The Lynching of Louie Sam (27 page)

No clear motive existed for Osterman to murder Bell, apart from Osterman's friendship with his brother-in-law, Dave Harkness. But Dave Harkness and Annette Bell had plenty of motive. It was rumored that at the time of his murder James Bell was threatening to sue Dave Harkness and Annette Bell. Annette Bell inherited five hundred dollars from Bell in trust for their son as well as six hundred dollars in proceeds from the sale of his land—which the Harknesses used to open a dry goods store. Bill Osterman got the job of appraiser of Mr. Bell's estate, and so took his cut of the proceeds. Dave Harkness died the next year, in 1885. Annette Harkness continued to operate the dry goods store and the ferry at The Crossing after his death. In the Whatcom County census of 1885, she is listed as a merchant. She later married Dave Harkness's friend Jack Simpson.

The Washington Territory achieved statehood in 1889. Bill Moultray was elected to the first state senate and remained in that office for many years. It is true that women were given the right to vote in the Washington Territory in 1883, but in 1887 female suffrage was struck down by a ruling of the Territorial Supreme Court. Women would not regain the right to vote in Washington State until 1910, and federally not until 1920.

Records show that George Gillies was born in England and immigrated to the Washington Territory with his Scots-born parents, Peter and Anna, probably in the 1870s, where Peter Gillies built a gristmill on Sumas Creek. According to an interview published in 1946 that the then elderly George Gillies gave to the
Abbotsford, Sumas and Matsqui News
, he and his brothers discovered the body of James Bell on the morning of February 24, 1884, while on their way to Sunday school. However, the character of George Gillies as portrayed in this book is invented. I have taken creative license with George's redemptive arc and his slow dawning of awareness of the injustice committed against Louie Sam, and with the persecution that his family suffered as a result.

Fearing a cross-border war between the
Nation and the American settlers, the B.C. and Canadian governments promised the
swift action immediately following the lynching. Within two weeks of Louie Sam's death, Canadian authorities dispatched two detectives to the Nooksack Valley to identify the leaders of the mob. One of the agents, a Mr. Clark, was driven out after being threatened by Annette Bell with “catching an incurable throat disease.” Prior to retreating to B.C., Agent Clark interviewed several Nooksack Valley residents who believed that motive and circumstances pointed to William Osterman as the murderer of James Bell. There was widespread belief that Louie Sam was framed by Osterman, who subsequently led the lynch mob in order to silence his scapegoat before Louie Sam could reveal the truth in a Canadian court of law.

Ultimately, neither Canadian nor American authorities had the resolve to see justice achieved. After initial promises to the government of Sir John A. Macdonald in Ottawa to further the investigation, American interest fell off. Wrote Washington Territory Governor Newell in July, 1884:

It is well nigh impossible to make discoveries of a band of disguised people who, with the entire community, are interested in the secrecy which pertains to such illegal and violent transactions.

In other words, despite the fact that the identities of the mob leaders were common knowledge, the American authorities had closed ranks with the settlers of the Nooksack Valley. It was left to Canada to initiate extradition proceedings, but the government did not act on the evidence gathered by Mr. Clark for fear of jeopardizing relations with the United States.

Within a few years, the
population in the Fraser Valley declined due to the toll of European diseases. The influx of settlers further shifted the population ratio so that the
became the minority in their own land. With the fear of an Indian uprising diminished by this decline in population, the Canadian government gave up its pursuit of justice for Louie Sam.

But the murder of Louie Sam remained an open wound for the
Nation. In 2006, healing began when the Washington State legislature approved a resolution expressing sympathy to the
for the lynching, acknowledging that both Washington and B.C. “failed to take adequate action to identify the true culprit of the murder and bring the organizers and members of the lynch mob to justice.” It wasn't a formal apology, but it was a recognition of Louie Sam's innocence.

Apart from recounting the horrors of the actual lynching, I found the most difficult aspect of writing this novel was presenting a truthful portrayal of nineteenth-century racism. Native Americans fell into a category all their own in the nineteenth-century pecking order of bigotry that targeted, among others, African-Americans, the Chinese, and the Irish. Native Americans were feared and reviled by many, especially settlers in the west, as hostile savages. They were romanticized by others as primitive children living in a natural, pre-civilized state. Missionaries saw the aboriginal peoples as heathens in need of Christian salvation and stepped up to the task—undermining First Nations cultures and languages and helping to spread European diseases like smallpox, tuberculosis, mumps, and measles that decimated aboriginal populations throughout North America.

Happily, today the
Nation represents a thriving community of eleven bands—among them the Sumas—working toward self-government and the preservation of
culture. It is my understanding that, to this day, the memory of Louie Sam remains very much alive in
culture as an important reminder of the historical racism, injustice, and loss suffered by The People of the River.