The first wave came in the form of 30,000 American gold seekers who poured across the border starting in 1858. The Sto:lo called these people Xwelitem (“the starving ones”), likely because the Hudson’s Bay Company was trading with them for massive amounts of fish for export, and they didn’t understand who could possibly be eating it all. Settlers soon followed, and the arrival of the Northern Pacific and Canadian Pacific railways ushered in a third wave. Between 1880 and 1890, the population of Washington increased nearly fivefold. All of this put pressure on local native populations, creating an atmospheric gumbo of opportunity and resentment.
This was the environment Louie Sam was raised in, and his father, a man known to local whites as Mesachie (“bad” in Chinook trading jargon) Jim, was one sign of the times. Jim Sam was already suspected of murdering an aggressive and unpopular American settler who went missing in 1882 when he was sentenced to five years in provincial prison for shooting cattle. Killing settlers and cattle implies a wish to be rid of both, but any stated motive (or proof ) has been lost. Jim Sam died in prison in 1885, from tuberculosis. If newspaper accounts of the day are to be believed, Louie had a terrible reputation, not least because of his association with his father. The family lived in poverty, travelling between native communities on either side of the line. Louie’s most valuable possession would have been a Hudson’s Bay trade musket that may well have belonged to his father.
The border region at this place and time was sparsely populated, and the border itself barely acknowledged. People crossed in both directions, often and without interference. For local natives like Louie Sam, the border was irrelevant; their historic lands straddled the line, and their relatives lived on both sides (the Sto:lo’s southern counterparts are now known as the Nooksack). As a result, travel and seasonal migrations for work were commonplace into the 1970s. Even today, there is no fence, nor scarcely any other indication that the Sto:lo’s homeland is perched on the rim of the world’s most feared and fearful nation.
It was on the American side of this imaginary line that a fifty-eight-year old shopkeeper named James Bell was found supine on the floor of his burning home, shot through the back of the head. It was Sunday, February 24, 1884, and three boys returning home from church had seen the smoke and found the body. A homesteader named Breckenridge, from the nearby settlement of Nooksack, claimed to have seen Sam “one mile from James Bell’s” about an hour before the murder. A fifteen year-old boy claimed to have seen him afterward as well, recalling later that “the look on the Indian’s face as he approached me struck me with terror.”
That was all it took: the local sheriff, Stuart Leckie, was notified, and three days later, on Wednesday the twenty-seventh, he and Breckenridge crossed the border in search of William Campbell, a provincial justice of the peace. Campbell, a local man, took the Americans at their word, likely mounting his mule and riding immediately to Kilgard, where he knew he would find Louie Sam. Once there, Campbell charged Sam and handcuffed him on the spot. Thus, a foreign national, and a minor to boot, became the sole suspect and defendant in the case of US Authorities v. Louie Sam. Sheriff Leckie, who some said was present for the arrest, wanted to extradite Sam immediately, but Campbell forbade it; the youth would have his day in a Canadian court first.
Sometime that same afternoon, approximately seventy-five men departed Nooksack on foot and horseback, bound for the Canadian border, about ten kilometres away. They had just buried their neighbour, James Bell, and the image of Bell’s ten-year-old son riding to the graveyard on his murdered father’s coffin would have been fresh in their minds. Until now, this group had resembled the typical inhabitants of any northwestern settlers’ community. Among them were homesteaders and shopkeepers — by and large churchgoing men. But on this dark winter afternoon, they were transformed: a number of the men were clothed in their wives’ skirts; others wore their coats inside out. They had blackened their faces and bound rags around their heads; some had painted red lines across their eyes, “Injun” style.
Lynching wasn’t all that common in the American Northwest, so it is interesting to note that the members of this group seemed to know exactly what they were doing and went to some pains to disguise themselves. These men, who came to be known as the Nooksack Vigilance Committee, were armed with buffalo guns, pistols, and a length of hemp rope. Shortly after nightfall, they crossed into British Columbia at a place called Sumas Prairie, due south of Kilgard.
As the mass of men and horses moved north in the moonless dark, their masked features would have been further obscured by silver clouds of their own breath. Somewhere near the border, they met a man on the road heading south. This man was almost certainly Sheriff Leckie.
What is puzzling about these events is their apparent coordination at both ends. After arresting Louie Sam, Camp- bell, the JP, had put him in the hands of two hastily deputized constables: Thomas York, a well-established resident of Sumas Prairie; and Joe Steele who, interestingly, made his home on the American side of the border. The two men were given instructions to escort the handcuffed Sam to the jail at New Westminster, more than fifty kilometres away. Because of the length of the journey, Campbell told them to hold Sam at York’s house for the night and start for New Westminster in the morning. It was at this point that a routine prisoner transfer started looking like a barroom collaboration between Agatha Christie and Louis L’Amour.
The York house was one of the few proper homes in the area. It lay less than a kilometre north of the border, and it was a popular place. Offering travellers a meal or several nights’ lodging was common in those days — even the murder victim, James Bell, routinely fed passersby — and on the night of Louie Sam’s visit, the Yorks had a houseful. In addition to Mr. and Mrs. York and their employees, Owen Hughes and Dick Williams, there was Special Constable Steele, Louie Sam, and two other unnamed men, one of whom was described in court records only as a “traveller” and the other simply as a “stranger.” The Traveller was “a big man with black whiskers” who carried with him only a bedroll. The Stranger arrived with no blankets at all, just a gun.
