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Saturday, December 24, 2005 · Last updated 9:52 a.m. PT
British Columbia seeks apology for 1884 lynching by US vigilantes
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
VICTORIA, British Columbia -- British Columbia's lieutenant governor is asking her counterpart in Washington state to arrange an apology for the 1884 lynching of a 14-year-old Sto:lo Indian boy by an American mob.
Louie Sam was being held by provincial authorities in February 1884 when more than 100 Americans came across the border on horseback, abducted the boy and hanged him.
He was suspected in the killing of a shopkeeper in Nooksack, in what is now Washington state's Whatcom County. Washington did not become a state for another five years, in 1889.
The lynching has not been forgotten by the Sto:lo or historians, who believe the boy died for a killing he didn't commit.
B.C. Lt. Gov. Iona Campagnolo raised the issue in September, during a visit by Washington Lt. Gov. Brad Owen.
"We're still trying to work things out," Owen spokesman Brian Hatfield said earlier this month. "But there will be a statement ... an apology."
"The lieutenant governor describes it as a healing," Hatfield told the Toronto Globe and Mail.
A resolution will be submitted to the Legislature during the session that begins Jan. 9, he said.
"It's always been one of those issues of injustice that's never been made right, and it's good that this is happening," said Grand Chief Doug Kelley of the Sto:lo Tribal Council. "It certainly means a lot to me and I think to all Sto:lo."
Keith Carlson, a professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan, became interested in the case a few years ago while working as a consultant for the Sto:lo. He found records in the B.C. Archives that not only detailed the vigilante raid into Canada, but described an undercover operation by two provincial police officers, who went into the Washington territory to investigate the death of storekeeper James Bell.
"The B.C. police were quite convinced he was framed for the murder. They had people telling them who really did it," Carlson told the Toronto newspaper.
Louie Sam lived just north of the U.S.-Canadian border in a small Sto:lo community near what is now Sumas, Wash. He had been offered a job south of the border, but when he got there he found there wasn't any work, Carlson said.
The night Sam headed back home, Bell was killed and his store set afire. Louie was accused by two local men.
Sto:lo leaders turned the boy over to provincial police, believing he would be treated fairly. But vigilantes seized Sam at the homestead where he was being held by a deputized B.C. constable. His body was found later, hanging from a tree just north of the border.
According to Carlson, outraged leaders of the 21 Sto:lo tribes in the Fraser Valley saw two options: "Ride south and kill the first white man they saw, or ride south and kill 120 whites - one for each member of the lynch party."
"It was on the verge of becoming a race war," he said.
To keep the peace, the B.C. government sent the undercover officers south, posing as laborers. They returned with statements from witnesses that implicated two Washington men, including the man who recruited Louie Sam for the non-existent job and later took over Bell's business. The other man married Bell's widow.
"I don't think there's any doubt but that Louie Sam was innocent. He was framed," Carlson said.
In December 2004, Washington state exonerated Nisqually Chief Leschi after evidence was heard by an unofficial "Historical Court of Justice."
Leschi was hanged by the territorial government in 1858, accused in the death of a white militia soldier, Col. A. Benton Moses.
The court - formed and headed by state Supreme Court Justice Gerry Alexander - did not address the question of whether Leschi shot Moses - after so long, it's impossible to know for sure what happened. But the judges determined Leschi should never have been charged because he would have been acting as a lawful combatant during the region's 1855 Indian War.
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