Thursday, April 21, 1842 — Midday

fort stikine

The last of the morning fog burned away as Louis Leclaire made a coffin, finishing the solemn task around eleven o’clock. The body of John McLoughlin was laid inside and the lid securely nailed. For want of a better location, the box was then taken from the carpentry shop to the bathhouse. As the pallbearers laid the casket down, Urbain Heroux surprised everyone by pleading, “My friends, pray do not suspect me. I have a wife and child to provide for and I am not wicked enough to commit such a deed.” His defence rang hollow, for no one within earshot questioned Heroux’s capacity for evil. To soothe the simmering tensions, “McPherson gave the men a dram” of spirits. It was a curious choice, given how poorly the last round of drinks had gone down, but it was the only way he knew to buy the men’s loyalty. As dusk approached, the fort’s complement settled in for a fitful night.

The morning of April 23, 1842, dawned clear, with a light westerly wind. The time had come to commit John McLoughlin’s remains to the Sandy Hills. The fort’s journal records the event without sentiment: “The men were employed digging the grave for the body and about 12:00 at noon it was deposited in the ground.” Ceremony was hard to come by. They lowered the fort’s flag to half-mast, and “the corpse was carried to the grave by Lasserte, Pressé, Leclaire, and some Kanakas, but Urbain did not touch it.” As the coffin hit bedrock, “the salute of a gun” rang out across the barren tidal plain. The grave was dug some distance from the fort, just beyond the high-water line, and marked with a rugged wooden cross. In a final hollow gesture, “the men drank another dram,” a cynical toast to their fallen leader’s good health.

Unwanted, unwelcome, and unprotected, McLoughlin’s wife left the fort immediately after the burial, running back to the shelter of her father, the tribal chief. As “McLoughlin’s wife” once again became “Quatkie’s daughter,” life at Fort Stikine returned to normal, or what passes for normal in hell. Time, tide, and fur wait for no man, and the day’s journal recordsthe officers of Stikine traded “five black bear skins for various articles” that afternoon. They also welcomed visitors when “Several canoes arrived from up the river.” John McLoughlin was not yet two hours in the ground, and already every last trace of him had been erased.