Thursday, April 21, 1842 — Dawn

fort stikine

The fort’s journal entry paints a sterile, detached scene: “Daylight, fine weather and no wind.” It would have been a lovely morning were it not for the murdered man on the platform.

If the Iroquois had their way, Stikine would have a captain soon enough. The first to seize the reins of command was Antoine Kawannassé, a man with half a mind and little to lose. He returned from his whispered plotting with Heroux and Kannaquassé to find the scene unchanged. He rolled the body face up, casting McLoughlin’s rigored eyes toward the heavens, although many of the onlookers felt that was as close to the pearly gates as Mr. John would ever get. Kawannassé began to bark orders with surprising ease. He told the Kanakas to fetch some boards, and the corpse was “carried on a plank to McPherson’s room.” Two chairs were recruited as biers, a flimsy yet serviceable arrangement that kept McLoughlin off the floor, the only small measure of dignity on offer.

There were other practical matters to be attended to, and the most distasteful of them fell to the lowest ranks. The inescapable issue of blood demanded immediate attention, for “the body bled profusely, there being a deep pool of blood found around it.” At Kawannassé’s command, it “was washed away afterwards by the Kanakas.” Bucket upon bucket was hauled from the well, and the pool was diluted and smeared until the platform was stained a uniform crimson.

The blood was everywhere, on everything. At one point, Kawannassé glanced down and saw that his “hands and front of [his] clothing were soiled with blood.” The less said about how the blood got there, the better. The blood ritual, witnessed by all, would soon be stricken from the official record, replaced by Kawannassé’s claim that his hands were bloodied from carrying the body. When no one was looking, he “washed them in [his] own room,” erasing the stigmata of his crime.

The mournful task of preparing McLoughlin for burial also fell to the Sandwich Islanders. Okaia, aided by two of his brethren, ensured that the body was “stripped, washed clean, decently dressed and laid out.” Charles Belanger, seemingly struck by divine inspiration, ran to his room and returned with a straight razor. He did what he could to groom McLoughlin’s ragged beard, steering well clear of the gaping exit wound on the dead man’s neck.

The stopgap morticians had just finished their ablutions when Kannaquassé burst into the room, hawkish and crazed. He lunged at the body and, without warning or cause, “tore the shirt open on the breast” and “attempted to tear off the vest.” The men watched in horror as Kannaquassé “threw the body on the floor and stamp[ed] on the face with his foot.” A volley of insults soon followed, and the Kanakas “saw Pierre strike the body in the face with his fist” and “strike it on the face with a towel which he had in his hand.”

For a moment, an eerie calm descended. Kakepé stepped forward, intent on returning McLoughlin to his makeshift catafalque, when Kannaquassé pushed him aside and again seized “the head by the hair and knock[ed] it against the floor several times, saying something very bad which [Kakepé] did not understand.” Those who knew the tongue heard Kannaquassé scream, “While you were living you gave me many a blow but you cannot do so now.” Kannaquassé then released John’s hair and ended his siege. His assault left the traders shaken, and they “were all crying and told him not to use the body in that way.” Kanakanui asked Kannaquassé to go downstairs and leave him to deal with the body, but the Iroquois refused to go. Reasoning with a madman rarely ends well, but the Kanakas were inherently deferential to any man possessing more “white blood” than they, and their respectful tone seemed to calm him. Kannaquassé then tried to recruit people to pray over the body, telling the Kanakas it “was customary in Canada.” The request was so disingenuous, no one could bring himself to do it.

Outside, commotion drew forth the last remaining holdouts. Oliver Martineau emerged into the breaking dawn, gormless and slack-jawed, of no tangible use to anyone. He told his colleagues he had spent the night sleeping in the southeast bastion, but the Metis trader was not just slow, he was inconsistent. When questioned further, Martineau admitted he had fired twice at the deceased. When Kannaquassé asked if Martineau had killed Mr. John, he replied, “I do not know if it was me or not.” Martineau would later change his story, saying he had fired into the air, not really aiming at McLoughlin. When asked a third time, he changed again, claiming he’d slept through the entire event, only to reverse his tale for a fourth time, telling anyone still listening he’d spent the night in hiding, too terrified to move “till daylight.”

The sun’s rays also roused Benoni Fleury, who was nursing a hangover. He had no recollection of the night gone by, saying, “I was told by the men that they found me in the morning under my bed, where I had hid myself the previous evening.” When informed of his master’s untimely death, Fleury broke down and cried.

As for Mrs. McLoughlin, she had heard the shouts regarding her husband’s cruel fate but was too frightened “to move out of [her] room,” and she refused to “go down stairs till the next Morning.” Only then did she see what remained of the man who had shared her bed. She had no rights, and her input into the funeral arrangements was neither solicited nor tolerated. There was no longer a place for her at Fort Stikine.

As the day stumbled on, the Iroquois and the Kanakas “quarrelled about who was going to obey whom.” Orders were given and quickly ignored, and nothing of note was accomplished. Thomas McPherson, having remained “up all night with the body,” simply assumed he was the new camp commander, and he barked orders that no one followed. During a quiet moment, he surreptitiously paced out McLoughlin’s quarters with an eye to taking them over. McPherson spent the morning writing the day’s entry in the fort’s journal and then completed his missives to the Hudson’s Bay commanders. In a letter to John Work, McPherson staked his claim as the outpost’s leader by adopting McLoughlin’s paranoia: “I am afraid that they will do to me the way they did to him.”

Pierre Kannaquassé made his own plans. As the Canadians gathered in the dining hall, he announced, “Now Mr. John is dead, I shall go out of the fort and spend the day with my wife.” Surprisingly, it was Urbain Heroux who stopped him, declaring that no one was to leave the fort. Kannaquassé told Kawannassé that Heroux was as bad as McLoughlin, treating the men as if they were prisoners. It was the first fissure in the Iroquois alliance. Kannaquassé’s voice dripped with bile as he laid bare his threat: “I see we must raise the devil again with these Canadians before we can get our liberty.”

As the day dragged on, whispers continued to circulate as to the killer’s identity.