Wednesday, April 20, 1842 — Dusk

fort stikine

One by one the men passed through the outpost’s side gate, skin drenched and bone weary. Although John McLoughlin Jr.’s day had scarcely begun, the traders had been hard at work since the gates were unlocked at six that morning. Work went on regardless the weather, and the men toiled in rain or shine, frost or swelter, in sickness or in health. The day’s labour was as backbreaking as it was monotonous: squaring timber to build a new barracks. There was no need for clocks and little sense of time, for the rhythm of their days followed the course of the sun. Now the darkness spread, signalling an end to the ceaseless cycle of work. The air was crisp and cold, and the afternoon’s rain gave way to the promise of a clear moonlit night.

Back in the fort, lumber continued to dominate the conversation. McLoughlin called for Louis Leclaire and gave him the dimensions of the new house to be built. Mr. John asked him to square its logs the next day, but it was an order masquerading as a request, one met with eye-rolling resignation. William Lasserte joined the discussion as measurements were taken, and a work detail was organized to prepare the foundation.

The workday was forgettable but the evening proved otherwise. For the past two days, the outpost had played host to “five Indians from Tako,” Stikine’s closest neighbour. Governor Simpson had recently decided that Fort Tako, a failure from its inception, would be closed within a year’s time. The five visitors arrived bearing letters from Tako’s chief trader, Mr. Kennedy, and took up residence in Stikine to await McLoughlin’s reply before setting off on their return voyage. No one seemed to be in a hurry to leave.

On their second day at Stikine, one of the Tako contingent got into an altercation with McLoughlin after the visitor said something he “considered improper.” A brief dust-up ensued, thanks to Hanega Joe’s clumsy efforts at translation, and ended when McLoughlin beat the impertinent delegate with his fists. The misunderstanding was eventually settled, and to make amends for his hasty use of force, McLoughlin ordered some rum be taken out of stores and given to the visitors as a peace offering. The gesture smacked of guilt, but the liquor placated the men from Tako. McLoughlin’s token gesture did not sit well with his own men, many of whom had been on the receiving end of the chief trader’s fists, with no free booze to show for it.

One such man was the fort’s cook, Nahua. That afternoon, the cook “went out of the fort for water and Mr. McLoughlin, suspecting that [he] had gone out for some other purpose, struck [him] upon the head and on the arm, with his fist.” Nahua promptly burst into tears, wilting under the assault.McLoughlin never made clear what treasonous offence he suspected Nahua of committing, but then, McLoughlin’s beatings rarely came with an explanation. As the night wore on, Nahua milked his injury for all it was worth, telling everyone within earshot of his unwarranted suffering. Word eventually circled back to McLoughlin, who came to check on his histrionic cook. He asked him to join the men for the evening’s festivities, but Nahua said he was in too much pain to get up. Long accustomed to the cook’s theatrics, McLoughlin told Nahua that the party would go on without him.

The chief trader then made his way to the front room on the lower level of the fort’s main building, where he found a ceilidh in full swing. The music was simple, catchy, and repetitive, hammered out on anything capable of holding a beat. Despite the hall’s snug dimensions, it was chock-a-block with men and a few of the wives. The gratis liquor was making the rounds, and faces were flushed. A disconcerting number of guns and knives were strewn about, misadventures just waiting to happen. The room was lit by a handful of candles, its furnishings a primitive assortment of filthy tables and chairs. A cloud of blue tobacco smoke momentarily overwhelmed the fort’s baseline tang of wet wool, curing animal hides, and overflowing latrines.

Despite Nahua’s absence, food still found its way to the table. The evening’s repast bore a striking resemblance to that of the night before, and the night before that. Venison was the fort’s staple, its ubiquity broken only by the occasional appearance of salmon procured from the local tribesmen. To wash down the game, the men had a choice of “brackish water” or hard spirits mixed with brackish water. They inevitably chose the latter.

Had McLoughlin paid more attention, he would have noticed the free-flowing alcohol greatly exceeded the amount he had authorized, and that the men partaking of it were not all from Fort Tako. One man in particular — Benoni Fleury, McLoughlin’s Metis valet and the fort’s resident spitfire — had overindulged and was growing increasingly sloppy and belligerent. When Fleury could no longer stand or form sentences, McLoughlin carried him to his room with the help of Antoine Kawannassé and William Lasserte.

Without ceremony they threw him onto the bed, but Fleury did not go quietly. He “became very noisy and troublesome. Mr. John spoke to him kindly and endeavoured to quiet him,” whispering to him and calling him “my lad [mon enfans].” Fleury’s pickled brain was incapable of registering kindness, and he slapped McLoughlin, locking him in a bear hug and accidentally tearing John’s shirt. The tussling continued off and on for almost an hour. Each time Fleury calmed down and the chief trader tried to leave, the shouting would start anew and McLoughlin was sucked into another round of slaps and chokeholds. After five attempts to settle the boisterous drunk, McLoughlin finally conceded defeat and tied Fleury to the bed. Even so, “Mr. John did this without anger and from a kind motive,” but Fleury continued to rage. Exhausted and at the end of his tether, McLoughlin slapped him several times across the face.

It was a familiar, dysfunctional dance between the two men. In the fall of 1841, the fort’s journal records that Fleury “got intoxicated…by helping himself rather too plentifully without permission out of some spirits remaining in the cupboard, for which he got a few well merited cuffs from Mr. John.” The frequently crapulent Fleury had grown accustomed to the back of McLoughlin’s hand, but his colleagues wanted none of it. When William Lasserte openly criticized the chief trader for striking a drunken man, McLoughlin slapped Lasserte for his insolence. This too was well-trodden ground. McLoughlin once hit Lasserte for “staring him in the face,” demanding to know, “Do you wish to kill me with your eyes?” The room’s only other occupant, Antoine Kawannassé, also had a troubled history with McLoughlin. Kawannassé swore that the only time McLoughlin ever beat him was “fore entering his room with my hat on, which I did inadvertently.” He stood silent, knowing better than to toy with McLoughlin’s hair-trigger, then backed out of the room, hat in hand.

With the last few ticks of a superfluous clock, it became April 21, 1842. The men continued to party through the early morning hours, blissfully unaware of the violence occurring upstairs. In a curious testament to liquor’s amnesiac powers, one reveller later recalled: “We spent the evening in the utmost harmony, dancing and singing, without an angry word, all parties being in the best possible humour.”