Wednesday, April 20, 1842 — Midday

fort stikine

On the last day of his life, John McLoughlin Jr. awoke at noon to a world that was already going on without him. Beside him lay his “Indian Wife”; they were coupled à la façon du pays, making her something more than a mistress but less than a lawfully wedded spouse. Not every man in Fort Stikine was permitted to keep a woman within its walls, but McLoughlin was the outpost’s chief trader, and rank had its privileges.

History does not record the woman’s name. In official company documents she was simply “Quatkie’s daughter” or “McLoughlin’s wife,” as though she ceased to exist outside of her relationships with men. Although nameless, she was still the daughter of a chief, and McLoughlin was the son of a chief factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, but what kept them in bed at so late an hour had nothing to do with their inherited lustre or even post-coital bliss: it was insomnia, born of paranoia, marbled with fear.

McLoughlin’s restlessness had dogged him for months. It began with his promotion to chief trader, the fort’s highest office, and was exacerbated by the recent loss of his trusted right-hand, Roderick Finlayson. The departure of Finlayson left the highly inexperienced McLoughlin in sole and uneasy command. As he told his colleagues, “I have had all the troubles that a man could have since I have been alone,” adding ominously, “I have had scarcely any rest, night and day I am up — it is to [sic] much for one and my constitution cannot stand it in such a troublesome place as this post is.”

These laments were no idle boasts or exaggeration. Since Finlayson’s transfer, Fort Stikine had become McLoughlin’s perdition. The outpost — built near what is now the town of Wrangell in the Alaskan panhandle — was “situated…among a horde of savages.” The local people resented the Company’s encroachment on their lands and repeatedly “attempted to scale the stockade with a view of taking the place.” Tensions escalated when the First Nation warriors destroyed the bridge linking the fort to the mainland, which in turn threatened the outpost’s water supply. The traders retaliated by taking a local chief hostage and holding him captive until his people repaired the damage.

The threat from outside the fort’s stockades, however, paled in comparison to the menace lurking within. Hostile as they were, the aboriginals were no match for the worthless band of miscreants, malcontents, and lost boys that made up the fort’s complement. Even the neighbouring tribes knew “Mr. John has bad white men at Stikine.”

Some of those men made no secret of their intention to kill their new chief trader; indeed, the assassination plot was an open topic of conversation among Stikine’s ranks. In the weeks prior, Company trader Pierre Kannaquassé had gone so far as to shoot at McLoughlin on three separate occasions. Each time the bullet flew shy of its mark, but guns were not the only means at Kannaquassé’s disposal. Earlier in March, Kannaquassé approached Nahua, the fort’s cook, and urged him “to poison McLoughlin by putting the scrapings of copper in his soup.” Horrified, Nahua insisted he “would do no such thing.” Nahua later informed McLoughlin of the treachery, and Mr. John gave Kannaquassé a sound thrashing. Still, McLoughlin held off firing his would-be assassin until he received word from his father, the region’s chief factor, on how best to deal with the man. It is telling that repeated attempts on the life of one’s superior were not automatic grounds for dismissal in the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Although the plots were thwarted, McLoughlin knew the threat remained, and he wrote to his supervisor, John Work: “I am still amongst the living of this troublesome post though reports say that I am going to be dispatched to the Sandy Hills,” a poetic euphemism for the cemetery. McLoughlin put on a brave face, telling Work, “all that does not trouble me much —but it keeps me on my guard.”

The demons plaguing John McLoughlin were not all so tangible. He had a history of self-destructive behavior and often suffered from bouts of depression, what he called getting “the Blue devils.” His mental darkness always descended at night, when the normal timpani of the fort fell silent, and he often complained, “I do not know what to do in the evening when I cannot sleep.”

He did find one nighttime distraction particularly compelling. According to a junior officer, Mr. John “was always trying to catch the Watchmen sleeping, coming by stealth wrapped up in his Blanket.” On one occasion, McLoughlin found a guard snoring and beat the man to within an inch of his life. Whether such corporal punishment was a necessary evil to ensure the fort’s security or a symptom of the chief trader’s declining mental stability was a subject ripe for debate. Curiously, even the man beaten for sleeping on his watch later admitted his harsh discipline was justified.

In between his midnight raids on the watchtowers, McLoughlin spent his twilight hours pacing, his thoughts a choir of despair. As each day drew to a close, his country wife prayed for exhaustion to overtake him. On the evening of April 19, he did not surrender until the light of dawn pierced the cracks of their room. With equal parts resignation and trepidation, McLoughlin pulled himself from his bed. There was work to be done, and if history were any guide, it would not happen without his constant vigilance and firm disciplinary hand. He looked a fright. On his best days, he had more hair than any man had use for, but he had let himself go, and his wild mane and boot-scrape beard did little to foster an image of sanity. He opened his window just a crack, a hedge against the cold and the nebulous threat. He shouted to Nahua to fetch him some food, but his barking was met only by silence.

Low-hanging clouds drained the blue from the sky, and the rain dripped incessantly. The sombre atmosphere matched his décor. Home was little more than a poor man’s still life: a timber box on the upper floor of the fort’s main house, punctuated with a few meagre possessions. Such was the price owed for the choices he’d made. He was just shy of thirty at a time when men counted themselves lucky to live a decade longer, and he was far from his ancestral home, although this was of no consequence to a peripatetic man like John McLoughlin.

He wasted little time on his morning ablutions, for personal grooming meant nothing in Fort Stikine. He dressed and drank, no doubt cursing the long-lost Nahua for robbing him of his morning meal. Then McLoughlin paused to take his wife’s hands, and they shared a few words. The words must have been few indeed, for he spoke only a smattering of her language, and she knew nothing of his. In more public settings, John relied on the services of Hanega Joe, the post’s ersatz translator. Joe claimed to have been educated in the United States and spoke “a little English,” a triumph of understatement. McLoughlin had already fired Hanega Joe once, only to rehire him almost immediately; desperation breeds forgiveness, and some English was better than none. But here, in the privacy of their room, the couple did what they could to make themselves understood. Even without words, their partings had taken on an air of finality.

It took all he had to leave the room, although his hesitancy had little to do with the menace waiting for him outside the door. Rather, it was a formidable crossbar, recently crafted by the fort’s carpenters and blacksmiths, preventing his exit. Call it what you will — a prescient shield against the looming evil or an artifact of his fevered paranoia — but “every night before he went to bed, he used to bar the door on the inside, as if he knew their treacherous intentions.” Whether such excessive precaution served to keep evil in or out is the question at the heart of this mystery.