Thursday, April 21, 1842 — Midnight

fort stikine

As recounted by Thomas McPherson.

It began with Benoni Fleury, pie-eyed and slobbering in the arms of John McLoughlin, who was himself “half-seas over,” an era-specific euphemism for drunkenness. William Lasserte lingered like a useless prop as McLoughlin fought to tuck his servant in for the night, but things soon got out of hand. To hear Fleury tell it: “I fell to bed, in doing which a scuffle took place between us and I unfortunately tore the sleeve of his shirt.” The rent was accidental but McLoughlin “became outraged and thrashed [Fleury] unmercifully, so much so that Lasserte requested leave to desist.” The boldfaced challenge to his authority inflamed McLoughlin, who “flew at Lasserte and struck him repeatedly.” Lasserte had no choice but to turn tail and run, with McLoughlin on his heels. At one point, McLoughlin managed to grab hold of Lasserte and smacked him again for good measure. Lasserte wrenched free and fled, with McLoughlin staggering in pursuit. Lasserte made for the staircase, leaving McLoughlin listing in his wake. Step by step, McLoughlin pulled himself halfway up the flight of stairs before finally giving up the chase. He then stormed into Belanger’s room, where he found Simon Aneuharazie, Francois Pressé, Urbain Heroux, and Charles Belanger drinking to excess. McLoughlin grabbed Aneuharazie by the throat, mistaking him for Lasserte. A terrified Aneuharazie gulped for air as he told his master he had the wrong man. McLoughlin relinquished his death grip and lurched from the room, leaving the men bewildered.

Lasserte waited for McLoughlin to leave, then headed into the room where Aneuharazie sat rubbing his swollen throat. Lasserte tried to rally his colleagues with tales of the master’s abuse, but to no avail. He then proposed a plan that bordered on mutiny, suggesting they capture and bind McLoughlin if he once again “became outrageous.” Aneuharazie was still smarting from the last drubbing, and Lasserte could find no takers among the drunken cohort, save for Urbain Heroux.

It was a fateful meeting of unsound minds. Heroux had imbibed heavily for the past eight hours and was exhausted, having not slept in many nights. Illiterate and uneducated, Heroux was a profoundly superstitious man. He was frightened of the dark and terrified to be alone at night, certain that “there is a danger near me.” His fears were well-founded, for McLoughlin “appeared particularly irritated against Heroux.”

Lasserte’s treacherous pleas found a receptive audience in Heroux. He took up the cause and “Urbain made his escape through the door, calling out ‘take care of yourselves, [McLoughlin] is maltreating Fleury.’” In truth, the mistreatment had ended the moment Fleury passed out cold, but Heroux’s warning finally roused the men to action.

Meanwhile, McLoughlin continued storming through the halls of the outpost. Drawn by the commotion, Francois Pressé stood peering out the door of the big house when he heard McLoughlin cry, “They have wounded me. I must kill some of them.” McLoughlin then ran to where the Kanakas lay sleeping and tried to marshal his troops by shouting “Aux arms, aux arms!” Pressé was a little drunk and still did not know what all the fuss was about, but he heeded his master’s call. He ran to his quarters and grabbed his rifle, only to come face to face with a raging John McLoughlin.

Despite his recent call to arms, there was something about the sight of Pressé with a gun that made McLoughlin uneasy. Paranoia tightened its grip, and McLoughlin turned on Pressé, whispering, “You also want to kill me.” He confiscated Pressé’s gun and ordered those within earshot to place him in irons. Pressé did not resist, later saying he had only been following orders and knew better than to challenge McLoughlin when he was so far gone. Despite the chief’s call for shackles, Antoine Kawannassé refused to comply. Pressé had done nothing wrong, and Kawannassé saw no indication the man had “any bad intention.” Outraged at again being defied, McLoughlin grabbed hold of Pressé’s shirt collar and bum-rushed him toward the holding cell. The awkward motion, mixed with spirits, caused McLoughlin to trip, and “his rifle fell and went off.” Startled by the noise, McLoughlin righted himself and slapped the cuffs on Pressé, locking him in the outpost’s makeshift cell.

McLoughlin, shaken and shaking, then headed upstairs to hide in McPherson’s room. Fortunately for Pressé, McLoughlin had been too drunk to secure the chains properly, and Pressé “succeeded in extricating [himself] from the irons.” Locked in a room with no hope of escape, Pressé was “in dread for my life,” horrified by the ruckus emanating from the other side of the wall. He pressed his ear to the door and his hair stood on end as he overheard McLoughlin give Antoine Kawannassé a final chilling directive: “The first Canadian you see, shoot him.”

Outside Pressé’s locked cell, bedlam reigned. The fort’s complement was now heavily armed thanks to the competing war cries of Heroux and McLoughlin. Just then, Pressé heard seven or eight shots fired in rapid succession. He became “seriously alarmed” and hurled himself against the door, frantic to break free.

Although many had taken up arms, not everyone joined in the fray. When the call went out to shoot any Canadian on sight, everyone fitting that description went into hiding. Charles Belanger gathered up several of the wives and led them to the carpentry shop, where they huddled like frightened children. Louis Leclaire was too proud to cower with the women but he found similar sanctuary beneath the bench in the blacksmith’s shop. George Heron cast dignity aside and hid in the latrine, hoping its rancid vapours would deter all comers. Even the fort’s resident idiot, Oliver Martineau, knew better than to make himself a target. He bolted for the southeast bastion, where he promptly lay down and fell asleep.

McLoughlin remained upstairs, hunkered down with Antoine Kawannassé and Thomas McPherson. The lone thought rattling in his well-oiled brain was to arm himself, and McPherson watched helplessly as McLoughlin “was walking about the floor trying to load his rifle. He gave it to me to load as he could not do it himself, being too tipsy.” That was the last thing McPherson needed.

Thomas McPherson was already having a rough night, made all the more unbearable for being the only sober man left in the rogue’s gallery. He had spent the evening fetching liquor for his boss: “About 9 P.M., [McLoughlin] called in the Canadians and Iroquois and sent me into the Store for 3 Bottles of Rum, those 3 Bottles were filled 4 times in the course of the Night.” By then, McLoughlin was so wasted he “thought he saw a person in a white dress in front of the men’s house.” Unable to stand, he dispatched Kawannassé and McPherson “to see who it was, but [they] could neither see nor find any one.” McPherson had seen McLoughlin soused on many occasions, and experience had taught him that when McLoughlin drank, there was always hell to pay. In between rum runs, McPherson barricaded himself in his room, “apprehensive of Mr. McLoughlin’s violence.”

McPherson heard what followed through the floor in his room. Having guzzled “1½ Gallons of pure Spirits,” the chief trader and his men “began to fight.” As the shouting escalated, Heroux and Lasserte “ran out of the House with their Guns and [McLoughlin] sent all hands out after them.” McPherson would have remained locked in his room were it not for “Mr. McLoughlin, who had come for his Rifle on account [of] Heroux & Lasserte’s threatening him.”

McLoughlin ordered McPherson to take up his lantern and accompany him in “search of Urbain and Lasserte, who had secreted themselves.” McPherson thought the chief trader was simply paranoid, but he could not disobey a direct order. Holding aloft their lone source of light, he trailed McLoughlin as he hunted under the beds, although “for what object I cannot say.” McLoughlin then “went around in the Gallery and searched the Bastions but could not find Urbain and Lasserte.” As McPherson made his way into the southeast bastion, McLoughlin “ran down into the Area of the Fort, calling out ‘Fire, Fire,’” pleading with his loyal followers to commence shooting.

A hail of gunfire ensued, filling the night air with lead and the acrid smell of spent powder. A strange metered lull ensued as each man struggled to reload. Then, according to McPherson, “3 shots were fired near Fleury’s house and one from the Gallery.” From his hideout inside the carpenter’s workshop, Belanger heard one shot, followed almost immediately by another, “the ball passing through the door where I was standing.” Moments later, when the smoke finally cleared, McPherson learned that “one of those Shots took effect.”

Moonlight etched the scene in stark relief. The body of John McLoughlin lay crumpled in a pool of blood at the door of Urbain Heroux’s house.Leaving the safety of the carpentry shop, Charles Belanger saw McLoughlin “lying on his face, his rifle under his arm, quite dead.” He had been shot through the chest. The wound proved instantly fatal; there were no final words, no last desperate gasps — “he did not even say, ‘I am killed.’”

Almost immediately, the men began to speculate as to who had fired the lethal shot. Belanger posed the question to the growing crowd but his query met with stony silence and averted eyes. When pressed, several of the Canadians insisted, “We do not know, perhaps it was the Indians [from Tako].” When he asked the Kanakas, “some said it was Urbain and others said it was Antoine.” McPherson, having inherited the mantle of command by default, immediately sat down and drafted a letter to the Company, writing: “I do not know the very man that have done it, but some of the Islanders were on the Gallery…and they saw two men firing, who were Lasserte and Urbain.”

The debate raged on through the night, and by morning all agreed “the fatal shot had been fired by one Urbain Heroux.”