THIS BOOK IS A WORK of fiction, but the key people and events are based on fact. On the evening of February 27, 1884, teenagers George Gillies and Pete Harkness secretly followed the Nooksack lynch mob as they traveled north into Canada with the aim of seizing Louie Sam for the murder of Nooksack resident James Bell, four days earlier. The mob, disguised in “war paint” and costumes, was led by William Osterman, William Moultray, Robert Breckenridge, and Bert Hopkins. Near the International Border between the Washington Territory and British Columbia, the lynch mob encountered Whatcom County Sheriff Stuart Leckie on his return from Canada, where that day he had witnessed Canadian Justice of the Peace William Campbell handcuff fourteen-year-old Louie Sam and leave him in custody overnight at the farmhouse of Thomas York, whom Campbell had deputized as a constable. The lynch mob sent one of their number ahead to Mr. York’s farmhouse to pose as a traveler in need of a bed for the night. Mrs. Phoebe Campbell—Mr. York’s daughter and the wife of Justice Campbell—later recounted that Mr. York believed that this infiltrator unlocked the farmhouse door after the household had retired for the night, thereby allowing the mob easy access to Louie Sam.
George and Pete were in Mr. York’s yard when the mob entered his house and hauled Louie Sam, still handcuffed, outside. And they were present when, on the ride back south to Nooksack, the mob stopped just short of the border and put a noose around Louie Sam’s neck. Eyewitness accounts report that when Louie Sam recognized William Moultray through his disguise, he spoke his only words of the night, recorded variously as: “Bill Moultray, I get you” and “I know you Bill Moultray, and when I get out of this I will get you.” His identity exposed, Moultray slapped the flank of the pony that was carrying Louie Sam, causing the pony to bolt—and Louie Sam to hang.
It was never proven that William Osterman, the Nooksack telegraph operator, murdered James Bell. However, the historical record shows that immediately following Louie Sam’s death the 
Nation presented evidence to the Canadian authorities that he was guilty, based on Louie Sam’s account of his visit to Nooksack to seek work from Osterman on the morning of James Bell’s murder. The were convinced that William Osterman lured Louie Sam to Nooksack as a scapegoat for the murder he planned to commit.
No clear motive existed for Osterman to murder Bell, apart from Osterman’s friendship with his brother-in-law, Dave Harkness. But Dave Harkness and Annette Bell had plenty of motive. It was rumored that at the time of his murder James Bell was threatening to sue Dave Harkness and Annette Bell. Annette Bell inherited five hundred dollars from Bell in trust for their son as well as six hundred dollars in proceeds from the sale of his land—which the Harknesses used to open a dry goods store. Bill Osterman got the job of appraiser of Mr. Bell’s estate, and so took his cut of the proceeds. Dave Harkness died the next year, in 1885. Annette Harkness continued to operate the dry goods store and the ferry at The Crossing after his death. In the Whatcom County census of 1885, she is listed as a merchant. She later married Dave Harkness’s friend Jack Simpson.
The Washington Territory achieved statehood in 1889. Bill Moultray was elected to the first state senate and remained in that office for many years. It is true that women were given the right to vote in the Washington Territory in 1883, but in 1887 female suffrage was struck down by a ruling of the Territorial Supreme Court. Women would not regain the right to vote in Washington State until 1910, and federally not until 1920.
Records show that George Gillies was born in England and immigrated to the Washington Territory with his Scots-born parents, Peter and Anna, probably in the 1870s, where Peter Gillies built a gristmill on Sumas Creek. According to an interview published in 1946 that the then elderly George Gillies gave to the Abbotsford, Sumas and Matsqui News, he and his brothers discovered the body of James Bell on the morning of February 24, 1884, while on their way to Sunday school. However, the character of George Gillies as portrayed in this book is invented. I have taken creative license with George’s redemptive arc and his slow dawning of awareness of the injustice committed against Louie Sam, and with the persecution that his family suffered as a result.
Fearing a cross-border war between the Nation and the American settlers, the B.C. and Canadian governments promised the swift action immediately following the lynching. Within two weeks of Louie Sam’s death, Canadian authorities dispatched two detectives to the Nooksack Valley to identify the leaders of the mob. One of the agents, a Mr. Clark, was driven out after being threatened by Annette Bell with “catching an incurable throat disease.” Prior to retreating to B.C., Agent Clark interviewed several Nooksack Valley residents who believed that motive and circumstances pointed to William Osterman as the murderer of James Bell. There was widespread belief that Louie Sam was framed by Osterman, who subsequently led the lynch mob in order to silence his scapegoat before Louie Sam could reveal the truth in a Canadian court of law.
Ultimately, neither Canadian nor American authorities had the resolve to see justice achieved. After initial promises to the government of Sir John A. Macdonald in Ottawa to further the investigation, American interest fell off. Wrote Washington Territory Governor Newell in July, 1884:
It is well nigh impossible to make discoveries of a band of disguised people who, with the entire community, are interested in the secrecy which pertains to such illegal and violent transactions.
In other words, despite the fact that the identities of the mob leaders were common knowledge, the American authorities had closed ranks with the settlers of the Nooksack Valley. It was left to Canada to initiate extradition proceedings, but the government did not act on the evidence gathered by Mr. Clark for fear of jeopardizing relations with the United States.
Within a few years, the population in the Fraser Valley declined due to the toll of European diseases. The influx of settlers further shifted the population ratio so that the became the minority in their own land. With the fear of an Indian uprising diminished by this decline in population, the Canadian government gave up its pursuit of justice for Louie Sam.
But the murder of Louie Sam remained an open wound for the Nation. In 2006, healing began when the Washington State legislature approved a resolution expressing sympathy to the for the lynching, acknowledging that both Washington and B.C. “failed to take adequate action to identify the true culprit of the murder and bring the organizers and members of the lynch mob to justice.” It wasn’t a formal apology, but it was a recognition of Louie Sam’s innocence.
Apart from recounting the horrors of the actual lynching, I found the most difficult aspect of writing this novel was presenting a truthful portrayal of nineteenth-century racism. Native Americans fell into a category all their own in the nineteenth-century pecking order of bigotry that targeted, among others, African-Americans, the Chinese, and the Irish. Native Americans were feared and reviled by many, especially settlers in the west, as hostile savages. They were romanticized by others as primitive children living in a natural, pre-civilized state. Missionaries saw the aboriginal peoples as heathens in need of Christian salvation and stepped up to the task—undermining First Nations cultures and languages and helping to spread European diseases like smallpox, tuberculosis, mumps, and measles that decimated aboriginal populations throughout North America.
Happily, today the Nation represents a thriving community of eleven bands—among them the Sumas—working toward self-government and the preservation of culture. It is my understanding that, to this day, the memory of Louie Sam remains very much alive in culture as an important reminder of the historical racism, injustice, and loss suffered by The People of the River.
—Elizabeth Stewart
PUBLISHER’S ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Annick Press wishes to acknowledge Stephen Osborne’s powerful article “Stories of a Lynching,” about the true events surrounding the lynching of Louie Sam, which appeared in issue 60 of Geist magazine. The revelations in this article were the motivating force for pursuing the story in a form that would appeal to young adult readers.