There was a trail from McLeod’s Lake, yes, ninety miles [145 kilometres] because there was a post above McLeod’s Lake before Fort
St. James. They didn’t call it Fort St. James in those days. It was called Stuart Lake, Stuart Lake Post.
Sir James Douglas, 1860s. Photo: HP002653
ORCHARD: Any incidents from those earlier years?
HALL: There was a, I guess everybody knows about how James Douglas’s life was threatened.
ORCHARD: That was here, was it?
HALL: Yes, that was here.
ORCHARD: What was the story about that?
HALL: Well, apparently this Native [named Zulth-Nolly] gave a beating to some Hudson Bay servant down in Fort George and, according to the story, he killed him and then he sneaked back up here. It was during the summertime, during the salmon season, and all the people were camped at the mouth, close to the mouth of the Stuart River.
And this man came up and, of course, he was hiding, and as soon as they heard about it across the lake there at the post, a couple of the men, the Hudson Bay men, came over and starting searching for him. Didn’t know, they saw them coming, you know, but there was a woman who had a baby and she was in bed, of course that would be in the smokehouse. And he didn’t know where to hide, so finally they hid him. He crawled in with this woman. He didn’t know at the last moment, he didn’t know where to go, so he just jumped there and, well, these two men, they came searching. And, of course, they threw the blankets off this woman like they did in the old days, like the Hudson Bay used to do, you know. They bossed these Natives, and so they threw the blankets off her, and there the poor fellow was crouching. And they got him out and they just tore him, literally tore him to pieces, and killed him.
In the 1890s, an aboriginal smokehouse was a gathering place as well as a location where fish, including halibut, were hung to dry. Photo: PN00366
Kwah was away then. He was down the river at that time. And they tore this poor fellow, just tore him to pieces without any fair trial, without even asking any questions. They just yanked him outside the door and they just literally tore him to pieces outside.
And when Kwah came back he was furious, of course. He was down the river at that time, and when he returned and found out what happened, well, he, Kwah, had a terrible temper and he took his men across. He said, “We will go and avenge this man’s death. They had no business to come over when I wasn’t here to do such a thing to one of my people.”
So he went across with some men. He picked these men, and they went across to the fort and they were let in. The fort was inside a barricade, a stockade, they call it. So when they got there, he demanded to see James Douglas who was a clerk then. And, or was he a clerk?
Anyway, he was there, and he, so they all got in the fort, right inside the trading post and demanded to see. One of the men had a knife and he went and grabbed James Douglas. Well, James Douglas started to order them out, you know, and no, they weren’t going to budge.
They said, “We’re staying right here. You had no business to come to our camp and do what you did to this fellow, and upsetting the whole village,” because all the children got scared and the women were just, the children were all screaming, you know, running around there while they were searching for this man.
Well, I guess James Douglas was, he really started to tell them off. And one of the fellows grabbed him by the throat, and he said he held him like that with a knife upraised in his right hand, and he said to Kwah, “Shall I strike?”
And Kwah didn’t say anything. So, “No,” he said. “Don’t strike, yet,” he said. And this fellow at the throat of James Douglas was just, you know, he really wanted to kill him right there, and finally Kwah said, “No!” He said, “Let him go.”
So this woman, I guess it would be James Douglas’s wife who was upstairs. She was a half-breed and she came down, and according to my father she didn’t throw anything down. According to the stories, is that she threw blankets and clothes down there and to pacify the men, but she didn’t. I asked my father, you know. It was just between my father and I, and I know my dad wouldn’t lie to me.
I said, “Is it true?” I said, “that this woman threw down blankets and dresses and stuff like that to pacify?”
He said, “No, she just came down and said—she was crying, of course, and she said, ‘Please don’t kill my husband. Please, I’m one of you, too, and he’s my husband and I love him. Please don’t kill him.’”
So he said, “Put your knife down,” he said to the fellow, “and let him go.” So the fellow let him go and didn’t kill him.
He once had in his hands the life of (future Sir) James Douglas, but was great enough to refrain from taking it,” reads Chief Kwah’s gravestone. Photo: hp071315
There’s a lot of things that are written that are not true about the Native people and their ways like they say. Like, my tribe, they’re the Carrier, and they say that they used to carry the bones of their husbands on their backs. According to my father, that isn’t true. They didn’t carry them, the bones, on their back at all. He said he had never heard of this. I told him what was written, and he said “I never heard of such a thing.” He said they used to bury them in the trees, sort of cache them, I guess. And they would bury them later, I guess. After the white man came, they showed them how to bury their dead.
But the story about James Douglas, well, it’s been retold so many times, and a thing added here and a thing added there. Well, this is the true story of what, just what did happen.
ORCHARD: How did they resolve that problem?
HALL: Well, they talked about it after he told the fellow to—this man—he let him go. And he didn’t want to let him go, but Kwah said to let him go, so he had to take his hands off James Douglas. And then they talked about it, you know, and so they left quite peaceably after that. Well, remember that there was no law, no policemen or anything, and these Natives were used to protecting one another and protecting their wives and their families.
The townsite of Lytton, 1875. Photo: hp037815
Won’t Do
Anyone Any Good to Fight
DANNY MILO
on Natives and White Men during
the First Gold Rush
(RECORDED IN APRIL 1963)
_____
DANIEL MILO (1864–1966) was 98 years old at the time of this interview. Born in Sardis, B.C., in the Fraser Valley as a member of the Chilliwack First Nation, Milo outlived all eleven of his brothers and sisters. His parents lived in a home on the banks of the Old Chilliwack River, and when he was a child, the current swelled and the family home was washed away. He offered many flood stories to Orchard. Milo also illustrates a lot of history and some oral tradition about the Chilliwack people, including details about geography, particularly that of Cultus and Sumas lakes.
Here, Milo discusses details