in the company, then in 1851 he became the second Governor of Vancouver Island. The following anecdote involves Douglas while he was a clerk at Fort St. James on Stuart Lake, working for the Hudson’s Bay Company.
HALL: Well, my father was, he was the chief, until his retirement in the ’40s, I think, he retired. They had hereditary chiefs, you know, in the old days and he was born in 1864, according to the register.
ORCHARD: Are there any memories handed down of the first white men coming, and what was the impression of them?
HALL: Yes, the people were living up here at Sowchea. They had, there was a reserve still there yet. But that’s where they were living in the summertime when these saw these canoes around the point and they were singing, the canoeists were singing. And they saw these canoes and they all went on the shore to see who it was. They were singing in a strange language, something they hadn’t heard before. So they were all there when they landed, and they were white men. I guess that would be Simon Fraser—when they first came.
And they all crowded on the shore to see. They were very curious, of course. They hadn’t seen any white men before and they started, I suppose, they talked in sign language. They couldn’t understand one another, you know.
And they showed them different things that they had, you know, like a knife and soap. They didn’t start to eat, according to all these stories that you hear, that they started to eat the soap. My father said they didn’t start to eat the soap. He said they didn’t know—they didn’t give them any soap in the first place to begin with, but they showed them a knife and then they showed them a—they showed them a gun and they fired the gun. When they fired the gun, well, they all took for the bush, you know. They got scared. They had never heard anything like it. They did all their hunting by these homemade things like spears, and, well, they did their hunting by spears and snares and traps, these wooden traps.
The first two came from McLeod’s Lake. They arrived where the Hudson Bay is. Yes, there were two white men. Yes, two years before he [Simon Fraser] came. No, a year before he came. They arrived where the Hudson Bay is. Not exactly where the store is—that’s the fourth store, the Hudson Bay, you know. Anyway, they arrived. It was just overgrown with great big spruce, and so they came out there and one of them made a blaze on the tree and said, “This is where the post will be.” And he promised the people that in a year’s time they would come back and build a post, where they could buy knives and guns, you know, and various things.
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
