Injustice of 1884 on state agenda for 2006

OLYMPIA — In 1884, a vigilante mob of more than 100 men from Washington Territory rode into Canada, abducted a 14-year-old Indian boy and hanged him from a tree.

The boy, a Sto:lo tribe member named Louie Sam, had been accused by the Americans of killing a shopkeeper in Nooksack, in what is now Whatcom County.

The killing nearly sparked a cross-border race war.

Now, more than a century later, Washington Lt. Gov. Brad Owen says there is convincing evidence the boy had nothing to do with killing the shopkeeper and was framed by the mob leaders. Owen is planning to ask the Legislature next month to pass a "healing" resolution acknowledging Louie Sam's innocence and decrying the lynching.

He also wants to pursue other gestures to make amends with the boy's descendants, such as possibly returning a Sto:lo spiritual stone that is now in the University of Washington's Burke Museum.

"From everything I've seen, there was a definite injustice done to this young man," Owen said.

But he denied recent news reports that he plans to push for a formal apology from Washington state.

"I find it difficult to go back and apologize for something that happened over 100 years ago when Washington wasn't a state and you don't have all the details," Owen said. "The issue that I have difficulty with is making an apology for people you have no relationship with — you have nothing to do with them and nothing to do with this incident."

Owen first learned about Louie Sam in September, while attending a Government House reception in Victoria, B.C. Owen's counterpart, British Columbia Lt. Gov. Iona Campagnolo, recounted the lynching in a speech. She said it is a mere footnote of history to some "but ... is as alive today with the Sto:lo people of the Fraser River as it was when it occurred."

Campagnolo asked Owen to join her in urging both the B.C. and Washington state governments to apologize to the Sto:lo.

Owen sent a letter later that month telling Campagnolo his office would look into the matter. B.C. government officials have indicated they will also respond to Campagnolo's request.

Owen's staff has enlisted two historians, one of them Keith Thor Carlson from the University of Saskatchewan, to help come up with wording for a legislative resolution.

Carlson, a former historian for the Sto:lo Nation, has researched the Louie Sam case for more than a decade and is writing a book about the saga. Using government archives, Carlson has reconstructed in remarkable detail the events leading up to the lynching and the futile efforts by British Columbia to bring the mob leaders to justice.

Carlson's research was put to film recently in "The Lynching of Louie Sam," a documentary that has been making the film-festival circuit.

Louie Sam was accused of killing Nooksack shopkeeper James Bell. When tribal leaders found out he was a suspect, they turned the boy over to provincial police, who left him in the custody of a local settler.

But that night the boy was abducted by the mob. His body was found the next morning, hanging from a tree a few hundred feet north of the border.

Sto:lo leaders initially considered sending warriors on a retaliatory attack against Nooksack.

"They couldn't decide whether to go down and grab the first white person they saw and hang him from the same tree" or to slay one American for each member of the mob, Carlson said this week.

But, Carlson said, the Sto:lo decided against an attack after government officials said they would look into the tribe's contention that the boy was innocent.

That claim was confirmed several months later by two B.C. provincial police officers who had been sent to Nooksack on an undercover operation. Their investigation implicated two Nooksack men in the shopkeeper's murder — one who later took over the dead man's business and one who married his estranged wife. Both helped lead the lynch mob.

The B.C. government asked American authorities to apprehend the lynchers and send them to Canada to stand trial for the boy's murder. But the Canadian government got little cooperation from the Americans and dropped the case.

Carlson said he thinks both governments share in the blame for not clearing Louie Sam's name and pursuing his killers.

Lt. Gov. Owen agrees.

"The politics of the day was just more powerful than this incredible injustice," Owen said. "They didn't put a value on this young life."

Ralph Thomas: 360-943-9882 or rthomas@seattletimes.com