US officials make amends for 122-year-old lynching
March 1, 2006
By Tom Banse
OLYMPIA, Washington, March 1 (Reuters) - It came 122 years
late, but Washington state and the Canadian province of British
Columbia tried to make amends on Wednesday for the mistaken
lynching of a Canadian Indian boy, an incident that nearly
started a cross-border race war.
State officials, a provincial minister and tribal elders
chanted and drummed together in a "healing circle" in the
ornate rotunda of Washington state's Capitol and lawmakers
approved a resolution expressing "the deepest sympathy" to the
victim's descendants.
In February 1884, a vigilante mob of more than 100
Americans rode across the newly finalized border into Canada
near Sumas, Washington. They grabbed Louie Sam, a 14-year-old
Sto:Lo Indian, from Canadian police custody and hanged him from
a tree.
Louie Sam had been accused of the murder of a shopkeeper on
the U.S. side of the frontier -- a crime that Canadian
investigators later determined he never committed.
"One of things I've learned as I have grown older is the
importance of being able to let the words 'I'm sorry' roll off
your tongue when you are," said Washington Senator Cheryl
Pflug.
"We look forward to much happier relations," Pflug told the
state Senate chamber.
Sto:Lo Tribal Council Grand Chief Clarence Pennier listened
from a place of honor on the Senate rostrum, and tribal elders,
including a descendant of Louie Sam, looked on from the
gallery.
Pennier, wearing a woven cedar bark headpiece and a
distinctive woolen cloak, thanked the lawmakers, first in his
native tongue, and then in English. "It makes us feel good,"
Pennier said.
He said the Sto:Lo, who live in the Fraser Valley east of
Vancouver, British Columbia, never forgot the injustice of
Louie Sam's death. By recognizing that "a wrong was done" the
lawmakers are "making it right", he said.
"It closes a door and it opens others by making sure that
we can establish relationships with each other," Pennier said
in a later interview.
University of Saskatchewan historian Keith Carlson said the
lynching almost ignited a cross-border race war that was
averted only when Canadian officials agreed to bring the
vigilantes to justice.
"The majority of the (Sto:Lo) wanted to charge across the
border and kill the first 120 Americans they found to balance
off the people who had been involved in the lynch mob," Carlson
said.
Canadian detectives working undercover in the United States
discovered two American townspeople were responsible for the
shopkeeper's death. They had framed Louis Sam for the crime and
then led the lynch mob.
Neither of the suspects was ever prosecuted.
Wednesday's resolution acknowledged that Washington and
British Columbia "both 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."
The carefully worded measure stopped short, for legal
reason, of including a formal apology, but said that marking
the incident now was meant to ensure "that such a tragedy will
neither be forgotten nor repeated".
(CRIME-CANADA-LYNCHING, Reporting by Tom Banse, Allan Dowd
editing by Peter Galloway, Vancouver newsroom 604-664-7314)
Special thanks to Scott Barta for passing this on!
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March 2006 Reports
Last updated on March 2, 2006