Not Justice: Lynching Louie Sam

Episode 432: In February 1884, a Scottish storekeeper named James Bell was shot dead in his cabin along Telegraph Road in Washington Territory, just south of the Canadian border. Within days, a fifteen-year-old Semá:th boy named Louie Sam was arrested on suspicion of murder and placed in lawful Canadian custody on Sumas Prairie. He never made it to trial. On the night of February 27, a mob of seventy armed and disguised men crossed the international boundary from Washington Territory into British Columbia, took Sam from his cell, and hanged him from a roadside tree 169 paces north of the border. No one else was ever charged for Louie Sam’s lynching, and the investigation into Bell’s death seems to have stopped with Sam’s death.

Sources:

Deadly Neighbours — Chad Reimer (Caitlin Press, 2022)

The Lynching of Louie Sam — Keith Thor Carlson, BC Studies No. 109, Spring 1996

The Lynching of Louie Sam — John Vaillant, The Walrus, December 2008

Lynching Information — Tuskegee University Archives

An American Mob Crosses the Canadian Border and Lynches Louie Sam — HistoryLink.org

Our Territory — Sumas First Nation

Sq'éwlets: A Stó:lō–Coast Salish Community in the Fraser River Valley

Daily Colonist (Victoria, BC), February–March 1884 — britishcolonist.ca

BC Historical Newspapers — British Columbian (New Westminster) 1884, UBC Open Collections

Whatcom Reveille, February–March 1884 — Jeffcott Collection, Western Washington University Archives

Mesachie and Louie Sam — Chilliwack Progress, October 8, 1958 — Newspapers.com

Washington State Expresses Regret Over 1884 Lynching of Canadian Teen — CBC News, 2006

Plain Injustice — Literary Review of Canada, 2022

Louie Sam — Wikipedia

PDF of The Lynching of Louie Sam by Keith Thor Carlson

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices