The Lynching of Louie Sam

THE ONLY DOCUMENTED CASE of vigilante lynching in British Columbia occurred in the Fraser Valley in late February 1884. The victim was Louie Sam, a fifteen-year-old Storlo boy, who, on the night of his execution, had been in the custody of the British Columbia Provincial Police. The lynch mob comprised approximately one hundred Americans from the border community of Nooksack. These men accused Louie of having killed one of their neighbours, a shopkeeper named James Bell. Within American society, vigilante violence had long been viewed as a legitimate means of establishing (or re-establishing) social order. The perceived fragility of European civilization on successive American frontiers has led countless "vigilance committees" to take the law into their own hands. However, it is doubtful that many of the American settlers who participated in, or condoned, the lynching of Louie Sam regarded northern Washington Territory in 1884 as a particularly dangerous frontier where criminals were beyond the reach of legitimate law-enforcement agencies. Indeed, young Louie Sam was incarcerated by Canadian officials within twenty-four hours of the murder of the Nooksack shopkeeper. The records documenting the lynching suggest that the crime was actually committed by an American settler from Nooksack, who used Louie as a scapegoat. Canadian