Teamster William Whyte, wood cutter Chew Wye and Constable Alexander Kindness. Three South Cariboo men with little in common - except for the brutal way in which they died.
Life in the Cariboo had changed in the years since the start of the Gold Rush. It was once a rough untamed country seen only through the eyes of the Indigenous people who called it home and later, the explorers who came seeking a new land.
By the 1900s, the hunger for gold and the rough men who followed the Gold Rush Trail slowly gave way to a different breed of people, eager to build homes and ranches, bringing civilization to the rangeland and forests of British Columbia’s Interior.
“But for eighteen months beginning in 1911, more than cattle were at home on the Cariboo rangeland. During this period, two killers, Indigenous men Paul Spintlum and Moses Paul, skillfully used the rugged gullies and tree-clad ridges to elude the men who sought to bring them to justice for the murder of three men,” wrote retired British Columbia Provincial Police Deputy Commissioner, Cecil Clark, in his story Phantoms of the Rangeland.
It was mid-July in 1911 when Cariboo freight driver, Louis Crosina, showed up at the Clinton police station with the news he’d stumbled across a dead body in Suicide Valley, located four miles from Clinton.
When Constable Jack McMillan asked how Crosina knew the man was dead he was told the victim’s head had been bashed in.
Arriving at the location he found the body of William Whyte, a teamster who had been working in the area. Discovering a blood-stained rock matching the wound in Whyte’s head, he realized he had a murder on his hands.
From the condition of the body, McMillan estimated he had been killed about three days prior and left partly concealed by a log some distance from the road.
During his investigation, McMillan learned that Whyte had been laid off from his job driving a team for Billy Parker at Big Lake. He stayed in the area waiting for his final pay envelope, due in on the first stage. The postmaster told McMillan that Whyte was disappointed when his wages did not arrive.
McMillan also spoke with Chew Wye, a Chinese woodcutter with a cabin near Four Mile Lake. He told McMillan that he had seen Whyte a few days before - he had been a little drunk, aided by the whiskey bottle sticking out of his pocket.
As Whyte left, an Indigenous man rode out of the bush. After sharing his bottle, Whyte climbed up behind the man and they road off; Chew Wye identified the man as 25-year-old Moses Paul, a member of the Clinton Band.
This troubled McMillan as Moses had never been in trouble with the law. He knew the young man personally as Moses had been the one to teach his daughter, Sadie, how to ride. McMillan had difficulty believing Moses had anything to do with Whyte’s death.
When he went to talk with Moses he found the man had little to say beyond admitting he’d shared a couple of drinks with Whyte before the two men parted company a few miles from Chew Wye’s cabin.
McMillan searched Moses’ cabin and found a watch later identified as belonging to Whyte.
Convinced now the young man must have been involved in the murder, McMillan locked him up in the Clinton jail, only to have him escape a few days later when the policeman was out getting hay.
It was at this time Paul Spintlum entered the picture. Not much was known about him except that he was a member of the Lillooet Nation and worked as a labourer during the haying season for the area ranchers. He was also a known friend of Moses.
Shortly before the escape, Spintlum bought supplies and rifle ammunition at Foster’s store, leading McMillan to conclude he’d broken Moses out of jail and he now had two fugitives on the run.
A few weeks later one of Chew Wye’s friends, Ah Joe, showed up in Clinton with the news that he had found Chew Wye, dead. The man had stopped by to visit his friend but saw no sign of life in the cabin.
“Pushing open the door, Ah Joe was shocked to see his friend lying on the floor, his head covered in blood. A bloodstained axe lay beside him,” wrote Clark.
McMillan believed the killer had to be known to Chew for him to feel comfortable turning his back on the person. Further investigation of the surrounding area turned up the tracks of two men on a small knoll overlooking the cabin,
The policeman believed the prints were made by Moses and Spintlum while waiting for Chew to get home. They needed to eliminate the only witness to Moses being seen with Whyte before he was murdered.
McMillan wired Chief Const. Joe Burr in Ashcroft who arrived in Clinton on the next stage. An inquest into the death was conducted with a verdict of “murdered by person or persons unknown,” being reached.
The search for the two outlaws ramped up but after weeks of hunting for them, police realized the two must be receiving help from fellow band members in the form of food, shelter, fresh horses - even information on the movements of the police tracking them.
The best authorities could do was keep the pressure on the pair and hope they made a mistake. When spring assizes opened in Clinton on May 3, 1912, it had been close to a year since Whyte’s murder.
By now, McMillan had been replaced by a Const. Lee who’d resigned from the force after just a few months in Clinton. Taking his place was a young Scotsman, one Const. Alexander Kindness. Kindness was about four months into his posting when he caught a break in the case.
Charlie Truran, a homesteader working at the nearby Pollard’s Ranch, had been searching for some stray horses when he spotted a pair of horses standing downstream on Mile 51 Creek. As he drew closer two men jumped out holding rifles. Truran realized he was looking at Moses and Spintlum. He headed to town with the news and caught Kindness standing outside the assize visiting with a group of town folk.
Kindness immediately formed a posse consisting of himself, Jimmy Boyd, Bill Ritchie, George Carson, Charlie Pollard and his son Johnny, Const. Forest Loring and one of the assize witnesses.
Picking up the outlaw's trail the posse began to close the distance. It was then Jimmy Boyd allegedly suggested Kindness fall back from his lead position and take up the rear, suggesting that the fugitives would not shoot him (Boyd) but would not hesitate to shoot a policeman.
“Kindness grinned acknowledgement but retained his lead position,” said Clark. “The consequence would be tragic.”
As the posse rounded a bend in the road a rifle cracked and Kindness slid off his horse, dead. More shots rang out and Loren’s wrist snapped as a bullet struck him.
Clark’s account of the ambush is based on official records dating to the time of the events in question. He describes a scene of confusion. Boyd unloaded his rifle into the fugitive's hideout while Loren ran for cover and Ritchie pulled Kindness to shelter.
“Ritchie said later that when he realized Kindness was dead, he looked up in time to see Boyd, who had run out of ammunition, bravely charging toward the outlaws. He was ready to use his gun as a club. Fortunately, the fugitives had vanished,” wrote Clarke.
Born in Banffshire, Scotland the Constable was a single man who served with the force in Vancouver before his transfer to Clinton four months before his death.
All across British Columbia, people were abuzz with the news.
Front pages across the province printed accounts of the shoot-up: “Outlaws Murder Constable on Cariboo Road, Posse in Pursuit” - Lillooet Prospector; “Constable Shot By Two Outlaw Indians" - Quesnel Cariboo Observer; “Constable Killed Near Clinton; Shot Down From Ambush” - Vernon News. Even the Great Falls Tribune in Montana ran the story on page one.
An Inland Sentinel story gave voice to speculation by some that Moses died in the ambush, either in the firefight or in a falling out between the two that ended with Spintlum killing Moses. The idea arose after an examination of the area showed that the tracks of only one man were found leading from the scene of the shoot-out.
The murder of Kindness was a turning point in the hunt to capture the killers. The government increased the reward from the original $1,500 issued the previous year to $3,000 for the capture of the two men.
Superintendent Colin S. Campbell, head of the BC Provincial Police, travelled to Clinton to take over the hunt and summoned Chief Constable W.L. Fernie who brought Shuswap First Nations tracker Alphonse Ignace and six helpers with him to continue the manhunt. Fernie was quoted as saying “For skill in tracking, I’d place those Shuswaps with the world’s best.’’
His squad of veteran trackers dogged the outlaws’ movements for three weary weeks.
Paul and Spintlum exhausted every trick in the book to throw them off but, slowly, the posse gained on the murderers who were forced to abandon much of their equipment and supplies to make better time.
Despite such tactics as the outlaws separating, utilizing the tracks of wild horses, and reversing the shoes of their ponies, the posse held on with the tenacity of bloodhounds. When the two Pauls reached Bonaparte Creek, Fernie and company were right behind them. But, at Kelly Lake, they reached the harder ground and their trail petered out. For all of their efforts, the police trackers couldn’t follow them any farther and Fernie had to turn back.
As Clark noted several years ago: “...As successive generations of Cariboo lawmen will testify, it’s no easy matter to run an Indian [sic] to earth in that part of the world. Especially if he has friends to supply him with grub and fresh horses. You can couple this to the fact that no foxier pair existed than Paul and Spintlum.”
There aren’t many accounts of the manhunt from the Indigenous community. The exception is a story recounted by storyteller Sam Mitchell that comes from a book called Sqwéqwel’s Nelh Skelkekla7lhkálha (Tales of Our Elders).
This book of St’át’imcets literature is written in Ucwalmícwts followed by an English translation and includes 15 stories told by well-known Upper St’át’imc storytellers Bill Edwards of Ts’k’wáylacw (Pavilion), Martina LaRochelle of Sek’wel’wás (Cayoose Creek), and Sam Mitchell of Cácl’ep (Fountain).
The story is called Qáqis múta7 sPaul Spintlum The Outlaws: Moses Paul and Paul Spintlum and is a series of stories Mitchell collected through direct conversations with those involved.
It is a remarkably even-handed telling of what happened and, as Henry Davis says in the Introduction, “Sam takes no side (though he does appear to take a certain pleasure in recounting how thoroughly the fugitives manage to outwit the government)" as seen in the following story.
At the time in question, the outlaws were in the Pavilion area. Mitchell refers to the person he spoke with as simply the Pavilion Person.
The bridges and ferries were being watched so the two men used whatever means they had at hand to avoid being captured.
“There’s a reservation down this way about four, five, six miles from where they crossed the river. The Indian reservation there, they come along there about dark. And there was always some washing on the line,” wrote Mitchell. “They seen, they looked at the washing, there was a couple of skirts, Indian women’s skirts. In them days, the Indian women, wore long skirts. So they pulled two down. They say, “We’re gonna make use of them.” So they went down."
The two men were headed to Lillooet where a Chinese-owned store stayed open until 10 p.m. After buying supplies the two men slipped on the skirts, packed the groceries on their backs and went to cross the bridge.
“And they see the couple guys standing there with a gun, they know them were the guards. On this trip, they happened to know, they knew this fellow pretty well, he used to be a game warden, and he knew a lot of Indians. And they looked at him, and of course, it was dark, and they knew it was Joe Russell. They kept agoing and crossed,” recounted Mitchell.
Who would have expected the outlaws to dress up like women and cross the bridge right under the nose of the guards?
After Kindness was killed the government hired all the trackers and horses it could get a hold of, said Mitchell.
“Them days, I think the trackers were only getting about two dollars a day. I know he was paying, the government was paying a dollar and a half a day for a horse. I know I had one horse that they loaned. And they sure must’ve used him, for he was in bad shape when I got him back.”
Autumn was drawing near again with the manhunt having passed the year mark and the outlaws still loose after two further killings. As 1912 neared its close, the authorities, desperate, decided to enlist the support of the region’s tribal chieftains.
Burr spoke with several of the chiefs and pointed out that law and order was good for white and Indigenous people alike. If the bands wished for ongoing support from the law in the future, however, they needed to convince their people to stop helping the two men who were responsible for taking the lives of three men.
The chiefs agreed to consider the matter and returned home to talk with their people. When no answer was forthcoming after a month, Burr reached out to Thomas Cummiski, then superintendent of Indian agencies for British Columbia in mid-December and asked him to meet with the chiefs and get their reply.
Burr suggested that if the chiefs did not cooperate they be disposed and new ones appointed, said Clark.
An article written by Tina Loo in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography says that it was around the same time when Lillooet chief Jimmy Retasket (Tyee Jimmy) allegedly told the Clinton constable he knew the whereabouts of the fugitives and, if given some leeway, could secure their surrender.
“This leeway amounted to a guarantee of non-interference by the police and a promise that the province would reimburse the expenses of those involved in the capture,” wrote Loo.
According to Clark, the agreement also included the commission of a set of medals inscribed with each of the chief’s names and a brief description of the part they played in apprehending the two outlaws.
When it came time for the presentation of the medals, the chiefs refused to accept them and today the full set can be viewed at the Provincial Archives in Victoria. Further, the provincial government decided the $3,000 reward should be split between the chiefs, who refused to accept it, as in their opinion, there was blood on it.
Accompanied by six selected chiefs, Cummiskey and Burr, went to the Bonaparte Reserve near Ashcroft where Moses Paul and Paul Spintlum were taken into custody on Dec. 30, 1912, said Clark.
Spintlum and Moses Paul were escorted to the Kamloops jail where they would await trial for the murders. Both showed signs of the long chase and the toll it took on their bodies.
Their lawyer, Stuart Henderson (known as “Canada’s Clarence Darrow”), had the venue changed to Vernon. Despite extensive testimony by the members of the posse on the day Const. Kindness was shot, and more circumstantial testimony, such as that of James Robinson who said that he’d sold cartridges to Spintlum on the day that Paul broke jail, the jury disagreed and a new trial was ordered for the June Assizes at New Westminster.
A story printed in the June 26 edition of the Sentinel reported posse members Truran and Loring both testifying that while they saw an Indigenous man hiding behind the tree trunk shooting at them, neither man could positively identify him as being Spintlum. Boyd, however, who was said to have known the Spintlum for 14 years, positively identified the accused as the person who killed the constable. There was some doubt around his testimony and whether it was reliable given the circumstances but the jury believed him.
In the end, Paul Spintlum was found guilty of murder and sentenced to hang; he went to the gallows at Kamloops on Dec. 12, 1913.
Ironically, Moses Paul, the man responsible for setting the entire series of events in motion was convicted on the lesser charge of accessory after the fact and sentenced to life imprisonment. As it turned out, he might just as well have been hanged, too, as he didn’t last long in prison, succumbing to tuberculosis in 1917.
Bad feelings arose around the trial and sentencing of the two men, wrote Loo. “The chiefs felt they had been betrayed by the provincial and federal governments: They had engineered the surrender of Moses and Spintlum, they insisted, on the understanding that neither of them would be hanged.”
The Sentinel ran a follow-up story to the execution in its Dec. 29 paper centred around John Lyon who was sentenced to death for the murder of a man named Pickering.
His sentence was commuted by the minister of justice due to the circumstances of the crime. Lyon suffered a violent beating at the hands of his victim minutes before killing him.
“What criticism is made arises from a comparison of the treatment accorded to this white unfortunate with that meted out to Paul Spintlum, the Indian upon whom white civilization took an awful vengeance two short weeks ago.”
Lyon took the life of another human being - his guilt was incontrovertible yet he was extended clemency.
In cases where capital punishment is the sentence then the judge's verdict must be infallible and the evidence presented must be incontrovertible.
Spintlum was sentenced to hang mainly based on testimony given by Boyd at the trial which he did not offer at the inquest or preliminary hearing.
The writer questioned Boyd's certainty in identifying Spintlum as the shooter. “It would not be impossible for a citizen of Kamloops to be at fault in attempting the identification of a Kamloops Indian 'with some man of who he caught a glimpse rising from behind a tree trunk during the excitement of a shooting affray'.”
The story went on to say that based on such evidence, Spintlum, protesting his innocence to the foot of the gallows was hanged. If his skin was white, the popular verdict would have been that his case warranted clemency, the same as Lyon.
“No surprise need be felt if the Indians after considering the details of the two cases are disposed to conclude that the same justice and mercy are not measured out to white and red alike.”
Spintlum’s final words, as quoted in a March 27, 2012 edition of Kamloops This Week, uttered just before Hangman Ellis pulled the lever on the gallows were, “Goodbye friends. I am dying for another man’s murder.”
With files from T.W. Paterson
