TEN-YEAR MAN HUNT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 68, 21 March 1934, Page 6

TEN-YEAR MAN HUNT.

PERSISTENCE AND JUSTICE. Th© news which reached Vancouver on .Tanuarv 22 of the death of Gun-a-noot, an Indian "of the. Northern British Columbia tribes revives memories of a case famous alike in the criminal records and the Indian chronicles of this province (writes the Vancouver correspondent of "Tl.e Times"). For ten years Gun-a-noot was an outlaw and a fugitne from the justice of British Columbia. Iwenty-five years ago Simon Gun-a-noot -was accused ot the murder of two white men, whose bodies were found, three miles apart, on the trail beyond Hazelton. It was alleged that the murdered men had molested Indian women, and Gmi-a-noot, who had a wife an five children, and was a -trader among tne Babine and Kispiox Indians, was known to have had a quarrel with them the night before their death. Gun-a-noot's story, which came, to bo generally believed in the province in after years, was that he took to the wilderness because he distrusted the willingness of the white man to give him a fair opportunity to establish his alibi. Whoever had killed the white men, it was generally believed that it was the Indians, and that the act was a sort of wild retributive justice. Thereafter, for ten years to come, tlienyin hunt after Gun-a-noot was an annual adventure of the Provincial Police. Every spring, when the snows melted in the northern hills, constables of the force would take to the trails. They could never come up with the fugitive. It was known that he was living bv his rifles and fishing lines, ill the wild country of the headwaters of the Naas and Stikine •Rivers, but there were always friends and tribesmen enough to warn him and to lead the officers of the law on a false scent. The outlaw Indian had friends among the white men of that country as well, who believed m his innocence. He seems to have achieved a reputation among the Indiana of that country as a man of wisdom and good character. When the hunt had cost 50,000 dollars in money, and a great deal in the white man's prestige among the Indian tribes, it was decided to try the method of persuasion. Through Mr. George Beirnes, a veteran packer of the north country, an interview was arranged between Gun-a-noot and Mr. Stuart Henderson, a Victoria lawyer well known to the Indians for his conduct of Indian .cases in the courts. At that time Gun-a-noot had with him his three son* and two daughters, his wife was dying, and his father, who had been foremost in persuading him not to give himself up, had lately died. Gun-a-noot. who had always maintained his innocence, said that if lie could believe that he was to get a fair trial he would give himself up. Mr. Henderson promised to act as counsel for the defence, and Gun-a-noot surrendered. He pleaded not rruilty, brought forward witnesses to hi.s alibi, !conducted himself with a conspicuous fearless--1 ness and good sense in court, and was | acquitted.