MURDERED BY INDIANS

Greymouth Evening Star, 16 November 1935, Page 12

MURDERED BY INDIANS

RETRIAL AT RESERVATION. VANCOUVER. October 23. The evening sun cast a. fitful glow on the peaks of the district Selkirks as a cavalcade of ten automobiles crawled snake-like down the slopes of Nicola Canyon and halted at an Indian reservation, after travelling all day from Vancouver. Bringing up the rear was a. police motor wagon, which on arrival, disgorged, four Indians, brothers, Aeneas, Joseph, Richardson, and Alexander George, sentenced to death for the murder of Dominion Constable Gisbourne and Provincial Constable Carr, who endeavoured to •arrest one of them for seriously wounding his squaw. On appeal, a retrial was ordered, and the Court decided to visit the scene of the slaying. The occupants of the other vehicles, numbering 44 persons, included the Chief Justice, the Hon. Aulay Morrison: the jury, the sheriff. Registrar, court reporter, interpreter, Crown Prosecutor, counsel for the prisoners, police, witnesses and representatives of the Press. His Lordship knocked on the door of the cabin of Chief Billy Buckskin.

to find he had departed for a distant reservation. A “material” witness, an Indian boy, whom the police had held in custody since the crime was committed, eighteen months ago, conducted the party as the Crown Prosecutor reenacted the scene of a stirring backwoods drama; a runner bringing news of the squaw, stabbed in five places; the arrival of the two police officers; the terrific fight that ensued until they were beaten to death by billcis of woods, and (heir bodies dragged down the billside and hurled into the river.

MESSAGE THAT PROVED FATAL

While the sheriff held a flashlight, the Court reporter took a complete record of the proceedings. From the stoop of one of the cabins, a squaw and her three papooses gazed, wideeyed, stolidly silent, as the strange paleface ritual unfolded itself. A physician told how he had been summoned by Constable Carr to attend the injured woman, wife of Aeneas, at the reservation. He found her suffering from knife wounds in the chest, and. abdomen. He ordered her removal to hospital. On the way they mot. Joseph, and flic oLTim.i’ told him to hold Aeneas, and tiiat he and Constable Gisbourne would come for him later: Had this message

which prepared the Indians for their | coming, not been given, the police j would not have i fallen into what! proved to be a trap. Tommy Brown, I the Crown’s chief witness, told how; Gisbourne, who was an officer of the ! Indian. Affairs Department, had fro-, quently helped the Natives when they; were in trouble, and took them to hos- • pital when they were ill. i Counsel for 'the prisoners Stuart j Henderson, K.C., has become, famous for his defence of Indian offendersfor a. generation. He secured the cl'e-j money of the Court for a noted- out-1 law, Gun-a-Noot, who had taken lothe. bush, ami whose capture the, police could not effect, as he was be-j ing protected by his fellow-tribesmen. J Henderson spent some weeks in the j wilderness, and at last persuaded* the! Indians to advise Gun-a-Noot to sur--render and throw himself on the ; mercy of the Court. j Night had fallen when the caval-•; cade, afteu a hasty repast, cooked in ; the open, commenced its return jour-!; ncy, after an experience without par-H allel in the history of justice on the!! Pacific Coast. i !