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Trapline Outlaw: Simon Peter Gunanoot (Sono Nis $19.95)
Simon Gunanoot, a prosperous Gitksan trapper and merchant, was charged with the cold-blooded murder of two men near Hazelton in 1906. With family members in tow, he fled into the wilderness and eluded capture for thirteen years.
Several expeditions pursued the fugitives, but Gunanoot's superior wilderness skills along the Skeena, Nass and Stikine Rivers soon made him into a Kispiox folk hero. The Gitksan helped him elude capture and provided food. Gunanoot sometimes followed his own posse, but he never harmed them.
He surrendered to Mounted Police in Hazelton on June 24, 1919 after Vancouver lawyer Stuart Henderson took an interest in his plight. With Henderson at his side in a Vancouver courtroom, Gunannoot was acquitted in 1920.
His co-accused brother-in-law Peter Hi-madam was soon exonerated, too. Evidence against both men was scant, and some prosecution witnesses had disappeared or died, so the Crown prosecutor did not pursue the case with rigour.
Thomas Kelley wrote the first book about Gunanoot, Run Indian Run, in which his outlaw status was glorified. Then along came David Ricardo Williams, a trial lawyer, who dissected the case more thoroughly for Trapline Outlaw: Simon Peter Gunanoot (Sono Nis, 1982).
Williams interviewed some of Gunanoot's children and gathered pertinent information not raised during the trial. After an extensive recounting of the facts, Williams effectively dismantles Gunanoot's romantic reputation as a wrongly accused murderer. "We cannot disregard the strong evidence of guilt,"; he concludes. "It establishes that Simon Peter Gunanoot killed both Alexander MacIntosh and Maxwell Leclair."; According to Williams, Gunanoot possibly killed MacIntosh as the result of MacIntosh's supposed or real trifling with his wife, or as the result of their drunken altercation, or some insult or slight connected with it. "Simon would have considered the cuts inflicted by MacIntosh to his face almost a mortal insult,"; Williams claims. "In any event, Simon's hostility combined with too much liquor led to a fatal outcome. He may have killed Leclair as the result of his taunts, but more likely he shot him in a drunken frenzy.";
Gunanoot's shooting spree on the day of the alleged murders is chillingly recalled from eyewitness accounts. The folk hero shot three horses, killed another horse with an axe and threatened to kill his own children. Gunanoot's co-defendant Peter Hi-madam implicated him and Gunanoot also told two of his sons he had committed the murders. According to Williams, Gunanoot also privately confessed to killing both MacIntosh and Leclair (after losing his drunken fight with MacIntosh) to his wife, to his father and to another man named Tom Lula.
Gunanoot was represented by Stuart Henderson, an unconventional lawyer who defended 45 men on murder charges during his varied career around B.C., and secured acquittals for all but two. Williams describes him as "perhaps the most effective criminal lawyer British Columbia has known."; After the trial, Henderson formed an unusual business relationship with Gunanoot, traipsing around the Kispiox as a prospector, hoping to strike it rich with Gunanoot's guidance. Henderson died in Victoria in 1945 at age 81. Born around 1874 in Gitanmaax, Simon Gunanoot died of heart failure in October of 1933 while tending his trapline near Stewart. He was buried in the wilderness. David Ricardo Williams' sobering indictment of Gunanoot (also spelled Gun-a-noot) will not suit the needs of Hollywood, or please anyone eager to imagine an Aboriginal equivalent of Robin Hood. Now back in print, Trapline Outlaw: Simon Peter Gunanoot (Sono Nis $19.95) serves as a fascinating work by one of the province's foremost biographers. 0-919203-98-1
[BCBW Spring 2005]
Several expeditions pursued the fugitives, but Gunanoot's superior wilderness skills along the Skeena, Nass and Stikine Rivers soon made him into a Kispiox folk hero. The Gitksan helped him elude capture and provided food. Gunanoot sometimes followed his own posse, but he never harmed them.
He surrendered to Mounted Police in Hazelton on June 24, 1919 after Vancouver lawyer Stuart Henderson took an interest in his plight. With Henderson at his side in a Vancouver courtroom, Gunannoot was acquitted in 1920.
His co-accused brother-in-law Peter Hi-madam was soon exonerated, too. Evidence against both men was scant, and some prosecution witnesses had disappeared or died, so the Crown prosecutor did not pursue the case with rigour.
Thomas Kelley wrote the first book about Gunanoot, Run Indian Run, in which his outlaw status was glorified. Then along came David Ricardo Williams, a trial lawyer, who dissected the case more thoroughly for Trapline Outlaw: Simon Peter Gunanoot (Sono Nis, 1982).
Williams interviewed some of Gunanoot's children and gathered pertinent information not raised during the trial. After an extensive recounting of the facts, Williams effectively dismantles Gunanoot's romantic reputation as a wrongly accused murderer. "We cannot disregard the strong evidence of guilt,"; he concludes. "It establishes that Simon Peter Gunanoot killed both Alexander MacIntosh and Maxwell Leclair."; According to Williams, Gunanoot possibly killed MacIntosh as the result of MacIntosh's supposed or real trifling with his wife, or as the result of their drunken altercation, or some insult or slight connected with it. "Simon would have considered the cuts inflicted by MacIntosh to his face almost a mortal insult,"; Williams claims. "In any event, Simon's hostility combined with too much liquor led to a fatal outcome. He may have killed Leclair as the result of his taunts, but more likely he shot him in a drunken frenzy.";
Gunanoot's shooting spree on the day of the alleged murders is chillingly recalled from eyewitness accounts. The folk hero shot three horses, killed another horse with an axe and threatened to kill his own children. Gunanoot's co-defendant Peter Hi-madam implicated him and Gunanoot also told two of his sons he had committed the murders. According to Williams, Gunanoot also privately confessed to killing both MacIntosh and Leclair (after losing his drunken fight with MacIntosh) to his wife, to his father and to another man named Tom Lula.
Gunanoot was represented by Stuart Henderson, an unconventional lawyer who defended 45 men on murder charges during his varied career around B.C., and secured acquittals for all but two. Williams describes him as "perhaps the most effective criminal lawyer British Columbia has known."; After the trial, Henderson formed an unusual business relationship with Gunanoot, traipsing around the Kispiox as a prospector, hoping to strike it rich with Gunanoot's guidance. Henderson died in Victoria in 1945 at age 81. Born around 1874 in Gitanmaax, Simon Gunanoot died of heart failure in October of 1933 while tending his trapline near Stewart. He was buried in the wilderness. David Ricardo Williams' sobering indictment of Gunanoot (also spelled Gun-a-noot) will not suit the needs of Hollywood, or please anyone eager to imagine an Aboriginal equivalent of Robin Hood. Now back in print, Trapline Outlaw: Simon Peter Gunanoot (Sono Nis $19.95) serves as a fascinating work by one of the province's foremost biographers. 0-919203-98-1
[BCBW Spring 2005]
Submitted on March 1, 2005 in By David.
