Johnny Peter (c. 1860 - 1913)

Johnny Peter was born on Kuper Island, BC in approximately 1860. He was a member of the Penelakut Indian Band, which has reserves on Kuper, Tent and Galiano Islands. Kuper Island is located in the Strait of Georgia, east of Chemainus, south of Thetis Island and west of the northern tip of Galiano.

Peter was an employee at the Kuper Island Residential School, which was run by two separate Roman Catholic orders from 1890 to 1975. 1890 and 1891 Annual Reports of the Department of Indian Affairs list payments to "Peters" for "services as caretaker and messenger at school", and for the purchase of 18 lbs. of salmon (for which payment of 54 cents was made). By the turn of the last century, Peter, his wife and children were living at the school.

On February 2, 1904 Penelakut Indian Band members Charlie Wilson and his wife Lucy left Chemainus in their canoe for their home on Kuper Island. A party of loggers later found the Wilsons' canoe on the beach, blood stained and riddled with bullets. Media accounts first reported that the couple had been found lying in the bottom of the canoe, killed at short range with a shotgun. It was later reported that a search was ongoing for the bodies, which were presumed to have been weighted and sunk in the nearby waters. By February 4th it was reported in the Nanaimo Free Press that the police had arrested "Johnney", "an Indian who [was] suspected of having had a hand in the dark deed", and had seized from him a 30 calibre rifle. On February 5th the same paper reported that Peter had been taken to Chemainus, and from there to Nanaimo, and that he had confessed to the crime.

Peter's crime was described by the Nanaimo Free Press in the following terms:

Terrorized by the medicine man [Charlie Wilson], who he believed had killed his boy by the practice of the Indian equivalent for the black art, and crazed by drink, Johnny Peters [sic], up to that time one of the most exemplary members of the mission on Kuper Island, shot Wilson and his wife out on the waters of Chemainus harbour and sank their bodies. Another Indian, probably the only witness to the crime, disappeared at the same time and there is good reason to believe that Johnny also made away with him.

Other members of the Penelakut community were also said to be angry with Wilson, to whom they were said to have "attributed all the ills, real or imagined, from which they suffered". It seems the symptoms of tuberculosis were attributed -- somewhat poignantly -- to magical powers on the part of the "medicine man":

Among the latter may be mentioned the presence of frogs and salmon in their bodies, and among the former the death of one of their number because "the wind had been taken out of him".

A preliminary hearing took place in Chemainus on February 11, 1904 before stipendiary magistrate Maitland Dougall, and Peter was sent to trial for the crime.

The case of Rex v. Johnny Peters [sic] was heard in the Nanaimo Spring Assizes in May 1904. Peter was defended by Mr. F. McB. Young, a lawyer retained on his behalf by the Department of Indian Affairs. The trial took place before Mr. Justice Irving on May 19 - 20, 1904, and Peter was found guilty of the murder of Charlie Wilson (the media reported that "it is doubtful if a conviction could have been had it not been for the fact that the prisoner tied the rope around his own neck by confessing his awful deed"). Peter was sentenced to death, the execution to take place on August 5, 1904. His trial for the murder of Lucy Wilson was put off until the next assizes, and presumably never took place.

On May 27, 1904 Superintendent of Indian Affairs A.W. Vowell wrote to H.A. Maclean, Deputy Attorney General of British Columbia, forwarding letters from Thetis Island and Chemainus Justices of the Peace Henry Burchell and Lewis G. Hill and the principal of the Kuper Island Industrial School, Reverend Gustave Donckele, requesting permission for the transfer of Peter's remains from Nanaimo back to Kuper Island following his execution. The men's letters were written on behalf of Peter's brothers, Moses and John. In his letter, Vowell noted that:

... [T]here is hardly a doubt in my mind that had it not been for the too free indulgence in intoxicants presumably furnished by the Indians concerned in the regrettable affair by some unscrupulous white man I would not now be under the necessity of bringing this request to your notice for what I trust will be a favourable reply. ... [T]he granting of the permission sought would go far toward assuaging the grief of the sorely afflicted relatives of the condemned man.

On July 23, 1904 the Nanaimo Free Press reported that Peters' death sentence had been commuted as a result of submissions made to the Minister of Justice by Peter's legal counsel, F. McB. Young.

Johnny Peter was admitted to the BC Penitentiary on August 1, 1904.

Johnny Peter fell ill with tuberculosis in 1912, and was attended in the last months of his life by BC Penitentiary physician Dr. W.A. Dewolf Smith. Immediately prior to his death BC Penitentiary Warden John Cunningham Brown attempted to arrange for Peter's return to Vancouver Island, but he died before this was possible. Johnny Peter died on January 31, 1913, survived by his wife and children, and by his brothers John and Moses.

References

• British Columbia Division of Vital Statistics (see BC Archives online Vital Event Indexes)
• BC Archives, GR-429, Box 11, File 2, documents 1483/04 and 1553/04.
• Dominion of Canada Annual Reports of the Department of Indian Affairs (1890 - 1891), Kuper Island Industrial School.
• "Double Murder: Aged Indian and his Wife Brutally Butchered", Nanaimo Free Press, February 3, 1904, p. 1.
• "Sentence of Death Commuted", Nanaimo Free Press, July 23, 1904, p. 1.
• "Death of Indian Convict", The Daily Province, Feb. 1, 1913, p. 32.
• "Sunk the Bodies: Three Possibly Murdered at Chemainus", Nanaimo Free Press, February 4, 1904, p. 1.
• "Suspected Indian is Arrested", Nanaimo Free Press, February 5, 1904, p. 2.
• "Vancouver Island Murder", The Daily Columbian, February 8, 1904, p. 6.