Lista de episódios

On a cold January evening in 1891, a condemned man was led slowly back to his cell for the very last time the night before his execution. The next morning, the hangman arrived at the man's cell and they headed toward the gallows where a black cap was put on, and at 8 o'clock exactly the bolt was drawn, and the trap fell. His death was painless. The man's name was Slumach, and he had just paid the ultimate penalty for his crime. But, not long after his death, rumours began to surface that he had discovered a lucrative and hidden stash of gold in the mountains, a source worth billions. It is said that just before Slumach was hanged, he muttered these words as a warning to anyone who dared to search for his secret gold mine: 'Nika memloose, mine memloose.' In this episode we look at how a single bullet was the catalyst for a 150 year old mystery.

When we last left off, a man named Slumach shot and killed a man named Louis Bee on September 8, 1890, along the reedy shores of what was then known as Lillooet Slough, near the vast expanse of Pitt Lake in southern British Columbia. In this episode, we take you through the relentless manhunt for Slumach, and the facts of the case as reported in the press. We also share details from the trial, which lasted no more than seven or eight hours, and where the defence called no witnesses.

The legend of Slumach and his gold goes by many names: the Legend of the Lost Mine of Pitt Lake, the Legend of the Lost Creek Mine, the Legend of Slumach's Gold. The story always starts with a variation on 'a brash young man from Pitt Lake', bragging about his wealth, spending it freely in New Westminster on booze and women. He would always disappear for a while to a creek rich with gold nuggets-a source that would be worth billions today. But in our investigation into Slumach's story, from the killing of Louis Bee to his execution, not a single newspaper article from the time mentioned anything about gold. Not one word. We're on the path of many others who have gone before us, who have gone looking for the lost gold mine. But is there a mine for us to find? And how was Slumach connected to it?

80 years after Slumach's execution, exclusive information emerged as part of a family story passed down through history: Slumach's story from his lips to only one person's ears. In this episode, we hear the account of what happened from Slumach's perspective. He was a wanted man and seen as a menace to society, so there seemed to be little interest in pursuing Slumach's motive. This raises the questions: Did Slumach shoot Louis Bee in cold blood to protect his gold as the legend says? Or was it actually self-defence?

We left off as we introduced you to Ms Amanda Charnley, a Katzie woman and Peter Pierre's daughter. Pierre was a catechist for the Roman Catholic Order of Mary Immaculate. He was also a healer and leader within the Katzie First Nation, and Slumach's nephew. Charnley described Slumach as 'a harmless old widower who lived at the bottom end of Pitt Lake in a shack which was on the abandoned Silver Creek Indian Reserve.' In this episode, we look at Slumach because the legend and newspapers painted him out to be some demon, evil incarnate. But could it have been just the opposite? Maybe he was just a man, and forces beyond his control doomed his fate.

Over the course of this podcast, we've discussed the ways in which Slumach and so many Indigenous peoples were at the mercy of an ongoing colonial enterprise that sought to extract wealth from a bountiful land no matter the cost, and often, the cost was justice. Slumach was vilified in the media, as part of a tradition of British colonial dominance that dehumanised Indigenous people and the legal mechanisms at the time doomed Slumach from the start. In this episode we look at an alternative, one that centres on healing. So what would that look like? What is the traditional justice process?

According to Amanda Charnley, Slumach went up into the canyons and above the clouds around Pitt Lake, and found chunks of gold he could carve out with a pen knife. Slumach told Peter Pierre that if he needed money, the map would lead him to the gold. They had destroyed the map, but Pierre committed it to memory. When asked if her father ever found gold, she said, 'He did try to go many years after the old man was hanged, but he met with an accident.' Pierre went looking and failed to find any gold, but did he tell anyone about Slumach's secret? Or was it more well-known? In this episode we're on the trail and in search of Slumach's infamous gold.

In the decades following Slumach's execution, we see people injured-sometimes fatally-while going into the region looking for a gold mine without much proof of its existence. Gold represented wealth and power, freedom from hunger and oppression, a source of abundance. People have killed and died for gold, crossed oceans for gold. Its lustre and scarcity easily made it the stuff of legend. In this episode, we're on the search for El Dorado and while we don't have a treasure map, we have the Jackson Letter, which may hold the key to finding Slumach's lost mine and his cursed gold.

Five years after Slumach died, on August 16, 1896, gold was discovered in the Klondike region of Yukon, bordering Alaska to the far north of British Columbia. As it happened almost 40 years earlier with BC's Fraser Gold Rush, some 30-to-40,000 fortune-seekers from around the world streamed into the Rocky Mountain wilderness in search of another El Dorado. Prospectors who passed through the region heard the tale of the old Indigenous man hanged for murder not so long before. Most knew of the Jackson Letter, which described the location of the bonanza above Pitt Lake that awaited the lucky finder. Many went searching...some never came back.

60 years after Slumach's death, in 1951, The Province newspaper, one of Vancouver's major dailies that is still in existence, connected Slumach's name to a curse. Up until that moment, the curse was nowhere to be found in newspaper articles at the time, even when they reported on the misfortunes of those seeking gold. Pulp fiction turned Slumach into an evil madman, and promoted the idea that getting his gold was as easy as hiking into the mountains north of Pitt Lake, which led to the deaths of many ill-prepared prospectors. In this episode, we investigate the origin of: 'Nika memloose, mine memloose,' and the curse attributed to Slumach.

In the final episode of the season, we share our final findings into the investigation of Slumach's story, the legend and the curse, and explore unanswered questions after walking the same path and sleeping under the same stars Slumach did over 150 years ago. We've been entrusted to rewrite his legacy in our search for the truth, and Slumach's story is not over. Neither is our quest for his gold.

On this special episode of Deadman's Curse, Kru Williams is joined by co-writer and executive producer, Ernest White II, to allow Kru to share his personal insights on what it was like contributing to the podcast, filming the TV series, and diving into the legend, and the curse, of Slumach and his lost gold.