Nahoua

Nahoua, a native of Hawaii, served the Hudson’s Bay Company for eighteen years, beginning in 1840 as a labourer and kitchen servant at Fort Stikine (1840-1847). Postings included Fort Nisqually outstation (1847-1849), Fort Rupert (1850-1852), Fort Victoria (1852-1854), Belle Vue sheep farm (1854), and Fort Victoria (1854-1857). Nahoua was present when John McLoughlin Jr. was murdered on 21st April, 1842, and testified to Heroux?s part in the murder. The crime precipitated bitterness between Dr. John McLoughlin and Sir George Simpson. The Fort Victoria Journal recorded on 10th January, 1849, Nahoua’s presence at the fort as a baker. Likely he was travelling to Fort Rupert when he was enlisted at Fort Victoria. In 1854, insulted by accusations he had stolen a shirt and tobacco plugs, Nahoua left Belle Vue Island for Fort Victoria, where he worked as a labourer and baker. He remained in the Victoria area as a restaurant worker (1859-1864), owning a home on Kanaka Row (206 Humboldt Street), where he and his wife, a Tsimshian woman, lived with their children. Strikingly, the children were baptized Anglican, not Catholic. Nahoua, or a variant spelling, ?Nahor?, was recorded as being fined on numerous occasions for morality offenses.

Sources:

• Barman, Jean and Bruce Watson, Leaving Paradise: Indigenous Hawaiians in the Pacific Northwest. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006).
• Sage, Walter N., “A Nolte on the Origins of the Strife Between Sir George Simpson and Dr. John Mcloughlin,” The Washington Historical Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 4 (October, 1933): 258-263. https:// journals.lib.washington.edu/index.php/WHQ/article/viewFile/8693/7728 .