Jim Charles and the Gold Mine

 Jim Charles and the Gold Mine

By Thomas H. Raddall

 

Legends of Jim Charles and his “secret gold mine” still persist in Queens County, all garbled and some absolutely false. He is described as “a bad Indian” — “a bloody murderer” — and so on. People have sought for his “mine” all over the Caledonia district, and especially about the shores of Kejimkujik[1] Lake. The full truth about Jim Charles was known to two men only. One was a New Grafton woodsman farmer named David Lewis, the other was the Rev. Clayton Albert Munro, a native of Maitland Bridge. Both were friends of Jim Charles, and he confided in them. Lewis died without revealing the secret of the “mine”. Munro, after serving in various Methodist pastorates in Nova Scotia, retired in Bermuda, where he died in 1950 at the age of 86.

Traces of gold were first discovered in Queens County in the 1850’s. The Queens County Historical Society has an old share certificate, dated 1854, of a company that was formed to exploit it. The company went bankrupt soon afterwards. Nobody now knows where this mine was, if indeed the company dug a mine at all.

The next discovery came in 1884, when a farm hand named Maguire, digging a hole for a fence post on the farm of George Parker at South Brookfield, found a quartz seam with a pocket containing some nuggets, one of considerable size.

This started a gold rush. Men poured in from everywhere. Some were experienced miners and prospectors. Most were not. They came from places as far apart as Newfoundland and Colorado, and they included a number of American adventurers who swaggered about the streets of Caledonia wearing cartridge belts and revolvers in the fashion of the wild West. Slick promoters floated mining companies and raised great sums of money, chiefly in the United States. The first mine was dug on the Parker land. Others followed, in various places in the region of South Brookfield and Caledonia, and Molega and Whiteburn.

Caledonia, a little crossroads hamlet of farmers and lumbermen, became the bustling centre. Two hotels appeared, one of them called The Golden Home. There were half a dozen busy bars. Miners and prospectors put up shacks and tents.

A printer named Banks moved in from Annapolis, bringing his press on a wagon, and started a weekly newspaper called the Caledonia Gold Hunter. (Oddly enough, the newspaper survived long after the gold rush was only a memory; and the Banks family continued to print it, under the same title, until when their plant was destroyed by fire.)

All in all it was an amazing scene in a hitherto quiet Nova Scotia countryside, and it lasted about ten years. A mine called the Libby was the biggest and most successful, but even that went bankrupt at last. The gold-bearing seams were narrow and irregular. Most of them went deep and were expensive to work. The necessary steam engines were fired with hardwood, cut by gangs of loggers working at boom-time wages. The nearest railways was at Annapolis, whence all machinery and supplies had to be hauled by wagon over something like forty miles of narrow road through the forest, climbing over the South Mountain en route, and later New Germany. The gold did not pay the cost of mining, and that was the end of it.

These gold-bearing seams, wandering in their thin spidery fashion, had a peculiar characteristic. In some places one crossed or joined with another; and where this joint occurred there was usually a pocket containing free gold in the form of dust or nuggets. Such a pocket, the one found by Maguire near the surface, started the whole rush. The slick mine-promoters could take ore samples from one of these seam-joints, send them to the government assay office in Halifax, and get a fine rich report to show the gullible.

I give these details of the Caledonia gold rush for a reason. In considering the strange affair of Jim Charles it is important to remember the excitement of the times, the greedy fever of the gold-seekers, and the number of desperadoes who came with them. Jim Charles had good reason to fear. He had found gold himself, years before the Caledonia discovery, and for years he had been taking little bags of nuggets and dust to the bank in Annapolis and sometimes to a bank in Liverpool. He would never say where or how he got it.

In the summer of 1944 I had a visitor. He was the Rev. Clayton Albert Munro, born at Maitland Bridge, Annapolis County, in 1864. I had never met him before, indeed I had not known of his existance. He had started life on a small farm, and earned money for his education by working in the woods as a logger and river-driver. He entered the service of the Methodist Church as a probationer, and eventually held pastorates in Annapolis, Chester, Guysborough, Lockeport and elsewhere in Nova Scotia. In 1925 Pine Hill College awarded him an honorary D.D. to mark his long service to the Church. A few years later he retired with his wife and daughter to Bermuda; and now, at the age of 80, he had come back for one last look at the scenes of his youth. (He died and was buried in Bermuda in October 1950.)

I beheld a grey man of medium height, moving with unusual vigor for that age, and I found his mind and memory as keen as that of a youth. He had read some of my stories and came to chat about bygone days in the Queens County woods. After a time he asked, “Do you know the story of an Indian named Jim Charles and his secret gold mine?”

I said I’d heard a number of legends about him, but I supposed that no one would ever know the truth. Mr. Munro said, “I know the truth about him, and if you like you can take it down.” So I got pencil and paper. This is what he told me:-

Jim Charles was a Micmac who lived on the point in Kejimkujik Lake where the so-called “Kedgie” Club and cottages are now. He and his squaw Lizzie cultivated a little vegetable plot, and Jim earned money as a guide to sportsmen in the fishing and hunting seasons. My family knew him well; he often called at our house on his travels, and my father and I often saw him when we went to Kejimkujik.

Jim was not only an excellent guide, he was quiet and courteous, and sportsmen from Annapolis, like Judge Ritchie and others, made a point of engaging him on their fishing and hunting expeditions. Some time in the l860’s, when I was a baby, Jim Charles found gold somewhere in the wooded wilderness beyond Kejimkujik.

He showed some of it to Ritchie. It was alluvial gold in the form of small nuggets. Ritchie took a sample home with him and had it assayed quietly, probably somewhere in the States. He told Jim not to breathe a word of his discovery, but to work the deposit secretly, bringing out a little at a time. Jim used to send it into Annapolis concealed in little tubs of butter, shipping it by the mail coach.

Ritchie used to dispose of the gold, returning the cash to Jim. This part of my story is hearsay of course, told to me by my mother when I was a boy in the teens. I believe it to be correct.

After some years Jim grew bolder, bringing out larger quantities of gold. And he began to spend the money recklessly. He bought a good carriage and a trotting horse. Eventually he had one of his sportsman friends order for him a silver-mounted harness in the States. He bought fine clothes for himself and Lizzie. He had a love for fine watches and fancy chains, and often had three or four on his person at one time, when he and Lizzie drove into Caledonia in their carriage, with the horse in its expensive harness, and Lizzie sitting up proudly in her fine gown and beaded Indian cap, they were quite a sight. By the year I870 everyone knew that Jim Charles had found gold somewhere. He was watched, and men tried to follow him when he set off on his lone expeditions, but Jim always managed to elude them.

Not far from Jim’s place at Kejimkujik was a small farm kept by another Micmac, Peter Glode. Glode and his squaw were good enough people, but they had a daughter whose morals were a bit loose. A wandering white ne’er-do-well named Jim Hamilton, said to have deserted a ship in Liverpool, N. S., struck up an acquaintance with the Glode girl and eventually moved in to live with the Glode family. He soon learned of Jim Charles and his “gold mine”. He tried to follow him a number of times but had to give it up. One day in the 1870’s Hamilton, well primed with rum, went to Jim’s house and threatened him and Lizzie, demanding to know the secret. He followed this up with blows, and Jim Charles struck back. There was a fearful struggle in the little shack. Jim was then about 45, and Hamilton far younger and stronger. At last in desperation Jim caught up his gun and struck Hamilton on the head with the butt. Hamilton fell and died in a space of minutes.

Jim Charles and Lizzie now had something worse to frighten them — the white men’s law. One of Jim’s friends was a Caledonia merchant named Harlow, who was also a magistrate. Jim hurried away to Caledonia, dashed into the store, and cried “Mister Harlow! Mister Harlow! I just killed Jim Hamilton. Save me! Save me!”

Harlow, a kindly and sensible man, calmed Jim down. There were no police in the country districts in those days, of course. The administration of law was a free-and-easy matter. Harlow called a magistrate’s court, heard the evidence of Jim and Lizzie, and of the Glodes. At the end of it he set Jim free. Most people agreed with his verdict, feeling that Hamilton had got what was coming to him. But there were a few who thereafter pointed out Jim Charles as a murderer never brought to justice.

(The family of Clayton Munro were descended from William Burke, the pioneer settler in North Queens, who spoke Micmac and was very influential with the Indians. The Munros themselves, always friendly to the Indians, had a good deal of the same influence.)

My family now tried to persuade Jim to take out a legal mining lease, covering the site of his gold, wherever it was. It would protect his rights, and at the same time it would end the spying and persecution of men like Hamilton. But Jim shook his head stubbornly and said, “Bad luck for Injun show white men where is gold.”

Soon after this Lizzie died. In their middle age, being childless, Jim and Lizzie had adopted a half-breed girl named Madeleine. After Lizzie’s death Jim married Madeleine, and they had one child, a son. Jim continued to market his gold through the banks in Annapolis and Liverpool.

One day in 1884 a tragic accident occurred in Kejimkujik Lake near Jim Charles’ Point. Three hunters —Gideon Burrell, Stewart Ruggles and a man named Stoddard — set out across the lake in a small bark canoe. The water was rough, the canoe capsized, and all three were drowned. Almost at once malicious tongues began to wag. Soon there was a story that Jim Charles had shot at the men with a rifle, hitting one or more of them, and so causing the canoe to capsize. It was a lie, of course. The bodies were recovered some time afterward, and they bore no trace of wounds. But the story persisted amongst those who had always held Jim a murderer. Some openly accused him.

Jim was badly frightened. He was getting old now. And now that gold had been discovered at South Brookfield the woods were full of prospectors, many of them rough characters from American mining camps. He dared not go to his own secret “mine” any more. In fact he hardly dared to set foot outside his shack.

He had spent his money recklessly in the years gone by. He had nothing now but the expensive watches, the fancy harness and the rest of it. After a time he had to sell these to buy food.

Some years before he died, a false story appeared in a Halifax newspaper to the effect that the notorious Indian, Jim Charles, had died, and had made a death-bed confession to the murder of Stoddard, Burrell and Ruggles. I had a church in Guysborough County at the time. I wrote home at once, to ask if it was true. The answer was that Jim Charles was alive, though very poor, and that the story was a bit of imaginative malice on the part of someone in the Caledonia district.

Not long after this another man named Hamilton turned up at Kejimkujik. He was no relation to the dead Jim Hamilton, so far as anybody knew, but he went to Jim Charles’ shack, told the old Indian that he was going to be arrested for the murder of the three hunters, and proposed, “Show me where your gold mine is, and I’ll get you off.” Jim was terribly alarmed, but he clung to his secret. However, after much brooding, he made his way to the farm of a man named Lewis, whom he trusted. He had come to a decision. So long as he kept his secret to himself the spying and the persecution would continue. He dared not go near his mine — and he needed money badly. The solution was to share his secret with a white man, a friend he could trust. Lewis was such a man; moreover he was active and resolute, not the sort that the shifty characters of the Caledonia “rush” would dare to trifle with.

Lewis agreed to take out a mining claim in his own name and Jim’s. The next thing was to visit the spot, measure off the claim and drive the stakes. He and Jim slipped away across Kejimkujik Lake in a canoe. It proved to be a long journey. All the men who had been beating the bushes about the shores of Kejimkujik in search of Jim Charles’ gold were wasting their time. The way led by portage to Mountain Lake, thence to Pescawess Lake, thence by the Shelburne River through Beverley Lake and Pine Lake to the very source. Thence by a rough and toilsome portage to Oakland Lake, the source of the Tusket River, which flows in the opposite direction, towards the western end of Nova Scotia.

Lewis was astonished and amused. The secret of Jim Charles’ gold mine was that it wasn’t on the Mersey watershed at all. It was on the Tusket! At last Jim said, “Soon now.” They were getting far down the Tusket towards the present village of Kemptville. Suddenly they heard an odd sound ahead. It was faint at first, and old Jim looked puzzled. It grew louder as they came around a bend and saw men, and buildings, and the smoke of a steam engine.

Old Jim had kept his secret too long. His mine had been discovered by prospectors working up the Tusket River, and now there was a mill on the spot. What he had found was a large and rich pocket of free gold at a spot where two seams joined, and the junction came at a point that was actually part of the streambed. The stuff had caught his eyes, shining in the shallow water. He must have cleaned out most of this alluvial gold, but there was enough left to catch the notice of the Tusket prospectors, and from that they had gone on to mine the actual seams. It was the Kemptville mine, which ran successfully for many years.

When they returned to Kejimkujik, Lewis and Jim Charles decided to keep mum about the whole thing. Who would believe that Jim’s famous mine was on the Tusket, or that it was now being fully exploited by an organized mining company?

(Here ends quotation from Rev. Dr. C. A. Munro)

Record of the N.S. Dep’t. of Mines and Forests shows that:-

Gold was discovered at Kemptville, Yarmouth County, in 1881, by James and Joseph Reeves. In 1885 a crusher began to operate, and for three years very high grade ore was crushed. In the year 1885 the mine produced 624 ounces of gold. In following the seam the mine produced less rich ore, and never again achieved the profit of 1885. Nevertheless it continued running, with some interruptions, for many years. It appears to have closed down finally in 1928.

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Information from Claude W. Hartlen, funeral undertaker at Milton, Queens County, in 1926:- Jim Charles, when he was very old and decrepit and poor, came to live at Two Mile Hill (near Milton) with John and Andrew Francis, Indians. He used to hobble about on two sticks. He died soon after. Mr. Hartlen prepared the body for burial. It was very lousy, and some of the lice crawled on to Hartlen’s clothing. The coffin was a plain pine box. Harlen ran a sawmill then, mostly making barrel staves. He also made coffins, but at that time had no hearse. In those days there was only one R.C. priest in Queens County, and he resided at Caledonia. Hartlen thought the Indians had sent for the priest to perform the funeral rites, but on arrival he found that they had not. They said they could not afford the priest. Two Indians had dug a shallow grave in the churchyard. When Hartlen expressed his concern about the absence of a priest, John Francis said “Oh, chuck the old bugger in anyway.” So the coffin was interred without ceremony. This was in the 1890’s. Hartlen could not remember the exact year. In those days Hartlen ran a little sawmill, sold fire insurance, and acted as the Milton undertaker as a side line. Indian burials were casual affairs, usually conducted without benefit of clergy. It was customary to haul the pine coffin all the way to Liverpool on a hand-cart. If the dead Indian had been popular, the little Micmac group at Two Mile Hill, men women and children, used to walk to Liverpool, taking turns at pulling the cart. They brought food in baskets, and after the burial they sat about the churchyard and held a sort of picnic. Usually the men had a bottle or two of rum. It was quite a cheerful affair. At evening they went home.

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Legends of Jim Charles and his gold mine are still current in Queens and parts of Annapolis and Yarmouth counties, and there are still people who believe that some sort of El Dorado exists in the woods of western Nova Scotia, untouched since Jim Charles took away his last pouch-full. Here are some of the legends:

 

I. Lane Smart, of Caledonia.

Smart’s father was an American mining engineer, brought to Queens County by a syndicate operating a mine there during the gold boom of the 1880’s and 1890’s. Isaac (best known as “Ike”) was brought up in North Queens, and was a guide to fishermen and hunters most of his life. Information given in 1945.

“I’ve heard a lot of tales about Jim Charles. Who hasn’t? My own guess is that he had no mine. That young squaw Madeleine was very chummy with the miners when she came to Caledonia, she was a pretty thing, and her lovers used to pay her in gold dust and nuggets. In other words she was old Jim’s mine. The miners used to steal gold out of the sluices, even out of the crucibles. It got so bad that all the miners coming off shift were searched for nuggets and dust; but the thefts went on. Gold dust and nuggets were common currency around Caledonia for years.”  (Note: according to Dr. Munro’s testimony, Jim Charles was selling gold in Annapolis many years before the Caledonia gold rush.)

 

Here is a letter to T.H.R., written by James B. (“Big Jim”) Macleod of South Brookfield, a famous guide and woodsman

“South Brookfield, June 3rd 1944

“Dear Comrade Tom — Mr. Munro, or Dr. Munro, or I should say Rev., I think is Clayton Munro formerly of Maitland, Annapolis Co. After his father’s death his mother married a Nixon. Alister Nixon of Maitland is a half Bro. Mrs. John Ford of Milton I think a Sister. I remember the first time I seen him he was on a river drive, Tenting in the pines below S. Brookfield Church. He came to Sunday-School on Sunday. The seat of his pants were badly torn. My Half Brother Parker McLeod and he were great chums. His letter does not change my idear about the Jim Charles mine. I still think it was in the vicinity of Loon Lake (i.e. on the Kejimkujik River —THR) Ike’s theary regards the matter will not agree with date of Jim Charles. As the Whiteburn mine found and worked by Hugh McGuire, James McGuire & William happened years after. I can remember when the McGuire Boys worked that mine. With a pistol fastened to a spring pole to break the quarts. They cut a wide swath them days. Jim driving his span of greys rigged up to a fancy carry all, with their silver mounted harnice. Drink finely got them. Hugh had a Hotel at Caledonia, now the Alton House. He died where Jack McGuire now lives. His wife still lives. Jim moved to Liverpool. He was the Dandy then. The country was not good enough for him. He died in Liverpool. You no doubt know his family.”

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Legend related to Helen Creighton, June 1947, by Thomas “Red Tom” Boyle, then living at Port Mouton but formerly of West Caledonia:-

“Jim Charles’ wife used to drive to town with gold, and would go to the States with it. He was a very treacherous Indian. He made baskets. After his first wife died he married another Indian squaw named Multi, and when he had to go out hunting he would tie his wife so she couldn’t get away. Jim shot at two Burrells. He thought they were trapping on his ground, and he shot three men altogether; two Burrells and their brother-in-law Stoddard. Bullets were found in the body. Jim Charles wore a pair of small gold earrings. His first wife dressed well. They had a horse and carriage, and lots of gold, and they used to go through the woods. There is a brook that leads to his tenting ground. Jim would wander off, but he would never show anybody his mine. His gold came out freely. My wife had a chunk of Jim Charles’ gold. Before the canoe shooting he shot a man named Hamilton.

Jim Charles had a brother-in-law named Bradford, a fine Indian, but scared to death of Jim Charles. Everybody was scared of him.”

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Legend related to Helen Creighton, July 1947, by Louis Pictou, Micmac Indian, Lower Granville, Annapolis County:-

“They made buttons out of Jim Charles’ gold, and grandmother made bullets.

Jim Charles brought his gold to Annapolis himself. He had a gold mine and he brought nuggets from the size of a pin-head to a pea. How he found them, it was a sort of dry summer, water was scarce and he was hunting and he wanted a drink and he went to a brook. He had to follow it down to a pool, sort of a little falls. While he was drinking he see this stuff in the water, and he reached down and got some of this stuff and picked it up. After he looked around, he saw it on the shores. He used to go there and take the gold to Halifax. After a while the white folks got wise to it and got after him. ‘Now’, they said, “Mister Charles, they claim you found a mine out there to Hedge Lakes. How much will you take for that mine?’ He didn’t want to sell, but three or four of them went with him to Hedge Lakes, and he got out of the canoe and got on shore, and he warned them. ‘I’m going, and I’ll be back in an hour’s time, but I don’t want anyone to follow.’ So he went, and he come back sure enough, and he brought these people the gold. They had liquor and they tried to get him drunk, but he was wise to that, and they tried to coax him to show where he got that stuff, and he wouldn’t. That mine was never found, by an Indian or a white man.

“They claim he killed a man, and then the rest of the Indians claim he didn’t. The Indians claim he wouldn’t have done a thing like that. People round Lequille said he was a real nice man, not treacherous.”

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Legend related to Helen Creighton, August 1947, by Louis Harlow, Micmac Indian, at Bear River, Annapolis County:-

“Jim Charles’ wife was a great medicine woman, and during this time they had a dance, and old Jim went down and was running around with a girl. A white fellow who was courting the same girl came in, and he struck Jim Charles. When Jim Charles fell he picked up a piece of wood, and killed the white man right there. They put Jim Charles in jail, and he pretended he was sick and couldn’t stand the confinement, so they put up a tent for him. He escaped from the tent and went to the woods.

He thought the dogs were after him, so he jumped in the water and swam till he came to a beaver house, and he stayed there. There was a big rock called Jim Charles’ Rock. Finally he went out and wrote to the people in Liverpool to come and get him. They tried him and cleared him.

“Jim Charles must have killed Ruggles. He was a lawyer who was against him. There was no Indian in the canoe with Ruggles. After it happened, other men came to him and said, ‘Uncle Jim, they’re lying about you’. It wasn’t true, but they told him they were coming after him. He went in the woods then to escape, and died of exposure.

“Jim Charles had a gold mine, and his wife knew about it, and where it was. He used to go to Halifax with fur, and he had two stocking-legs filled with gold. George King, the mail driver, saw him and told me himself. When he first went to Halifax he had an old horse, and whenever a team came by he had to go to one side to let them past. He didn’t like that, so after he sold his fur and got his gold he looked round for the best horse in Halifax, and he bought a trotter. He had a sleigh all varnished up and painted red. He never told about his gold, because it was believed that if the Indians found a gold mine, and told the white man, the Devil would come to the Indian and he would die.”

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Legend related to Helen Creighton, August 1947, by Charles Charlton, of Milford, Annapolis County:

“The three men in the canoe which Jim Charles is supposed to have shot at were Stewart Ruggles; Gid Burrell, a shoemaker; and Zeke Hanley, a white guide. They were in a little 60-pound birch bark canoe, which was overloaded. Some of the birch bark canoes were so cranky you had to keep your hair parted in the middle, and others were so cranky you daresn’t change your mind. Sid Camden brought the corpse of Burrell through here in a daggin with a single ox, all wrapped in moss. His body was the last to be found. The only killing I ever knew of around here was old Jim Charles killing a white man who was too familiar with his wife.” (Note by THR: “Daggin” or Dagan” was a western Nova Scotia word, probably Acadian in origin, for a wagon pulled by a single ox.)

(Note by THR) In July 1957 Arthur B. Merry came to my house with an old gun that he had found on the bottom of Kejimkujik Lake. It was a very dry summer and the lake was low. Paddling a canoe over a shallow place near his property on the east side of the lake, Merry had noticed the gun and fished it up. His property was the old Charlie Minard place, and it included the Indian burial ground. Merry thought the gun might be one of those lost when Stoddard and the others upset their canoe in 1884. It was badly corroded by rust, but one could see that it was a cap-fire, muzzle-loading, smooth-bore gun, very light and short in the barrel.

(Note by THR) Fifteen or more miles west of Lake Rossignol, near the place where the boundaries of the western counties come together on the map like the wedges of a pie, lies a small lake called Koofang by the woodsmen. Somewhere in the vicinity of “Koofang” is a huge boulder with a cave under it, known as “Jim Charles’s Rock”. This is where Jim hid for some years after he killed the man Hamilton. The name “Koofang” (which means nothing in English, French, or Micmac) is obviously derived from the old French word “couffin”, meaning a type of basket, perhaps because the lake had that shape. Modern surveyors misunderstood the pronunciation, and marked it “Two Fan Lake” on the N.S. government map.

(Note by THR)

In May 1966 Reginald Dickie, a land surveyor employed for many years by the Mersey Paper Company, told me that Jim Charles’s grave was on the point in Kejimkujik where he had his cabin; the mound can be clearly seen, and for many years the proprietors of the Rod & Gun Club maintained a wooden cross or headboard on which was carved or painted Jim Charles’s name.

This was in contradiction to my information from Claude Hartlen, long since dead.

On May 22, 1966 I drove to Maitland Bridge and had a long talk with farmer and woodsman Cecil Baxter. It was a Sunday and various elderly members of the Baxter family had gathered for a reunion, including a Doctor Baxter, a dentist, who now lives in retirement in Halifax. Doctor Baxter could recall seeing Jim Charles talking to Baxter’s father some time in the 1890’s. All of these elderly people knew the story of Jim Charles. Cecil Baxter, who had traveled a good deal in the backwoods west of Kejimkujik as a younger man, knew the whole area intimately. In essence this is what he said:

Clayton Munro’s mother, after her husband’s death, continued to live on the Munro farm, and later she married James Nixon, who was a widower. Hence James Nixon’s son Allister, and Clayton Munro, were half brothers.

David Lewis, the friend and confidant of Jim Charles, had a small farm on the road from Maitland Bridge to Kejimkujik. He was more of a woodsman than a farmer, and spent a good deal of his time in the forest. It was David Lewis who went along when Jim Charles offered to show the whereabouts of his “mine”.

But Lewis was never sure whether Jim’s astonishment was real or false when they found a real mine operating on the Tusket. Jim had resorted to so many tricks to deceive the white folk about his “mine” that it had become almost a habit.

Also there was some doubt about Jim Charles’s sanity by that time.

After Jim Charles was formally cleared of the murder of Hamilton various people made threats to see him hanged. Jim Charles took to the woods and hid himself away for three years up the Shelburne River. Near Koofang Lake there was a big rock and a cave beside it, where Jim lived during these three years. Woodsmen afterwards found the place and always referred to it as “Jim Charles’s Rock” and “Jim Charles’s cave.” It was not on the shore of Koofang Lake but back on the land where there was a good view. During these three years alone, living by hunting and fishing, constantly afraid of discovery by white men, Jim’s mind became a bit queer. His squaw knew where he was, and eventually he returned to the cabin in Kejimkujik when she convinced him that there was no more danger. He told some of his white friends that during the time he was living in the cave near Koofang Lake some people hunted for him with two dogs. One dog was of normal size, the other was huge. He was much afraid of the big dog.

Eventually Jim Charles’s squaw died, and his son Maiti went away to the States. I have heard that Malti learned the blacksmith’s trade in Maine and stayed there the rest of his life.

I have heard that during the days of Jim Charles’s affluence he joined the Masonic order. I don’t think there was a Masonic lodge in Caledonia then. Possibly he joined the lodge in Liverpool or Annapolis. The Indians hereabouts were nominally Catholics, and I have heard it said that Jim Charles must have been the only Catholic Freemason in existence.

Jim Charles definitely was not buried on the point in Kejimkujik. When he was old he went to live with an Indian family named Francis in Milton, near Liverpool. He died and was buried down there. The “grave” on Jim Charles’s Point in Kejimkujik was a natural mound near the main building of the Rod & Gun Club. When the Club became a hotel for sportsmen, one of the proprietors used to tell his guests that Jim Charles, the famous Indian murderer and gold miner, was buried under that mound. He put a wooden cross or headboard on it, with Jim Charles’s name, and spun yarns about Jim’s ghost being seen walking about the point at night. It used to delight the women guests.

The Rod & Gun Club was built about 1907 by a group of sportsmen, mostly from Annapolis. After some years one of these men — I think he was a Mills from Annapolis — bought out the interests of the others and turned the place into a summer resort for families, mostly well-to-do Americans. It changed hands a good many times during the years since. The most recent owner was Norman Phinney. The Parks Branch of the Department of Northern Affairs expropriated his and other properties at Kejimkujik when they took over the whole area. Norman Phinney now lives at Wilmot, near Middleton in the Annapolis Valley.

My father remembered the drowning of Ruggles, Burrell and Stoddard very well.

The day was very calm, and the canoe foundered because it was overloaded. They had been warned that the canoe was overloaded. They were heading from Jim Charles’s Point towards Hog Island when it foundered. For quite a time they struggled in the water, screaming for help. The cries were heard at a distance of two miles, at the John Lewis house.

The magistrate was Charles Harlow Ford, a member of the Masonic lodge. He was an outstanding magistrate in his day, and people from all over the countryside came to him for legal advice. He would hold court in his house, and disputes and grievances would be settled through him. Charles Ford and David Lewis were both friends of Jim Charles. The wife of David Lewis was an Indian, Esther Jeremy, a sister of the late Joe Jeremy of Molega.

Hamilton was killed at what is called the Glode Field, in a hollow, not far from the road going in to Kejimkujik.

 

Other documents today:

Pinehurst Lodge (and Jim Charles)- Raddall

The Lost Gold at Kejimkujik – Randall from Footsteps on Old Floors

The Flight of Jim Charles   /drf

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[1] Note: I spell KE-JIM-KU-JIK, phonetically, following the Indian pronunciation. The meaning is obscure. According to the Indians the literal translation is “the-part-that- swells”, and some illustrate by saying “like a bladder with a narrow end”. Sesbresay’s History of Lunenburg County (page 341) says that the cove at Aspotagan was alternately called KEBEJO-KOOCHK by the Indians meaning “a closing of the passage”. Both names obviously have one etymological origin and seem to refer to the shape of the lake or cove. However the ancient Indians built eel-weirs on the Kejimkujik River (below the lake) whose stone remains can still be seen. In a sense these might be called “a closing of the passage”. Such weirs, in the Fall rains, would raise the lake and spread its area to some extent.

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