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Who Lynches on the Frontier? Jesuit who shared Brown’s story, what Brown saw as a novice highlights the challenges of the uncivilized frontier, as distinct from the experience of contemporary Jesuits. And yet, if John Brown’s obituary reflects the lingering influence of the frontier justice paradigm, its details also anticipate some of the critiques of that paradigm raised by later historiography. The victims may have been imprisoned in a house, but they had been captured and were awaiting trial. If the institutions of conventional law and order were under development in New Mexico, they were certainly not absent. Thus, Brown’s story provides an appropriate introduction to other Jesuit references that anticipate modern historical interpretations of Western frontier lynching. The first, from the Alaskan frontier, casts the identity of potential lynchers into sharp relief, not least because its reference to their whiteness is so nonchalant.

The Murder of Archbishop Seghers

In July 1886, Archbishop Charles Seghers left British Columbia to pursue his longstanding dream of establishing a mission in the Yukon River Valley. Since he had persuaded the Society to take charge of the mission, Jesuit fathers Pascal Tosi and Aloysius Robaut accompanied him. The archbishop also insisted upon inviting Frank Fuller, an off-again, on-again employee of the Rocky Mountain Missions, to join the party, against the advice of the Jesuits, who had noticed his recurrent periods of mental illness. When the group reached the place where they had planned to spend the winter, the archbishop insisted on going further, while the Jesuits stayed behind. As a result, the Jesuits were far away when Fuller shot the archbishop, under the paranoid delusion that the cleric wanted him dead. Fuller brought his victim’s body to the trading post at St. Michael’s, where he claimed to have killed the archbishop in self-defense. The Jesuits only learned what had happened many months later, when the spring thaw made it possible for them to travel to their scheduled reunion with the archbishop. Fuller was arrested and convicted of manslaughter (McNally 2000, 113–19; Barnum 1893, 437–48; WL 1887, 272–74, 281–82; Seattle Post-Intelligencer 1888a).

The murder of Archbishop Seghers became an important international news story. Particularly problematic for the Jesuits were media references to Fuller as a Jesuit brother: in fact, Fuller himself made this claim in a statement following his conviction (Seattle Post-Intelligencer 1888b). The archbishop’s “unfortunate oversight” in referring to “Brother Fuller” in a letter from the Yukon only compounded the problem (Barnum 1893, 441; McNally 2000, 118; Seghers 1887). Although non-Jesuit sources confirmed that Fuller was not a member of the Society, references to him as “Brother Fuller” spread from British Columbia to Sydney (Victoria Daily Times 1887b; Los Angeles Times 1887; Victoria Daily Times 1887a; Sydney Morning Herald 1887).

The general dispatch on Alaska published in the 1887 volume of the Woodstock Letters included a brief report about the murder (272–74). However, in 1893, Francis Barnum composed a more extensive account of the event – an account he tells us was edited and approved by Tosi (WL 1893, 436–49). Barnum emphasizes that Fuller was never a Jesuit, that the Jesuits had warned the archbishop against hiring and retaining Fuller because of his