Charles-Jean Seghers (1838 – 1886)
Charles-Jean Seghers was born in Ghent, Belgium. He was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1863 and soon after began his missionary work in Vancouver, British Columbia. He was appointed Bishop of Vancouver Island in June 1873. His diocese included Alaska and he made five trips north. After serving in some administrative positions in other places, he was reassigned to Vancouver and resumed his missionary work, establishing missions in Juneau and Sitka and founding a school and a hospital in Juneau.1)
In July 1886, Archbishop Seghers set out from Victoria with Jesuit Fathers Pascal Tosci and Aloysius Robaut, and layman Francis Fuller. They were joined by a Canadian man, Provost, in Juneau. He was included to build a boat for travel on the Yukon River. They party travelled to Chilkoot [Dyea] where Seghers engaged about fifty packers to carry the luggage. The charge was thought to be exorbitant and kept rising until Seghers objected, upon which he was threatened. [Captain Michael] Healy intervened by showing a gun and Seghers’s party was allowed to continue their trip over the mountains, less his money and now accompanied by five miners and sixty packers. Provost disappeared at the summit but two miners offered their boat as a gift.2)
On August 27th, the party encountered a snowstorm on Lake Laberge. They stopped at a First Nation camp and Seghers recognized people he had met before, perhaps at Noukelakayet. The party reached [Arthur] Harper’s Place at the mouth of the Stewart River on 7 September 1886.3)
Seghers worried that a Protestant missionary, Rev. Parker, was planning on establishing a mission at Nulato. Archbishop Seghers left Tosci and Robaut at Stewart and travelled on down the Yukon River by canoe with Fuller who had already exhibited signs of paranoia. The two priests were to join Seghers at Nulato in the spring. Seghers and Fuller reached Noukelakayet on October 4th and they had to wait until the river froze before continuing. The trader, a man named Walker, was anti-Catholic and he stoked Fuller’s paranoia. Seghers and Fuller left for Nulato by dog team at the end of November, accompanied by an adult, Sennetoh [Shahnuuti’], and a youth, Koihatoy. They were camped at a spot close to their destination when Fuller shot Seghers, killing him instantly.4)
Seghers was buried at St. Michael, exhumed in 1888 and buried at Victoria, reburied in the crypt at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Victoria in 1894, and reburied again in a memorial crypt under the high alter in 1938. Francis Fuller was tried for murder in Sitka with Walker and Sennetoh [Shahnuuti’] as witnesses. He was convicted of manslaughter and condemned to ten years hard labour and a fine of a thousand dollars.5)