Why did Slumach shoot Bee?

Bee was described "as in the habit of blustering at and threatening everyone with whom he came in contact," and it was said, that there was "bad blood between Slumach and Bee." A few words by Bee that day may have been the last straw and it was enough to enrage Slumach to the point that he shot and killed Bee with his old front loader.

There were rumours in the press that Slumach killed at least one more man before Louis Bee is raised in the 1890 newspaper reports. The "Colonist" (January 1891) even suggest that he had killed 10 men "before the whites settled on the mainland of B.C." Indian Agent McTiernan believed Slumach when he denied that he had killed anyone other than Louis Bee in his life. The buzz may have related to a number of unsolved murders in the area for which Slumach’s hanging was meant to be a deterrent. Still the accusation that Slumach killed more people than Bee persists till the present. Unjustly I asume.

With the hanging of this old man the press’s interest in Slumach died. What was there to report? Slumach was only rumoured to be involved with other murders and there was not a thing about gold. British Columbia between the Fraser gold rush and the Klondike, was is a world full of prospectors, fortune seekers and speculators and even gossip about gold would have triggered a stampede to the Pitt Lake area, duly recorded by the press —but it did not happen.