Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont (3 page)

Riel, playing the moment as well as any actor in a stage play, allows tension to build all day before he gives his answer. He finally agrees to come back to Canada with Dumont and company, but only if his wife and two young children can join him. Dumont readily agrees. There’s plenty of room for all in the wagons. Riel explains that he must finish up his teaching at the mission school as he’d made a promise to the children, but this will take only three or four days. Again, Dumont says that this will not pose a problem.

“Fifteen years ago,” Riel says, “I gave my heart to my nation, and I am ready to give it again.” He then sits down and writes a long letter to the men in the room while they stand about awkwardly. When he is finished, Riel hands the letter to Michel Dumas, who is able to read.

Riel, in part, writes:

Your invitation is cordial and pressing. You ask me to accompany you with my family. I could make my excuses and say no. Yet you await my decision, so that all I have to do is to make my own preparations, and the letters you bring assure me that I would be welcomed by those who have sent you as if I were returning to my own family. Gentlemen, your visit honours and pleases me, and your role as delegates gives it the character of a memorable event; I record it as one of the happiest occasions of my life. It is an event my family will remember, and I pray to God that your deputation may be one of the blessings of this year, which is the fortieth of my existence.

Let me speak briefly and frankly. I doubt if any advice I could give you while on this alien soil concerning matters in Canada would be of much use beyond the frontier. But there is another aspect of the matter. According to Article 31 of the Manitoba treaty, the Canadian government owes me two hundred and forty acres of land. It also owes me five lots which are valuable because of their hay, their wood, and their nearness to the river. These lots belonged to me according to various paragraphs of the same Article 31 of the treaty to which I have referred. Directly or indirectly, the Canadian government has deprived me of these properties. In addition, if the Canadian government were to examine the matter, it would soon see that it owes me something more than that.

These claims which I have on the government retain their validity in spite of the fact that I have now become an American citizen. In your interest therefore and in mine as well, I accept your friendly invitation; I will go and spend a little time among you. Perhaps by presenting petitions to the government we shall be able to gain at least something. But my intention is to come back here soon, in the coming autumn.

Most every scholar of Riel has remarked upon the strange internal dichotomy that induced him to at once aggrandize and doubt himself. They also make note of this letter, among many others, for various reasons, often to help support wideranging hypotheses about Riel and his intentions. Some argue that his intentions in 1884 are anything but religious. Instead, Riel sees Dumont’s invitation as a chance to claim what he believes the government owes him. Others argue that Riel has no idea of the hornet’s nest he’s about to stir up, that he expects to visit for only a few months to help create petitions before returning to his exile. Still others argue that the letter reflects the scattered and self-important thoughts of a mentally ill man.

But the men to whom the letter is written see it as something else entirely. As his biographer George Woodcock notes, Gabriel is truly humbled by the ascetic conditions in which they find the great Riel and his family living. The Father of Manitoba, a man who should be housed as comfortably as any politician in his mansion in Ottawa, ekes out an existence teaching poor Indian children to read and write. Riel lives in the spirit of Christ himself, having given up all his worldly possessions for the sake of others. This, in the end, comforts Dumont, reassures him that he has indeed done the right thing in travelling this far to petition this great man who can deliver the Métis justice.

On June 10, 1884, Gabriel and company with Louis and family begin the long wagon ride back to Batoche. The warmth and promise of the approaching summer shines down, and their trip home can be viewed as far more than just a literal one. Through great beauty but also great danger, the Métis travel the path they’d taken not long before, a journey that all of them believe leads them back to their homeland.

CHAPTER TWO

Transformation

In many ways, Louis Riel is a man without a home. Born in Red River near Winnipeg in current-day Manitoba in 1844, Louis is the eldest of eleven children. Red River remains his spiritual home in so many ways, but at the tender age of fourteen, his deeply spiritual convictions are recognized by the powerful Bishop Taché, who talks Louis’s parents into allowing their son to pursue a university education and the priesthood in Montreal. Louis’s relationship with his family, especially his father, is very close, and the decision to let him move so far away is painful for all of them, though his parents must take a certain amount of pride in knowing that their son will become one of the first Métis to be university educated.

Louis is recognized as a very good student, though one prone to dark moodiness, and his years at the Collège de Montréal pass by accordingly. But in 1864, word of his father’s sudden death reaches Louis. This shakes him to his core, and by the following spring Louis has withdrawn from the college and been kicked out of the convent of the Grey Nuns, where he attempted to be a day student. He no longer speaks of becoming a priest. He remains in Montreal, taking on a job as a law clerk, a rather dull profession to which he is ill suited. Over the course of this year, Riel falls for a young woman and wishes to marry her but her parents refuse him, in no small part because he is Métis. Riel’s friends claim that his broken heart takes him to Chicago, where he stays with the poet Louis-Honoré Fréchette and continues to write his own poetry, a passion of his for many years. From Chicago, Riel makes his way to Saint Paul, Minnesota, where he takes on another clerking job.

In 1868, four years after his father’s death, word trickles down of Métis troubles back in Red River. Riel’s mother asks him to return home, and Louis, unhappy with the course his life is taking, agrees to return. His first wandering in the wilderness comes to an end on July 26, 1868.

Back home, Riel finds that an influx of English-speaking Protestant settlers have arrived in Red River, and tensions between these new arrivals, the Indians, and the Métis are on the rise. Despite their long tenure on the land around Red River, the Métis don’t hold clear title to it according to the Hudson’s Bay Company. The Company claims that it actually owns a huge swath of the North-West, a place they call Rupert’s Land, including all of what is now Manitoba. It was given to the Company in 1670 by the King of England, of all people. Now the Company has made a deal to sell Rupert’s Land to Canada, and neither seems to care very much what the Métis might feel. The Métis, not considered white, not considered Indian, these people who speak French, English, and a dozen First Nations tongues, as well as their own hybrid one, Michif, are beginning to feel as if they exist in some netherworld that renders them invisible to the rest of the world.

Back home in the bosom of his tight-knit family, Louis feels more grounded than he has in years. He watches what’s happening around him with the intense eyes of an osprey, sees how more new Orange settlers from Ontario arrive every month, how the Hudson’s Bay Company manoeuvres in its approaching deal with the Canadians, keeping vital information about the sale of land that many feel isn’t even theirs a secret from the Métis and Indians.

The Red River Settlement in 1869 has become a vibrant place, an open door to the west, a community of close to twelve thousand and growing. Of those twelve thousand, six thousand are French-speaking Métis, four thousand are English-speaking Métis, and the other approximately two thousand are European and Canadian settlers. Louis witnesses how both the government of Canada and the Hudson’s Bay Company ignore Métis petitions to be involved in any transactions regarding the land upon which they live. And he especially takes note of the arrival of Canadian surveyors on August 20, 1869. They begin to measure and divide parcels of land in the English-style square lots, ignoring the fact that the Métis, long inhabitants of this place, divide the land in the seigneurial way, each lot narrow and having access to the river. Just as importantly, the Métis have created community lots for livestock grazing, a cornerstone of their society that is deeply rooted in their First Nations beliefs of sharing. All of this is what makes sense in this part of the country. It’s clear to anyone who wishes to read between the lines that the Métis will be evicted and thrown to the winds once this deal between the Company and Canada is made.

Feeling the fire of God speak to him once again, a gorgeous deep burn in the pit of his belly that Louis hasn’t felt in years, he gives a speech in late August to French and English half-breeds alike from the steps of the deeply symbolic Saint-Boniface Cathedral, denouncing the unfairness of the surveys and the machinations of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the government. That many people not only gather but listen and are moved by Louis’s powerful words doesn’t surprise his family. Louis’s departed father, after all, had been instrumental years before in breaking up a Hudson’s Bay Company monopoly and remains highly respected for it, even in death. Maybe Louis feels his father’s smile that late August day. The crowd is impressed, delighted that they have such an eloquent spokesman who seems a natural to lead them in their struggles. This Louis Riel has spent years out east learning the ways of the Canadians, he is deeply spiritual, and he comes from excellent stock. Louis’s position as a leader is quickly cemented, and he finally feels as if he is coming into his own. He understands at last that God doesn’t wish him to be a priest. God tells Louis that his role is to stand up for his people, to be their spokesman.

This is a job he takes to quickly. But on that late August day, no one in the crowd guesses that within months Louis will lead them in what the Canadians call a full-scale rebellion—despite the fact that the area isn’t even a part of Canada yet—and the Métis call a resistance, a defence of their homeland.

On October 11, 1869, a group of Métis that includes Riel take their first physical action in a course of events that plays out quickly. The English surveyors who’d first appeared near Red River in late August, just nine days after Louis’s first speech, continue to busily mark out square parcels of land right on the half-breeds’ doorstep. Louis and company confront the survey team on this crisp autumn day, stepping on their chain as a symbolic act of defiance, at the same time putting the fear of God into them.

Louis knows he has no other choice. The Canadians and the Hudson’s Bay Company have agreed that December 1, just fifty short days away, is the day this questionable transaction will close. The Métis have tried all other courses. The Roman Catholic Bishop Taché of Red River, the Anglican bishop of Rupert’s Land Robert Machray, and even the Hudson’s Bay Company governor of Rupert’s Land and Assiniboia William Mactavish have all warned the young government of Prime Minister John A. Macdonald that surveying this land in front of the Métis without recognizing Métis title will cause serious unrest. But John A. ignores these important men and the Métis in general, a troubling habit that becomes ingrained over the next many years.

To be fair, John A. is under tremendous pressure to try to carve a western part of this brand new country out of the wilderness before the growing American talk of annexation becomes reality. He feels as if he’s in a race with a huge and powerful competitor who disdains, even ridicules him. But John A. Macdonald’s often-rash decisions and his callous refusal to recognize the Métis petitions can be viewed as his own racist disdain for these people. It must be God’s great joke to create a race that is composed of three such deeply troubled identities: French, Indian, and Catholic, all rolled into one! This people called the Métis, what a nightmare. Thankfully, they are mostly ignorant buffalo hunters and their population is small enough that they don’t deserve too much attention. That John A. dares to rub salt into the wounds of this people by appointing the notoriously anti-French William McDougall as lieutenant governor of the North-West Territories in September of 1869 and isn’t able to see the quick fallout of this provocation, which culminates just a few weeks later in Riel and company halting the surveyors, spells brewing trouble. It boils over before the Canadian government knows what’s happening.

In part, John A. doesn’t want to recognize that this Louis Riel is adept at inclusion and has convinced many English half-breeds, European settlers, and a number of Indian tribes that they must stand up in unity if they are to hold any sway on their own land. Louis understands that this newly minted country of Canada is just two years old, and it acts like a bully who’s going to have trouble backing up its aggressive tactics. And Louis knows that this resistance doesn’t just end with stepping on a chain.

To organize themselves better, the Métis create what they call the “Métis National Committee,” and it is in place just five days after the disruption of the surveyors. Louis agrees to become secretary and continues his policy of inclusion, inviting two representatives from each parish to help the Métis and other Red River settlers create an organized stand. The Hudson’s Bay Company, fearing its very fruitful deal with Canada might be in jeopardy, becomes involved, asking to meet with the committee to explain itself. It mustn’t come as a surprise to the council that the Métis oppose the placement of the anti-French McDougall to the powerful position of lieutenant governor of the whole area, and they warn the council that he will not be welcome to take up his position on their land. McDougall represents all the dangers the Métis face, and all their fears. He represents an encroaching government, the Métis believe, that frowns upon their hunting and subsistence-farming lifestyle, their religious beliefs, and their language. None of the Métis ways will be protected if the Canadians take control of Red River as planned. Simply put, McDougall will be turned back if he attempts to come here without the Canadians first negotiating a fair deal that includes protection of the Métis lifestyle and of the population in general.