In 1885, the Riel Rebellion broke out in Saskatchewan, Canada. The Métis, angered by the refusal of the Canadian government to confirm their river lot claims along the Qu’Appelle and South Saskatchewan Rivers, organized the Provisional Government of Saskatchewan with Pierre Parenteau, Sr. as president, Gabriel Dumont as military adjunct, and Louis Riel as people’s council. The new government’s capital was Batoche, a village with about 500 residents.
The armed rebellion began at Duck Lake where the Métis under the leadership of Gabriel Dumont encountered the North-West Mounted Police and local militia. After a tense standoff, the Mounties retreated.
About two miles from Duck Lake there was a heated twenty-minute battle won by the Métis. During the battle Louis Riel carried an enormous crucifix and encouraged the Métis warriors and called upon God to help them. Only through the intervention of Louis Riel did the Canadian forces manage to escape total destruction. Louis Riel claimed that the victory at Duck Lake was because God was on their side.
At the Battle of Batoche the Canadian forces, numbering about 950 soldiers, defeated a force of 250 Métis and ended the rebellion. Following this defeat, many Métis fled to Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota. Gabriel Dumont evaded the Canadian patrols and escaped to the United States. Louis Riel was captured. The rebellion had lasted only two months.
Background
In the early 1800s, the Métis began to develop their own identity as a distinct people. The heart of Métis country was on the plains of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. While many Métis worked for the trading companies, primarily the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company, others became specialists in commercial bison hunting which provided meat and pemmican to the trading posts.
In their book Louis Riel, Dan Asfar and Tim Chodan write:
“The Métis were a French-speaking people living in western Canada who drew their ancestry from both whites and Natives. They were the offspring of French fur traders and Native women who married during traders’ sojourns in Rupert’s Land.”
Dan Asfar and Tim Chodan also report:
“Over time, the Métis (French for “half-caste”) formed a distinct population. They developed buffalo-hunting practices of their own and competed against bordering Natives for hunting grounds.”
Rupert’s Land is the territory which was granted to the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) in 1670. Rupert’s Land is the area drained by Hudson Bay and includes all of the present-day province of Manitoba, most of Saskatchewan, southern Alberta, southern Nunavut, and parts of Ontario and Quebec. In 1870, HBC transferred Rupert’s Land to Canada.
After Rupert’s Land became a part of the Canadian Federation and opened to homesteading, settlers began flooding the region. Among them were “Canada Firsters”. In his book Who Was Who in Native American History: Indians and Non-Indians From Early Contacts Through 1900, Carl Waldman described the Canada Firsters this way:
“Being Protestant Orangemen, prejudiced against French, Catholics, and Indians, they were insensitive to Métis land rights.”
Canadian surveyors set out to section off the land into square townships of 800 acres each. The Métis system of land distribution—narrow, river front lots—did not mesh with the Canadian homesteading squares. The Métis river lot system was inspired by the seigneurial system of New France. In this system there are parallel lots which are 6-12 chains in width (1 chain = 66 feet) and up to two miles deep. The rear of each lot was used for hay and for wood.
The Métis during the 1880s repeatedly petitioned Ottawa for official recognition of their lands and their concerns were ignored. Consequently, there were several armed conflicts between the Métis and the newcomers which culminated with the Riel Rebellion of 1885.
The Trial
In 1885 Louis Riel was tried in Saskatchewan under the North-West Territories Act of 1880. The jury that heard his case was composed of six English-speaking Protestants. Dan Asfar and Tim Chodan write:
“How this could be construed as a jury of his peers is hard to fathom.”
During the trial there were many problems with translation. In addition, Riel was tried before a magistrate rather than a judge. A magistrate is simply a lawyer with at least five years’ experience.
In her biographical sketch of Riel in Notable Native Americans, Tina Weil writes:
“He hoped his trial would become such a spectacle that it would embarrass the Canadian government and they would set him free. Unfortunately, Riel was wrong.”
Riel’s legal team, after meeting with him, concluded that he was not of sound mind and therefore they would use insanity as their only defense. Dan Asfar and Tim Chodan write:
“There is no reason to believe that their opinion of Louis’ mental health was not genuine. After meeting him, they sincerely believed he was mad.”
In his meeting with them, Riel had expounded on his belief that he was a prophet.
The jury found Louis Riel guilty of high treason and recommended that mercy be shown. However, the magistrate pronounced a sentence of death by hanging. Following the sentence there was a flurry of appeals, both in the legal system and in the court of public opinion. Dan Asfar and Tim Chodan write:
“Riel came to be seen as a symbol of French Canada’s fate at the hands of Anglo-Saxon Protestant Canada. The newspapers and public opinion were transfixed by the symbolic struggle to gain mercy for Riel.”
In spite of this, the Protestant Anglo-Saxons won, and Riel was hung. Riel’s body was transported to Manitoba for burial. Dan Asfar and Tim Chodan report:
“Rumors had been circulating that a group of Orangemen was planning to attack the procession, and every Métis man in the long column of mourners had a rifle slung over his back and one keen eye fixed on his surroundings.”
There was no attack.
Riel’s Legacy
Louis Riel envisioned an entirely new nation on the Canadian plains, a nation bound together by blood, by a common culture, and by belief. In her biographical sketch of Louis Real in the Encyclopedia of North American Indians, Olive Patricia Dickason writes:
“National hero of the Métis, Louis Riel is a key figure in Canadian history. In formulating the aspirations of his people during the difficult years following the confederation of Canada (1867) and acting to realize them, he became a catalyst in the French-English and Catholic-Protestant rivalries that dominated the Canadian political scene of the period.”
With regard to Riel’s legacy, Dan Asfar and Tim Chodan write:
“A man who has alternatively been described as a frontier hero, a Father of Confederation, an egotistical maniac and a religious zealot, Riel left a legacy that has aroused no shortage of controversy over the years.”
Dan Asfar and Tim Chodan also write:
“The Anglo-Saxon subjugation of Louis Riel and the Métis rebellion in Saskatchewan defined the immediate future of western settlement, discouraged French Canada’s ambitions past the 100th meridian and nudged Québec into an isolationist shell that would remain firm for the better part of a century.”
Carl Waldman writes:
“Saskatchewan became an Anglo-dominated province, as Manitoba had earlier. To the Métis, as well as to Catholics all over Canada, Riel was a martyr to their religion and cause.”
In his book Montana 1889, historian Ken Egan writes:
“Riel’s story repeatedly raises questions about the difference between madness and political genius, between vision and delusion. Was he a prescient political thinker who had the courage to follow his convictions, or was he a madman caught up in deceptive dreams that cost him and his people?”
Ken Egan also writes:
“Riel’s role as revolutionary was rendered even more controversial by his religious beliefs, for he imagined replacing the Catholic Church, so central to Métis life, with a New World religion modeled on the Church but looking more like a Protestant sect. This original creed reveals that this gifted, melancholic, unsteady man was dreaming of a far more profound revolution than might be apparent at first glance. He was imagining a mixed-race polity that practiced an original form of religion, all rooted in the place, the traditions, and the values of indigenous peoples and settlers.”
More history
Indians 101: Metis
Indians 201: The Pemmican War
Indians 101: The Red River War
Indians 101: The North-West Mounted Police
History 101: The Deerfield War of 1675
History 101: Fort Astoria, Oregon
History 201: The War of Jenkins Ear
History 101: British exploration of the Northwest Coast
