Louis Riel

Canadian political leader

• Born: October 23, 1844
• Birthplace: St. Boniface, Assiniboia (now Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada)
• Died: November 16, 1885
• Place of death: Regina, Northwest Territories, (now in Saskatchewan), Canada

One of the most controversial figures in Canadian history, Riel led two popular revolt movements in the west and played a crucial role in the creation of the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan.

Early Life

Louis Riel (LEW-ee ree-EHL) was born and raised in the Red River Valley of Manitoba. Because his paternal grandmother had Dene Indian ancestry, his family were regarded as Metis—people of mixed European and Indian heritage. Like his father, Louis went east to Montreal to study as a young man. In the tradition of his family, he was a devout Roman Catholic and was doing well at the Seminary of St. Sulpice, but the death of his father in 1864 seems to have interrupted his studies for the priesthood. He then went through a difficult period, studying law for a time in the office of Rodolfe Laflamme, and coming under the influence of the conservative backlash, which had resulted from the thwarted Quebec Rebellion of 1837-1839.

After the end of a disappointing love affair, Riel left Montreal and lived in Chicago and St. Paul, Minnesota, for several months before returning to Manitoba in 1869. On his return to Canada, Riel landed in the middle of a political storm over the change in status of the territory. The Hudson’s Bay Company was in the process of ceding its sovereignty over Rupert’s Land, which included Manitoba, to the newly created Dominion of Canada, and the Metis people believed that they were being overlooked in the negotiations regarding this transfer of authority. Riel’s father had been a leader in the struggle to break the fur-trading monopoly of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the area in 1849. As an intelligent, educated, and traveled young man, Louis Riel was well situated and equipped to assume a role of leadership among his people despite being only twenty-five years old.

Life’s Work

The Canadian Dominion Lands homesteading program, which was introduced after confederation in 1867, had trouble accommodating the Metis population of the northwest. First, members of communities wishing to use the system to homestead needed some familiarity with the English language, and most Metis spoke only French or Indian languages. Second, the Dominion Lands program was intended for farmers, not for people such as the Metis, whose subsistence was based on fishing and trapping. Third, the program was intended for new arrivals, not for people already established in the area. Finally, the Dominion Lands method of surveying in rectangular lots went against the system of dividing land that had been used traditionally in Quebec, where settlers got small amounts of river frontage and long, narrow strips of land extending back from the river.

The law recognized the Metis and their settlements. Surveyors sent to the western frontier by the Canadian government were supposed to accept established claims and to be sensitive to local situations. However, they were not trained diplomats, and friction often resulted. On October 10, 1869, Louis Riel led a party of eighteen Metis who blocked the progress of a surveyor named A. C. Webb in the first confrontation of what became known as the Red River Resistance. On November 2, 120 armed men led by Riel moved into Fort Garry (where Winnipeg is now located), which had formerly been occupied by the Hudson’s Bay Company. They proclaimed themselves the provisional government of Manitoba on December 27. When William McDougall, who had been appointed by Canada as the first governor of the province, arrived, the rebels refused him entry and sent him packing back to Ottawa. The provisional government then sent a delegation to Ottawa to negotiate the terms under which Manitoba would join the new Canadian Confederation.

At that moment, there was a good deal of sympathy for Riel and his cohorts among the Canadian population. However, the execution of an English prisoner named Thomas Scott cut deeply into that goodwill. Scott had tried to escape twice and was apparently a difficult and disagreeable prisoner. Riel and the Council of War that he assembled believed that maintaining good order and discipline required the strictest measures and had Scott put in front of a firing squad on March 4, 1870. Most English-speaking Canadians considered Scott’s execution an unjustified act of cold-blooded political expediency.

On May 12, 1870, the Manitoba Act became law and Manitoba joined the dominion as a province. The act met the legitimate demands of Manitoba’s provisional government, but the amnesty that had been discussed for participants in the resistance never materialized. Those who participated in the execution of Thomas Scott were murdered by vigilantes or chased off. A warrant was issued for Riel’s arrest, and a member of the Canadian parliament from Ontario took it upon himself to offer a five-thousand-dollar reward for Riel’s capture. Riel became a fugitive, and although he was elected by citizens of Manitoba three times to represent them in the Canadian parliament, he was never able to take his seat in Ottawa.

For almost fifteen years, Riel suffered in silence and labored in obscurity. He believed deeply that he had a mission from God to lead his Metis people to some historic destiny, but all political avenues of expression were blocked. His frustration finally became too much for him, and he spent several years institutionalized under psychiatric treatment in Quebec. In 1875, he was finally granted amnesty—with the condition that he stay out of Manitoba for five more years. His vagabond existence seemed to end during the early 1880’s, when he married Marguerite Belhumeur, started a family, and took a job teaching in Montana. He even became a U.S. citizen in 1883, but the call of his Canadian destiny came once again.

A delegation from the Batoche area of Saskatchewan led by Gabriel Dumont sought out Riel in Montana and asked for his help in dealing with several problems involving the Canadian government. Riel packed up his wife and two young children, went to Saskatchewan, and became the leader of a movement that became known as the Northwest, or Second Riel, Rebellion. The main issues involved land distribution and were similar to those that had arisen in Manitoba fifteen years earlier. Newly arrived English settlers were swamping the territory and putting pressure on the Metis population. By then, the buffalo herds on which the Metis depended were gone, and living off the land by fishing and trapping was no longer possible. Inexperienced in modern commerce and agriculture, the Metis had trouble adjusting to changing times, and the Canadian government failed to respond to their needs.

The Northwest Rebellion was a much larger uprising than the Manitoba Resistance had been. Some eight thousand Canadian soldiers under the command of Major General Frederick D. Middleton were sent to crush a few hundred Metis and their handful of Cree and Assiniboine allies. Bloody confrontations at Duck Lake, Battleford, and Fish Creek were preliminary to the last stand of Louis Riel at the Battle of Batoche in May of 1885. Finally, on May 15, he was captured and taken to Regina to stand trial for high treason.

Modern standards of due process cast a suspicious light on the treatment of Riel after he was taken prisoner. The selection of his jury and the jurisdiction of the stipendiary magistrates who heard his case now appear questionable. Most observers agree that the official inquiry into Riel’s sanity that was arranged by Prime Minister John A. Macdonald was a political charade. However, Riel himself did not complain in the diaries that he kept during the last days of his life. By all accounts he forgave his enemies and accepted his fate with good grace. He is said to have ascended the scaffold to his own hanging in a state of inner peace when he was executed in Regina on November 16, 1885.

Significance

Sympathy for Louis Riel has grown in Canada with the passage of time since his death. Although he clearly made mistakes, the demands he made of the government in both his major confrontations are generally considered to have been justified, and most of his demands were eventually met. In 1997, a private members bill was introduced to the Canadian parliament to revoke his conviction for high treason, but it was still being revised and debated during the first years of the twenty-first century.

The modern nation of Canada was founded on the marriage of two European peoples in the New World, the French and the English. Many Canadians, including Pierre Trudeau, who was Canada’s prime minister during the 1970’s and early 1980’s, have enjoyed this kind of mixed heritage. Trudeau’s policy of coast-to-coast bilingualism is a cultural extension of the same unifying impulse. The Metis leader Louis Riel has come to symbolize the bringing together of disparate elements into a whole. To a growing number of modern Canadians, Riel symbolizes a united Canada.

Bibliography

Charlebois, Peter. The Life of Louis Riel. Toronto: NC Press, 1975. An illustrated, very sympathetic, and readable biography.

Dumont, Gabriel. Gabriel Dumont Speaks. Vancouver: Talon Books, 1993. The personal account of the Second Riel Rebellion by the Metis military commander.

Flanagan, Thomas. Riel and the Rebellion. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. The issues involved in the Second Riel Rebellion presented from the point of view of the Canadian government.

Friesen, John W. The Riel/Real Story. Ottawa: Borealis Press, 1996. Focuses on the importance of Riel in creating and shaping Metis culture.

Riel, Louis. The Diaries of Louis Riel. Edited by Thomas Flanagan. Edmonton: T. H. Best, 1975. Letters, notes, visions, prophecies, and prayers written by Riel in jail during the last few months of his life.