(1844-85)
Métis leader and founder of the province of Manitoba, Canada
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.
Of Franco-Chipewyan descent, he was the grandson of Marie-Anne Gaboury, the first white woman in western Canada. Riel was born in the Red River Settlement (at that time under the governance of the Hudson's Bay Company), and went to Montreal to study for the priesthood but turned to law instead. He returned to the West the year following the confederation of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia as the Dominion of Canada. An immediate challenge to the fledgling government was the transfer of the huge expanse of Rupert's Land (essentially present-day Northwest Territories) from Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) administration to that of the new dominion. The date set for this was December 1, 1869.
The Métis communities of the Northwest, the product of the fur trade that was still flourishing in those regions, had been developing for more than two centuries. Far removed as they were from the centers of colonial government, they already had a well-established tradition of independent self-sufficiency. Nowhere was this more evident than at Red River. Years earlier, in 1816, when the HBC had sought to enforce regulations that the Métis considered to be against their interests, the people of Red River under the leadership of Cuthbert Grant (c. 1793-1854) had mounted successful resistance in a confrontation known as the Battle of Seven Oaks. It was a moment of truth that confirmed the Métis in thinking of themselves as a "new nation," a people neither Amerindian nor white, but a combination of both. Beginning in the 1840s, the Métis at Red River presented a series of petitions to the HBC and to the imperial government in London, asking for recognition as a separate people and a voice in government. Officials dragged their heels, suspicious of these people who did not fit into established social categories.
As the date for the transfer of the HBC lands to Canada drew closer, tensions mounted in Red River. When government surveyors arrived unannounced and set to work, Riel and a group of Métis stopped them, on October 11, 1869. The alarmed Métis then organized the Comité National des Métis (National Committee of the Métis) to defend their interests. In the meantime, Canada had named a former commissioner of crown lands with a dubious record regarding his dealings with aboriginal territories, William McDougall (1822-1905), as lieutenant governor of Rupert's Land. When he arrived at Red River, his entry was blocked by Riel and the Comité, on the grounds that the settlement had not been consulted about his appointment. On November 2, the Métis took peaceful possession of Lower Fort Garry, the HBC's regional headquarters—a move that symbolized the Métis' control of Red River. All this they accomplished without firing a shot.
A furious McDougall, unwilling to accept what had happened, slipped into the settlement during a snowstorm on December 1, the day that had been scheduled for the transfer, and read the proclamation that had been prepared to announce Canada's takeover. His action formally ended HBC authority without providing any effective official authority to take its place; in effect, he created a political vacuum. Under the circumstances, the Métis were legally free to form a provisional government, which they did, with Riel as president.
Opposition was not long in developing, however, its major manifestation being a group calling itself Canada First, based in English-speaking Protestant Ontario. The aggressive behavior of some of the Canada Firsters in Red River led to arrests, and eventually to the court-martial and execution of one of them, Orangeman Thomas Scott. As Ontario cried for vengeance and Quebec sprang to the defense of the Métis, Ottawa rushed the Manitoba Act through Parliament, carving out of the Northwest Territories a new province—Manitoba—that guaranteed equal rights to French and English speakers and provided for a separate Catholic school system; in addition, 1.4 million acres of land were set aside for Métis.
For Riel, the consequences were not so happy. In spite of Ottawa's promise of amnesty, Ontario continued to demand that he be brought to justice for the execution of Scott. Although Riel was twice elected to Parliament, in 1873 and again the following year, hostility against him was such that he was never able to take his seat. In 1875 he was banished from Canada for five years, with the promise of amnesty afterward. Nervously exhausted from the strain of his position, he began to see himself as a prophet of a new form of Christianity that would be based in Canada—an unorthodox position that lost him support among the Catholic clergy. Under the name of Louis R. David, he was hospitalized in Quebec for a little more than a year and a half. Upon his discharge he returned west to work as a trader and interpreter, and to become involved in regional politics. In 1881 he married a Métis woman, Marguerite Monet. In 1883 he became a U.S. citizen, and the following year he accepted an invitation to teach at the Jesuit mission at Sun River, Montana. Soon after he settled there, a delegation of Canadian Métis arrived to ask his help in a crisis that had been precipitated by the passing of the buffalo herds.
The situation in the Canadian Northwest in 1884 was very different from what it had been in Red River in 1869-70. In addition to the disappearance of the herds, the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railway was nearing completion, and the federal North-West Mounted Police were a strong presence. But in one unfortunate respect, things were all too much the same: Ottawa was still having trouble hearing the voice of the West, particularly that of the Métis. Frustrated at the slow pace of negotiations over the place of the Métis in the province, Riel, on March 8, issued a ten-point bill of rights for the North-West Territories. The manifesto included provisions recognizing the rights of Amerindians and white settlers as well as the rights of the Métis. When Ottawa did not respond, Riel proclaimed a provisional government on March 19 (the name day of Saint Joseph, the patron saint of the Métis) and seized the parish church at Batoche, on the Saskatchewan River. Within a week, with the help of the new railway, federal troops were on the scene.
The armed conflict that followed was quickly over, but the same cannot be said for its consequences. The repercussions from the hanging of Riel for high treason on November 16, 1885, are still being felt. The cause of the Métis had received a severe setback, but it was not destroyed. It has in fact been regaining momentum in the closing decades of the twentieth century. A testimony to this was the inclusion of the Métis as one of Canada's three aboriginal peoples in the Constitution of 1982, and the federal government's recognition, in 1994, of the aboriginal right to self-government.
Thomas Flanagan, ed., The Diaries of Louis Riel (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1976); A. S. Lussier, ed., Louis Riel and the Métis (Winnipeg: Pemmican Publications, 1988); George F. G. Stanley, Louis Riel (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1963).
Olive Patricia Dickason
University of Alberta
