Blood Upon Our Land Read online

  An Ontario man named Thomas Scott, who had been working in the area, was the driving force behind a band of Canadians heading for Fort Garry in January 1870. Scott, who was fiercely anti-French and anti-Catholic, wanted only English-speaking whites to settle the prairies. He had collected around himself a group of men who shared his ideas.

  The Métis arrested and jailed them. At the end of that month, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald sent Donald Smith, a government messenger, to the Red River settlement. He was to explain the government’s policy to the Métis. Frustrated and disheartened with the fact that they were still being ignored, Riel and the provisional government sent him back to Ottawa with a Métis Bill of Rights.

  Thomas Scott became a difficult prisoner, and hostile to everything for which the Métis stood. Riel ordered him tried. Scott was sentenced to death and executed on March 4, 1870. The execution, which went very badly, is the event that haunts Michel Bouvier in this story. The firing squad fired, but only three bullets hit Scott, none of them killing him. It was left to one of the men to put a revolver to Scott’s head, and pull the trigger. What was considered a lawful execution by the Métis people, was seen as murder by those in Upper Canada.

  When the Red River settlement entered Confederation in 1870 as Manitoba — the reason Riel is called the father of Manitoba — many people in English Canada remained enraged by Thomas Scott’s death. Riel had no choice but to accept a five-year voluntary exile to the United States, where he lived in both Minnesota and North Dakota.

  During the time he was in exile, Riel was elected to Canadian Parliament three times. Edward Blake, the Premier of Ontario, placed a $5000 bounty on Riel’s head, a bounty intended to keep him from taking his seat. Fearing for his life, and under the threat of that bounty, the courage it took for Riel to come into Canada, slip into the Parliament Buildings and sign the register there is difficult to imagine. He was often depressed, and spent periods of time in asylums — what today we call psychiatric hospitals. To the very end, he insisted that he had not been mentally ill.

  By 1878 Riel was back in the Montana Territory. It was there that he met a young Métis woman named Marguerite Monet dit Bellehumeur. They wed à la façon du pays on April 28, 1881; the next year, they were married by a priest. At one point, Riel was working on a sheep ranch owned by a man named Henry Macdonald. Marguerite took care of the owners’ baby. She cooked for the ranch hands, and spent hours beading moccasins and bags. She also crocheted, and made a pair of wristlets using white and blue yarn for the Macdonald baby. Those wristlets are in the collection of the Montana Historical Society, and were the inspiration for the gift Marguerite sends to Louise.

  The Northwest Resistance

  When Louis Riel arrived at Batoche in July of 1884, having been persuaded to come by Gabriel Dumont and three other Métis representatives, James Isbister, Michel Dumas and Moïse Ouellette, he had not only brought his wife and two children with him. He also carried the legacy of the Red River Resistance. Prime Minister John A. Macdonald had not forgotten the events of 1869–1870. Although not all historians agree, some are of the opinion that as the months went on, Macdonald purposely aggravated the situation in the Northwest. Louis Riel had few options in a situation where the government would not recognize the rights of the Métis. Under his leadership a Provisional Council was formed. Riel called it the Exovedate, which was the word that Josephine and many others could not pronounce. It meant “those who have left the flock.”

  On March 17, the rumour reached Batoche that more than 500 mounted police were on their way to arrest Riel. The Métis reacted by raiding the Kerr brothers’ store, and taking prisoners. Riel formed his Provisional Government the next day, and Dumont took charge of the military. On March 25, Dumont and his Métis soldiers fought a force of North-West Mounted Police and volunteers commanded by Superintendent Leif Newry Fitzroy Crozier. The Métis would have destroyed them, had Riel not given the order to cease fire.

  There was no involvement on the part of the Métis in the killings at Frog Lake, and yet the public still blamed Riel. Macdonald decided the time was right to put the Métis in their place, and so called in Major-General Frederick Dobson Middleton to do the job. Major-General Thomas Bland Strange was ordered to march from Calgary and engage Big Bear and his warriors. He was then to join Middleton. Lieutenant-Colonel William Dillon Otter and his men would reinforce Fort Battleford.

  Although Riel had sought the support of the First Nations, only some gave it. Josephine would have been aware of only some of the facts of their participation. Big Bear’s war chief, Wandering Spirit, led the attack on Frog Lake. Both men paid the price for their insurrection. Wandering Spirit was hanged, and Big Bear was sentenced to three years in Stony Mountain Penitentiary, although he served only two of them. By the time he was released, though, he was a broken and sick man.

  Other First Nations leaders suffered similar fates. Camped at a spot called Cut Knife Creek, Cree chief Poundmaker’s village was attacked by Colonel Otter’s forces on May 2. The Cree, led by Poundmaker’s war chief Fine Day, were outnumbered, but they still defeated their enemy. Poundmaker urged his warriors not to continue their actions against the soldiers, but he was unsuccessful. He was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to three years in Stony Mountain. He served only one of those years, but that was enough to ruin his health. Poundmaker died four months after his release.

  One Arrow’s trial was carried on through an interpreter whose words continually left the chief confused. According to the Crown, One Arrow had associated with the Métis at Batoche, and so had broken his treaty with the Queen. On this basis, One Arrow was blamed, tried and sentenced within six minutes.

  Equally unfair was the treatment of the First Nations men who had been arrested and charged with murder for their activities at Frog Lake. Lieutenant-Governor Edgar Dewdney decided to make the executions a public event. The prime minister agreed. Macdonald would write to him saying: The execution of Riel and of the Indians will, I hope, have a good effect on the Métis and convince the Red Man that the White Man governs.

  When Chief One Arrow died on April 25, 1886, soon after being released from prison, he was buried in the St. Boniface Cemetery, beside Louis Riel’s gravesite. His body remained there for 120 years, far from his people and his home. In 2007 the people of The One Arrow First Nation asked that Chief One Arrow’s remains be returned to them. Their request was granted. His old gravestone was left behind at St. Boniface, but the chief’s body was brought back to the reserve. After a four-day traditional wake and a funeral service, Chief One Arrow was buried there on August 28, 2007.

  When General Middleton’s troops entered Métis land, what resulted was the Resistance of 1885. Scholars have long referred to the Resistance as a rebellion, but in the eyes of the Métis, no rebellion was involved. The people of Batoche were simply resisting the efforts of the Canadian government to invade and rule their land. Though this term has been much debated, it remains the position of the Métis today.

  In the end, Louis Riel was charged with high treason on June 6, 1885. If he had been tried in Manitoba, he would probably have faced a jury of sympathetic Métis. But the trial was held in Regina. The jury was made up of English Protestants, and the judge had close ties to the Canadian government. Riel’s lawyers were forbidden by the judge to refer to the events that had led up to the actions for which he was being tried, and Riel was only allowed to speak in his own defence at the very end of the trial. His words were wasted. He had pled not guilty, certain that the law would be with him, but he was wrong. The jury found him guilty. They recommended mercy, but he was sentenced to hang on September 18, and although his execution was delayed by a series of appeals, they were unsuccessful.

  Louis Riel’s Execution and its Aftermath

  Many people, particularly in Quebec, thought the sentence was unfair. The fact was that John A. Macdonald had said that Riel “shall hang, though every dog in Quebec shall bark in his favour.” Louis Riel was executed o
n November 16, 1885. His remains were returned to his wife, and he was buried at St. Boniface.

  Louis Riel’s friends and family were now left without his powerful influence. His wife Marguerite died of pneumonia after a long battle with the coughing sickness — what we now call tuberculosis — at St. Boniface in May of 1886. She was buried next to her husband. Marie-Angelique died of diphtheria in 1878. Her brother Jean-Louis died in 1908 of complications resulting from a buggy accident. Louis Riel has no direct descendants.

  Riel’s lieutenant, Gabriel Dumont, remained in the United States, where he performed as a skilled marksman in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show for a few years. When amnesty was granted to the Resistance participants, he returned to Canada in 1888, and then to Batoche in 1893. Dumont passed away on May 19, 1906, and was buried in the Batoche cemetery near the other veterans.

  Marie-Antoinette, the St. Antoine church bell, was taken back to Millbrook, Ontario, by three soldiers, Private Jack Stainthorpe, Private Ira Nattrass and Sergeant Ed McCorry. For several decades it hung in the town firehall. It was then put on display in the local Royal Canadian Legion #402. Over the years, Métis leaders asked that the bell be returned to Batoche, but the answer was always no. In 1991 the bell was stolen from the Legion, as were Sergeant McCorry’s medals. At the time of this printing, the bell is still missing.

  Other treasures, though, have found their way home. Gabriel Dumont’s billiard table was probably confiscated by Colonel Samuel L. Bedson, a transport officer in the Canadian forces. Bedson was also a prison warden. It is likely that he took the table back to Stony Mountain Penitentiary near Winnipeg, the same prison in which One Arrow, Big Bear, Poundmaker and the convicted Métis served their sentences. Later on, the billiard table was kept at the warden’s home. After many decades, it was given to Parks Canada, where it sat in a warehouse. It was returned to the Batoche National Historic Site in 2006. The table needed new felt, and it had received nicks and scratches over the years, but it was in good condition.

  Louis Riel’s Legacy

  Although Riel’s life was honoured by Métis people in many ways over the years, on February 18, 2008, the first annual Louis Riel Day was celebrated in Manitoba. That in itself is a special event, but what had been returned to the Métis people is even more remarkable. After the Battle of Batoche, Riel and two unnamed companions fled to the settlement of Halcro, about 45 kilometres from Batoche. There they were taken in by a Métis woman named Margaret Halcro, who hid them in her root cellar. Three days later, Louis Riel decided to give himself up. He gave Margaret Halcro his HBC presentation sash in gratitude for what she had done, and then he and his companions surrendered to Big Tom Hourie and two other scouts about 300 metres from Margaret’s home.

  The sash, which over the years had simply been kept in drawer or a trunk, was passed down through Margaret Halcro’s family along with the story. In 2008 her descendent, seventy-six-year-old Marian Hackworth of Dawson Creek, B.C., contacted the province’s Northeast Métis Association, telling its president that she had the sash. It was authenticated, returned to the Manitoba Métis Federation, and is now on display at the St. Boniface Museum.

  Today Batoche is a national historic site. It is more than that, though; for the Métis, it is hallowed land. Each July since 1970, people have come to Batoche to celebrate Métis culture through the Back to Batoche Days festival. Everyone is welcome. They camp in tents, trailers, even tipis. Some compete in voyageur games, throwing hatchets or carrying heavy loads. There is a bannock-baking contest. Visitors can sample traditional food, listen to storytellers or purchase traditional crafts. There is jigging, square dancing and fiddling. And on Sunday, people gather at the cemetery where a Mass is said, and the struggle that took place there is remembered. So are the people who were a part of that struggle.

  Riel’s death outraged Francophones, driving a wedge between them and English Canada that continues to this day. For many years, Riel and his cause have been the topic of controversy and discussion. He was, after all, a man as complex as the patterns in a ceinture fléchée. Some have viewed him as a visionary, a person who could see a future of harmony and peace between the Métis and their neighbours. He has been regarded as a martyr, as someone who was unfairly executed. Others considered him a traitor. The Métis people, though, have never had any doubt about Louis Riel. For them, and for many other Canadians, he remains a hero.

  Images and Documents

  Image 1: Louis Riel in 1878, after fighting for Métis rights during the 1870 Resistance.

  Image 2: Riel’s wife Marguerite died of pneumonia following years of suffering from tuberculosis, in 1886.

  Image 3: Riel’s children, Jean-Louis and Marie-Angelique. Marie-Angelique died of diphtheria in 1878. Jean-Louis died in 1908 after a buggy accident.

  Image 4: After the 1870 Resistance, many Métis moved from Manitoba to Saskatchewan, in hope of a better life.

  Image 5: Métis fiddle music has a sound all its own. The “Red River Jig” is uniquely Métis.

  Image 6: When the buffalo roamed the plains, the buffalo hunt was a yearly event for the Métis and for many First Nations people.

  Image 7: Gabriel Dumont, one of the Métis’ most experienced buffalo hunters, rode to Montana to ask Louis Riel to help the Saskatchewan Métis gain title to their land.

  Image 8: Cree traders during negotiations at Fort Pitt. Some of the First Nations bands sided with Riel, Dumont and the Métis. Others did not wish to fight.

  Image 9: The Métis forces met those of General Middleton for the first time at the Battle of Fish Creek.

  Image 10: General Middleton’s soldiers used a Gatling gun to fire high-velocity bullets at the Métis fighters. The Gatling gun’s firepower was too much for even the Métis crack shots.

  Image 11: The Battle of Batoche begins.

  Image 12: Major-General Middleton’s soldiers were ordered to quell the Métis uprising in the Batoche area, after the telegraph lines at Clark’s Crossing were cut.

  Image 13: This sketch of the steamship Northcote, under fire from Métis fighters, appeared in the Illustrated War News on May 9, 1885.

  Image 14: At upper right, General Middleton; at bottom, a Métis home being hit by shells. Most of the homes in and around Batoche were burned by the army.

  Image 15: Soldiers advance on dug-in Métis fighters.

  Image 16: After three days of fighting, Middleton’s forces finally captured Batoche.

  Image 17: Cree Chief Poundmaker was imprisoned after the Resistance. He died soon after being released from Stony Mountain Prison.

  Image 18: Nine of the Métis who fought and died in the Resistance are buried in a mass grave in the cemetery at Batoche.

  Image 19: Canada in 1885. The Canadian Pacific Railroad was completed late that year.

  Image 20: The area involved in the 1885 Northwest Resistance.

  Glossaries

  Michif Glossary

  Abain: interjection, such as “I’ll be darned”

  bābee: baby

  Batochien: insult meaning Batoche dog/cur

  bell anzhelik: rat root

  belmyr: stepmother

  bengs: pieces of sweet fried dough

  li Blawn: the whites

  Le Boon Jeu: Jesus

  boulets: venison and muskrat (or other meat) and vegetables, all rolled together into small meatballs

  chirāān: Northern lights

  dilet kwyee: sour milk

  galet: bannock

  gárso: boy

  googoosh: boogeyman

  grawdpayrs: long flat dumplings boiled in chicken broth

  Kanayaen: French-Canadian (female)

  Kanayah: French-Canadian (male)

  Laenjee Graw: Mardi Gras

  Mafway jeu: exclamation, such as “oh my god”

  mársee: thank you

  ma nohkom: my grandmother

  mo nook: my uncle

  Pimbahtaw: Run or Go (order to sled dogs)

  rababoo: stew made of ve
getables and meat

  roogaroo: werewolf

  saencheur flechee: colourful sash worn by Métis people

  soup di pwaw: pea soup

  tart de vyawnd: meat pie made of venison and pork

  ma tawnt: my aunt

  turtulage: beating out a rhythm with spoons

  Vawndarzee Saen: Good Friday

  vylōōn: fiddle

  zhounn: yellow

  Zhour di Lāh: New Year’s Day

  Zhour di Pawk: Easter

  Zhour di Rwāy: holy feast day of the Three Kings

  Zhour di Sawndr: Ash Wednesday

  Cree Glossary

  kinikinik: mixture of red willow bark and bearberry leaves