



This etext was produced by Gardner Buchanan.






The Story of Louis Riel
The Rebel Chief


by Joseph Edmond Collins

Toronto, 1885




CHAPTER I.

Along the banks of the Red River, over those fruitful
plains brightened with wild flowers in summer, and swept
with fierce storms in the winter-time, is written the
life story of Louis Riel. Chance was not blind when she
gave as a field to this man's ambition the plains whereon
vengeful Chippewas and ferocious Sioux had waged their
battles for so many centuries; a country dyed so often
with blood that at last Red River came to be its name.
But while our task is to present the career of this
apostle of insurrection and unrest; stirred as we may be
to feelings of horror for the misery, the tumult, the
terror and the blood of which he has been the author, we
must not neglect to do him, even him, the justice which
is his right.

He is not, as so many suppose, a half-breed, moved by
the vengeful, irresponsible, savage blood in his veins.
Mr. Edward Jack, [Footnote: I cannot make out what Mr.
Jack's views are respecting Riel. When I asked him, he
simply turned his face toward the sky and made some remark
about the weather, I know that he has strong French
proclivities, though the blood of a Scottish bailie is
in his veins.] of New Brunswick, who is well informed on
all Canadian matters, hands me some passages which he
has translated from M. Tasse's book on Canadians in the
North West; and from these I learn that Riel's father,
whose name also was Louis, was born at the island of
La Crosse, in the North-West Territories. This parent was
the son of Jean Baptiste Riel, who was a French Canadian
and a native of Berthier (_en haut_). His mother, that
is the rebel's grandmother, was a Franco-Montagnaise
Metis. From this it will be seen that instead of being
a "half breed," Louis Riel is only one-eighth Indian, or
is, if we might use the phrase employed in describing a
mixture of Ethiopian and Caucasian blood, an Octoroon.

Nay, more than this, we have it shown that our rebel can
lay claim to no small share of respectability, as that
word goes. During the summer of 1822, Riel's father, then
in his fifth year, was brought to Canada by his parents,
who caused the ceremony of baptism to be performed with
much show at Berthier. In 1838 M. Riel _pere_ entered
the service of the Hudson Bay Company, and left Lower
Canada, where he had been attending school, for the
North-West. He was stationed at Rainy Lake, but did not
care for his occupation. He returned, therefore, to
civilization and entered as a novice in the community of
the Oblat Fathers, where he remained for two years. There
was a strong yearning for the free, wild life of the
boundless prairies in this man, and Red River, with its
herds of roaming buffalo, its myriads of duck, and geese
and prairie hens, began to beckon him home again. He
followed his impulse and departed; joining the Metis
hunters in their great biennial campaigns against the
herds, over the rolling prairie. Many a buffalo fell upon
the plain with Louis Riel's arrow quivering in his flank;
many a feast was held around the giant pot at which no
hunter received honours so marked as stolid male, and
olive-skinned, bright-eyed, supple female, accorded him.
Surfeited for the time of the luxury of the limitless
plain, Riel took rest; and then a girl with the lustrous
eyes of Normandy began to smile upon him, and to besiege
his heart with all her mysterious force of coquetry. He
was not proof; and the hunter soon lay entangled in the
meshes of the brown girl of the plains. In the autumn of
1843 he married her. Her name was Julie de Lagimodiere,
a daughter of Jean Baptiste de Lagimodiere.

Louis _pere_ was now engaged as a carder of wool; and
having much ability in contrivance he constructed a little
model of a carding mill which, with much enthusiasm, he
exhibited to some officers of the Hudson Bay Company.
But the Company, though having a great body, possessed
no soul, and the disappointed inventor returned to his
waiting wife with sorrow in his eyes. He next betook
himself to the cultivation of a farm upon the banks of
the little Seine; and his good, patient wife, when the
autumn came, toiled with him all day, with her sickle
among the sheaves.

Tilling the soil proved too laborious, and he determined
to erect a grist mill; but the stream that ran through
the clayey channel of the _Seine petite