b'The Riel RebellionPART 1 By Alan RockmanThe slender bearded man with the fiery eyes stood erect and defiant in the Regina courtroom. His name was Louis Riel, considered to be a Messiah by his fellow Metis and by the Cree Indians who flocked to his call for rebellion, a rebellion just recently crushed by the joint forces of Canadian militia rushed by train across the prairies and the muskegs, and by the steadfast men of the Royal Canadian North Western (Mounted) Police. In many ways, Riel resembled the American John Brown especially in their favoring the oppressed, their calls for revolt, and in a temperament, many claimed bordered on the verge of insanity, but that is where the resemblance ended. Riel, unlike the dour New England raised Brown, grew up on the plains in a community of mixed half-breeds, mostly the sons and daughters of French fur traders and First Nations (Indian) wives. A community that relished the joys of trading, of communal dances, of hunting buffalo, of the church, and of living wild and free.R iel was an educated man, his English was very good,Pacific Railway (CPR), and his two hand-picked associatesMetis sending their Red River carts across the International albeit spoken with a French accent. He himself wasfor Northwest Territory affairs, Lieutenant Governorsborder for trade in Minnesota. That is, until the Hudson\'s 7/8s French, barely a trace of Indian in him. But heWilliam McDougall, and subsequently Edgar Dewdney,Bay Company, in response to the increasing clamoring for was 1/8 native, and like his father, Louis Riel Senior, knownhad not been so myopic in ignoring, some say cavalier andCanadian unity on behalf of MacDonald and others, quietly as "the miller of the Seine" (named not for the famous riveralmost deliberate in their reactions to the plight of the Half- ceded all of their lands and interests to Canada. On March running through Paris, but for the Metis method of "seiningBreeds and the First Nation tribes of the West. 9, 1869, a deal was made between the British Hudson\'s Bay fish" on the Seine Creek tributary off the Red River in the Company and the Dominion of Canada which not only Canadian Northwest) (Tanner Ogden, The Canadians,There were three major reasons for what became known ascemented Canadian nationhood established two years Time-Life Books, 1977, p. 137) became a quite vocalthe Northwest Rebellion of 1885, also known as the secondearlier, but allowed the Canadians to purchase the Hudson\'s advocate for the rights of the Metis Half-Breeds and forRiel Rebellion, a Rebellion that despite the low amount ofBay Company run Rupert\'s Land between Hudson\'s Bay their First Nation tribal friends. casualties on both sides would be even more bloodier andand Lake Superior to the east and Regina and the Rockymore desperate than that first rebellion in 1870. Mountains to the West for 300,000 English pounds. Under In that Regina courtroom that cloudy, cold autumn daythe terms of the agreement, the Hudson\'s Bay Company in 1885, Riel addressed the crowd, speaking movinglywould be allowed to retain six million acres of the 120 of the plight of his Metis people, their land was stolenmillion acres of the Fertile Belt that stretched from Fort by opportunistic land grabbers aided and abetted by theGarry to the mountainous borders of British Columbia. The authorities sent out from Ottawa who chose to learncompany would also keep 50,000 acres around the already nothing about the Metis, their customs, traditions, and120 existing Hudson\'s Bay Trading Posts - the rest of the laws. He spoke of their being dispossessed, of the buffaloland would be claimed by the Dominion of Canada which being slaughtered, and how they and their Cree Indiancould develop it as it saw fit (Tanner, The Canadians, p. 140; friends had been taken advantage of. How they were nowNewman, Peter C., An Illustrated History of the Hudson\'s literally starving because the Canadian authorities choseBay Company, Madison Press (Toronto), 1995, p. 169).not to abide by the "numbered treaties" they had madesolemnly with the tribes, had seemingly broken the sacredAll well and good. For Canada that is, but the treaty ignored promises of caring for the Indian, and how facing no otherthe rights of the nearly 10,000 Metis Half-Breeds, whether choice, urged his people to rise up. they be of French or Scottish stock. They were convenientlyignored by both the representatives of the Hudson\'s Bay This rebellion, Canada\'s only Indian War in the West, if aCompany and by the Canadian authorities, who now sent rebellion where only skirmishes, a couple pitched battles,surveyors out to measure the newly acquired lands for and a give-or-take one hundred casualties more or lessdevelopment and settlement. The trouble was, the surveyors, that lasted barely four months could be called an Indianled by an inept Canadian Colonel named John Stoughton War was clearly instigated by the presence of this swarthy,First, the displacement and dispossessing of the Metis andDennis, methodically began to do away with the Metis\'s slender bearded, seemingly crazed man Louis Riel. Butthe Indian. As mentioned earlier, the Metis, the Cree, thelong-established tradition of parceling the long strips of river, unlike so many of the American Indian Wars, it was oneBlackfoot, the Assiniboine, and other tribes had roamedor Quebec lots back from the Red and Assiniboine rivers for that could have been avoided. If only the Canadian Primethe plains freely for decades, traveling back and forth acrossfarming, for mutual protection, and for community (Tanner, Minister John A. MacDonald, seemingly fixated on unitingthe American border, trading, hunting buffalo, a free spiritThe Canadians, p.142; Janigan, Mary, Let the Eastern Bastards Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific and promotingtolerated by the Hudson\'s Bay Company that representedFreeze in the Dark, Vintage Canada. 2013, pp. 33-34). Colonel and pushing the concept of a Canadian TranscontinentalBritish interests. They had maintained an uneasyDennis\'s surveying team not only carved out 160 acre lots Railway spurred on by the development of the Canadianrelationship with Hudson\'s Bay, which frowned on theon 36 square mile townships on Metis\' land, which also 30 October 2019'