Nearly two years later, Riel returned to the United States and eventually became a school teacher at a Jesuit mission in Montana Territory. Riel accepted the invitation and travelled north with his wife and two young children. This was a fateful journey that would lead to the North-West troubles of , which once more pitted Riel against the Canadian government. Riel was charged with high treason, found guilty by a jury , sentenced to death and hanged in Regina on November 16, For decades after his death, Riel was largely perceived by Canadians as a rebel, when he was discussed at all.
But his image started to change after the end of the Second World War and by the late s he had become one of the most iconic figures in Canadian culture. Riel has now been the subject of endless poems, novels , graphic memoirs , films and even a world-class opera, recently re-mounted and re-interpreted.
Paul, Minnesota, where he had been living and returns to the Red River settlement to seek election as a member of Parliament.
The reward is based on Riel's participation in the execution of Thomas Scott, an Englishman, during the tenure of his provisional government in The Canadian government grants an amnesty to all Metis, except Riel, who participated in the turmoil.
A grant of amnesty to Riel is conditioned on him accepting a five-year banishment from Canada. Riel meets with President Ulysses S. He complains of Canadian treatment of the Metis and asks for money and a promise that the United States will not let Canadian troops cross over U. Grant, not wanting to aggravate relations with Canada, refuses and suggests that Riel seek U. A few days later, while attending mass in Washington, D.
After friends report Riel's strange behavior e. After spending two years in Quebec asylums, Riel is released. He soon heads west, spending time in St. Paul before eventually settling in Montana. By now, thousands of Metis, unhappy with the situation in Ontario, have moved west to the south branch of the Saskatchewan River.
In a meeting of Metis in St. Laurant, a list of grievances is prepared. Gabriel Dumont, in a letter to the lt. Riel tries to organize local Metis and Indians for an invasion of Canada, but his plan fails. None of these characterizations is entirely accurate; each contains some measure of truth. The North-West Rebellion and the trial of Louis Riel is best understood as the product of a particular place and time: the Canadian frontier, in a time when civilization and its institutions confronted the traditions of a more primitive people.
The North-West Rebellion had its roots in an earlier crisis. In March , The Hudson's Bay Company owner of a large swath of land called Rupert's Land including present-day Manitoba and Saskatchewan , agreed to sell most of its land to the Canadian Government in return for , pounds in cash and land grants totaling seven million acres.
Before the transfer became effective on December 1, decisions had to be made what to do with the 12, settlers living in the Red River area of Rupert's Land, near present-day Winnipeg.
About four-fifths of these settlers were Metis, persons of mixed white usually French and Indian ancestry. Who was Louis Riel? Riel might be the most complicated, elusive, puzzling, and controversial figure in Canadian history. Riel was born in into a devout Catholic family in St. Boniface, a settlement on the Red River, in present-day Winnipeg.
Although of seven-eighths white ancestry, Riel considered himself a Metis. He left home at age fourteen to travel to Montreal and study for the priesthood. He proved himself to be a serious and gifted student, striking his masters as deeply faithful and scholarly, but some and a bit odd and reclusive. Two years later, when his widowed mother begged him to return home, Riel left Montreal.
On his way back in , Riel stayed for several months in St. Paul, where he heard stories from Metis traders of growing unrest in the settlements north of the border along the Red River. The impending transfer of the Hudson Bay Company's land to Canada was a major worry for the Metis, who wondered what it might mean for the thier independent lifestyle.
And, of course, the native people who lived on the land might have beggged to differ about whether the land was really the King's to grant in , when it first came to be owned by the Company.
No one in power seemed particularly interested about how the 10, or so Metis, and 2, or so white settlers, who lived along the Red River area of Rupert's Land felt about the transfer.
When Riel returned to his mother's small cottage, he began to understand--then to champion--the cause of the Metis. The fact that Riel spoke English--a rare ability among the Metis--buttressed his influence. When a Canadian survey team showed up in the Red River region in the fall of , local residents concerns increased. Riel persuaded the surveyors to abandon their mission. Then he rallied the French-speaking Metis and the English-speaking mixed race people, stressing their common grievances with Eastern interests.
He urged the creation of a local army to oppose the appointment of William McDougall as the new lieutenant-governor to run the Red River settlement. Riel's message resonated and he took the offensive. The fort fell without bloodshed. Then Riel formed a provisional government with himself as the president.
A plot by whites was set in motion to retake Fort Garry. But Riel's government got wind of it and arrested the plotters. In March , a provisional court court-martialed for treason, sentenced to death, and executed Thomas Scott , the hot-headed and most unrepentantly racist and uncooperative member of a group that had attempted to re-take Fort Garry from Riel's government.
The decision to execute Scott came after he relentlessly taunted his captors. Scott's killing, and the outrage it caused, became the "central and defining event of the Red River Resistance. When word of Scott's execution got out, many infuriated English-speaking Canadians in Ontario called for Riel's head.
Prime Minister John Macdonald sent forces west to regain control of the region. Riel's provisional governmental army was no match for the Canadian troops. Riel fled just hours before the troops reached and re-took Fort Garry. In June , Canadian negotiators reached agreement with Riel's government to establish a new province to be called Manitoba. Settlers were promised the right to retain their land, and and additional 1.
When word, however, reached Riel that the amnesty he thought had been promised in the negotiations was not forthcoming, he fled to the Dakota Territory. The next several years saw Riel go in and out of Canada, and in and out of the Canadian Parliament. For periods of time, he lived in Minnesota and in northern New York, but he remained committed to Metis politics. In October , even with an outstanding warrant for his arrest, Riel won election to the Canadian Parliament.
In February , Riel won the seat again, even though he was hiding in Montreal, far from his Red River home, at the time. Fellow legislators, calling him a "fugitive from justice," voted to expel Riel two months later, but that didn't stop Metis voters from giving him the unclaimed seat back for a third time in September. Tired of dealing with the Riel issue and anxious to put the problems behind them, legislators voted in to grant amnesty for participants in the Red River uprising--but in Riel's case the amnesty was conditioned on his agreeing to a five-year banishment from Canada.
Riel's banishment led to a turning point in his life. Shortly after meeting with President Grant in Washington to discuss the plight of his people in Canada, Riel claimed to have a vision in which God annointed him as his "prophet of the new world. He was now the voice for a people favored by God, the Metis. Riel's vision raised questions about his mental health. So did many of his other actions. Riel proclaimed to some that he was the Biblical King David.
He developed a propensity for ripping his clothes off, explaining that it was beautiful, as Adam and Eve did before the first sin, to be nude. Friends observed Riel crying and shouting in public. He interrupted a mass to contradict a priest. These and other unusual claims and practices landed Riel in an asylum near Montreal in March At the asylum, Riel's mental condition continued to deteriorate.
On one occasion, he smashed ornaments and candles in the asylum's chapel. Several times orderlies placed Riel in a strait-jacket. Riel remained at the asylum, under an assumed name, until February Meanwhile, Manitoba was undergoing a rapid evolution. The province was becoming more English and less French. It grew more dependent on rail and steamboats, and less dependent on the old Red River carts.
Its hunting and fur-trading economy was giving way to farming. Metis, intent upon preserving their traditional lifestyle looked west. Several thousand Metis migrated from Manitoba to lands near the Saskatchewan River. Eventually, Riel's health improved enough to allow his discharge from the asylum in Montreal. He traveled through the northern U. His experience as a trader made Riel worry about the future of his race.
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