Читать книгу A Critical History of the Red River Insurrection - Rev. A. G. Morice - Страница 13

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Time went on in the East without bettering the conditions of the French Catholics, though the English were still but a negligible minority. Twenty years after the Cession that “element in Canada was narrow in the extreme, and from the start arrogated to itself the control and rule” of people it did not even understand.[95] When in 1790 their commonwealth was divided into two distinct parts, the Englishman from Quebec who had been instrumental in securing the division and was the spokesman of the English minority wanted, even for Lower Canada, which was almost exclusively French, “a representative House of Assembly, but wished the matter to be so arranged that the English, although greatly in the minority of population, should always have a majority in the Assembly.”[96]

Then we all know of the clause of the 1791 Act concerning the “Clergy Reserves,” whereby Catholics were forced to financially support their religious adversaries, in other words, to pay them for endeavouring to destroy their own denomination. We likewise know of the efforts made by the English to “establish the Protestant Church in Canada,”[97] to the exclusion of that of the people; of the refusal of their authorities to recognize the Catholic Bishop of Quebec, a post long antedating their own coming into the country, or to allow of the setting up a regular hierarchy even long after the time had been ripe for it; of the interference of the same in the affairs of the Sulpicians; of their War Department, kept up mostly by Catholics, building the Anglican cathedral of Quebec (1804).

Nay, as late as 1810, forty years after the Conquest, the judges, even in Lower Canada “were all Englishmen, being appointed by the Crown and allowed to hold office in the Assembly by virtue of their position as judges,”[98] despite the protests of that same body that the Bench should have nothing to do with politics. The English are wont to boast of their fair play; for most of their French fellow subjects, that fair play is at times more or less mythical. The Manitoba school question should suffice to excuse them for holding to their scepticism on that score.

With these and similar points of history fresh in their minds, above all, with a clear remembrance of the way the Acadians had been snatched from their homes, the wife from the arms of her husband and the children from the knees of their parents, and dispersed to the four winds, was it surprising that the French of Assiniboia looked askance at the prospect of being delivered helpless and without any previous agreement, to the tender mercies of the same English from the East?

Even one of their natural enemies, since he was one of the later day writers on the Red River troubles, cannot help admitting that “the attitude of the French half-breeds is . . . to some extent reasonable.” This is not over generous, to be sure; but too often you must be satisfied with scant justice when it is a question of the Métis.[99]

Under those conditions, do not those authors who self-complacently pity the “ignorance” of the poor Métis show themselves the more ignorant of the two sets of people[100]? In view of what we know of the illegal[101] abolition of the separate schools of Manitoba and of the official use of French in that province, especially when we remember the brazen lies and broken promises which made that abolition possible, we should be able to gauge the degree of appropriateness there is in, for instance, Rev. MacBeth’s contention that “Riel and his men were starting to fight the shadows of events which might never come.”[102]

Bearing in mind the unjust treatment by the British of the original inhabitants of Eastern Canada, and remembering that whatever liberties the province of Quebec now enjoys had to be snatched by hook or crook from the former, though the oppressed formed the immense majority of the people, how can an author who is not “ignorant,” write as MacBeth does that the French of Assiniboia, who were expected to be soon thrown into the minority, “should have known that no act of robbery,[103] or deprivation of rights[104], had ever been permitted ultimately by the flag under whose folds they were to be governed.”[105]

Once again, what of the Manitoba school question, whose existence had been made impossible in advance by a text from a higher authority as plain, as explicit as possible?

We would have to admit that MacBeth and those other English writers who can see no sufficient cause for the Riel rising are right if the precursors of those who were going to come from Canada had not by their very acts, which all historians feel bound to stigmatize, endeavoured to give the lie to the contentions of those authors. Nothing is more easy than to accumulate fact upon fact authorizing the natives of Red River to put a stop to the perpetration of such deeds, even though most of them were nothing else than “poor ignorant half-breeds.”

In the first place, without having ever been consulted, they were disposed of and their country sold out to another commonwealth which was in the possession of entirely different political institutions. That injustice is not only admitted, but pointed out by most authors, as in itself a valid cause for resentment against such as were responsible for it. In the words of Capt. Huyshe, who came west to fight the Métis of Red River, “it cannot be a matter of wonder to any impartial person that they . . . objected to be transformed from a Crown colony to ‘a colony of a colony,’ and handed over to the Dominion bon gré mal gré like so many head of cattle.”[106]

And yet we make bold most emphatically to declare that such a consideration, though entertained by the natives of English origin, was practically overlooked by those of French descent. This was merely a matter of sentiment and wounded pride; the French were prompted by higher considerations when they rose in arms. They were fighting for dear life, considered from a political standpoint.

For let it be remembered that the latter were not the only people in the Settlement to be discontented. The settlers of English or Scottish parentage, whites and half-breeds, “felt that they had been treated none too courteously by the Canadian Government,” writes the Rev. A. G. Garrioch.[107]

Then there was the truly amazing lack of tact on the part of the Ottawa authorities in appointing as governor of the new domain a man who had been represented by one of his own colleagues in the Federal Cabinet as being “unpopular in Canada”[108]; a cold, autocratic individual who had the reputation of being anti-Catholic and therefore anti-French. And that same autocrat, who knew nothing of Assiniboia though ever interested in the West,[109] was coming in advance of time with an almost ready-made government[110] the members of which probably knew still less about it!

And, thirdly, the same unbidden importation was accompanied by three hundred Enfield rifles and plenty of ammunition for the use of those new-comers whose attitude had already given such a bad opinion of the Canadians. These arms, thought McDougall, would immediately check any show of resistance among the Métis. In this, however, he was sadly mistaken and, in Tuttle’s estimation, this evidenced “the same want of wisdom displayed throughout the whole negotiations for the transfer. Instead of Mr. McDougall’s three hundred rifles frightening the French half-breeds, they only made them more determined not to permit the Canadians to enter Assiniboia and set up a new government until they (the half-breeds) had been consulted in the matter and guarantees given that their rights would be respected,”[111] and not trampled under foot as had been those of the original population of Quebec.

Then there was a fourth, and even more important or at least more pressing, reason for the Red River Insurrection, a cause which absolutely all the authors have to admit, more or less grudgingly, but none the less explicitly. This unanimity will free us from the necessity of quoting from them as we have done in the foregoing pages. Several of the lately arrived Canadians, after having intoxicated the Indians, made them sign deeds whereby most valuable tracts of land in and around Oak Point, on which French half-breeds were already settled and to which the same Indians had no manner of right, were surrendered to the strangers from Ontario.

Even Dr. Geo. Bryce cannot help admitting those abuses. But he almost condones them when he writes that they turned aside from their normal avocation, surveying or road-making, “to claim unoccupied lands, to sow the seed of doubt and suspicions in the minds of a people hitherto secluded from the world. . . . It cannot be denied, in addition, that the course of a few prominent leaders, who had made an illegitimate use of the Nor’wester newspaper, had tended to keep the community in a state of alienation and turmoil.”[112]

Contemporary authors and Protestants on their oath are agreed that those strangers did not confine their covetousness to “unoccupied” lands.[113] Moreover those parties were constantly hinting at the eviction of the rightful owners of the land, which would result as a matter of course from the transaction under consideration in London. “It is a well-known fact that the man[114] who professed to be the leader of the party openly declared that the half-breeds of Red River would have to give way before Canadians, and that the country would never succeed until they were displaced altogether.”[115]

The Métis who, through their mothers, had the very best title to the land and were passionately attached to it, were to be ousted, and might esteem themselves fortunate if the forthcoming Ontarians would condescend to retain them as cart-drivers.

No wonder, therefore, if the secretary of the Council of Assiniboia should have later on declared on oath that “it was very generally believed or apprehended among the people, but to a greater extent among the French half-breeds, that the whole country would be appropriated or monopolized by the new-comers.”[116] “I myself shared that apprehension,” added the said secretary, who was not French.

And one of the most prominent gentlemen of Fort Garry likewise remarked in his own testimony: “The English also felt that the surveys were improper,”[117] because conducted on land not under the jurisdiction of the Government by whose orders they were made, and also because they affected estates already occupied.

This ought surely to suffice to convince the most sceptical. One more testimony, always from a Protestant, will close our list for the present. Mr. Geo. Stewart, the historian of the Administration of the Earl of Dufferin, writes as follows: “The overbearing conduct of some of these [Canadian] persons, and the injudicious speeches and movements of the others, very speedily provoked the hostility and aroused the fears of the settlers. . .

“It was said that the plots of ground where some of them [Métis] had lived and reared families for fifty years would be torn from their possession by the Government of Canada and themselves sent adrift, their rights to the soil would be invaded, their houses taken from them, enormous taxes would be levied, and the most absolute tyranny forced upon them. They would be bought and sold like slaves.

“With these views firmly established in the very hearts of the populace, we cannot wonder at the popularity of the movement which was created to resist to the death what some called Canadian coercion. Our only astonishment is, all things considered, that there was not more blood spilled, and more cruelties practised than there were.”[118]

After the foregoing respectable array of uncontroverted and uncontrovertible facts, all culled from works by English Protestants unfavourable to Riel, statements the number of which could very easily be swelled up, would it be believed that an author who takes himself seriously, and who, coming after others, has had the opportunity of profiting by their findings—and the fact that he quotes from us shows that he has read at least some of their writings[119]—has the cheek, at this late hour, to call them “alleged causes of the discontent?”[120] If that is not what is called prevaricating, we fail to understand the meaning of the plainest words.

This is pointed out here as an instance among many of the little respect many English-speaking writers entertain for historical truth when the reputation of Riel and his followers is at stake.

This is perhaps the proper place to open a parenthesis and indulge in a short digression, all the more allowable as this is not merely a formal account of the events under review (especially as we have not as yet commenced our narrative), but a “critical” study of the same.

Nobody will question the absolutely unimpeachable character of the authorities we have so far referred to: Protestants, and official blue books emanating from the British and the Canadian Governments. So manifestly evident has been the distortion of facts and so wild the insinuations inspired by hatred, sourness and prejudice, that the one English author, Alexander Begg, who can be styled the only eye-witness to what he wrote about in his Creation of Manitoba,[121] has been practically tabooed because too fair and impartial to suit ill-disguised partisanship. Nay more, it is even claimed that his volume was as much as possible suppressed under Orange influences. It is certainly next to impossible to find it to-day.

Alexander Begg, who must not be confounded with his namesake who wrote a History of British Columbia, was privileged to witness the various phases of the Red River drama.[122] His testimony must therefore be endowed with a priceless value in the eyes of the real historian. Nevertheless may we not be allowed to remark in this connection how prejudice, or the influence of environment, can affect the reasoning powers even of the most upright men? Rev. A. C. Garrioch was also in the country at the time of the Red River troubles; in fact, he taught in St. John’s College from 1868 to 1871 and for that reason had to keep aloof from the turmoil at his very door, after which he was stationed for many years at Portage la Prairie, in the midst of Riel’s most bitter enemies.

Referring in his First Furrows to above mentioned honest Alexander Begg, he says that “he was in a splendid condition to get his facts, but in a poor position to form an opinion without bias, for he was business partner with A. G. Bannatyne, in a general store which catered to the Métis as well as others, and Mr. Bannatyne and the Hudson’s Bay Governor, Wm. McTavish were married to sisters, and the latter being at this time in very poor health, Mr. Bannatyne had to act as go-between for him and the Métis.”[123]

This piece of reasoning seems rather strange to us. Who is the better equipped to judge sanely on happenings, he who knows of them and their inner side through only one party, or he who is informed by two opposite sides? To form a proper opinion of the halfbreed doings, must one eschew their company and listen only to their opponents? To us Begg, even if he had not had all of his facts first-hand, was in the very best position possible not only to learn and record them, but even to take in their real significance, inasmuch as he was constantly noting down events and keeping a diary of the daily occurrences around him.[124]

At any rate, he was not prejudiced by the people with whom he was living, who were so fanatically opposed to one of the parties that they could not have a good word for him.

Before going farther, let us repeat that the above mentioned book of Mr. Begg’s, together with that compilation with a twofold object, John S. Ewart’s The Manitoba School Question, with which is coupled An Historical Account of the Red River Outbreak,[125] are the only reliable accounts, the former first-hand, the latter compiled from divers sources, of the Red River Insurrection. Both contain most valuable information recorded, in the first place, with the greatest simplicity and a straightforwardness which is not absolutely without mistakes and, in the second, with a juridical logic and lucidity which cannot be surprising, coming from an author prominent in his profession as was Mr. Ewart.

Closing our parenthesis about Al. Begg, we now revert to the question of the encroachments of the Canadian surveyors and others on the landed rights of the original population of Assiniboia. While the public mind was not a little disturbed by their audacious operations and their imprudent sayings, it was ascertained that Mr. McDougall, the pseudo-governor of the country stranded at Pembina, on the frontier, “held frequent communications with their leader, John C. Schultz.”[126] The identity of his views with those of the “arrogant exponents of the Canadian policy in Red River”[127] was soon confirmed by the appointment of Col. John Stoughton Dennis, who “arrived with a staff of surveyors to divide and subdivide the land into sections as they saw fit.”[128]

All these strangers now fell victims to a perfect land fever. They staked out for themselves and friends in Ontario what they wanted of the best lands, occupied or not, and their leader appropriated enough “to make him one of the largest landed proprietors in the Dominion,”[129] had he been allowed to take possession of them. Finally it began to look as if no man’s property was safe.

Now we might ask any fair-minded reader: Is not the right of ownership one of the most sacred privileges of a free manhood? To put the question is to answer it. That right is so inalienable that even a legitimate government must recognize it; so that the people of the Red River Settlement would have been warranted in resisting forcibly the ruthless expropriation of their land by their own government. When that expropriation is attempted by an outside government which has absolutely no jurisdiction over it, the right of resistance is doubly clear.