Читать книгу A Critical History of the Red River Insurrection - Rev. A. G. Morice - Страница 19

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The Bishop’s representations were of no avail. He none the less went on with his endeavours to ward off the danger by appealing to the sense of justice of the Canadian authorities; but Sir Georges Etienne received him in such a way that the good prelate could not decently broach again the subject to him. “He said he knew it all a great deal better than I did and did not want any information,” affirmed Taché.[202]

This was in July, 1869. In September of the same year, the Bishop went to Quebec, where he met the Lieut.-Governor, to whom he told the same story.

“It is absolutely necessary that the Government should be acquainted with these circumstances,” remarked His Honour.

“I know,” said the Bishop, “and this is even the reason of my journey. But I have not been successful in causing my fears to be entertained.”

“Sir Georges is in the house,” insisted the Governor; “you must absolutely tell him this.”

The same information was then repeated with the Quebec Governor as a witness; but the same negative result was the prelate’s only reward.

“We know it all and are prepared for any eventuality,” answered the great Ottawa man.[203]

Mgr. Taché having then received from Mr. William Mactavish, Governor of Assiniboia, a most telling letter showing that the situation was getting worse, he deemed it his duty to the Federal Cabinet, as well as to his own people, to communicate these new facts to the Hon. Hector Langevin, Minister of Public Works, since he could no longer see Sir Georges on the same. Langevin was then away, but by dint of looking for him he was found, in the beginning of October, and told what the Bishop knew of the conditions in the Red River Settlement down to that date, after which he also tried to interest in them various other public men of the East.

All of them concurred in declaring that “it was necessary that the Government should know of these things.”[204] Mr. Mactavish’s letter was then sent to Sir Georges Cartier, who answered as before. Furthermore, the next day, the Ottawa papers announced that a certain number of rifles and a quantity of ammunition would be sent to Fort Garry with Mr. William McDougall, who was soon to repair thither.

Learning of this in their isolated commonwealth, the forerunners of the Ontario immigrants west “became more and more insulting,” inasmuch as their number had lately been on the increase. “They did not hesitate to say that the half-breeds would soon be driven from the country, or kept as cart-drivers to bring in the vehicles of the new immigrants.”[205]

The impartial reader will readily grasp the situation. Here are people daily insulted in their peaceful pursuits and threatened in their property and civil rights. They protest, and the only balm which is applied to their wounds is the perspective of being shot down by rifles sent out by those who should protect them!

In the face of this, their duty was, according to sanctimonious writers who would not have stood half as much without putting everything to fire and sword, to meekly submit to the encroachments of the “superior race” (theirs), under pain of being considered as rebels to an authority against which they never rose!

Nor was this all. Grievously hurt as it was in its social, political and especially economic rights, the French-speaking population of Red River had in 1868 undergone a terrible ordeal at the hands of nature itself. As a result of innumerable swarms of grasshoppers which fell on the land, everything of a vegetable nature was eaten up in the Red River valley. By July of that year, there was not an ounce of provisions to be sold in the whole Colony.

In this extremity the United States came to the assistance of the stricken people with a sum of money not any too large (£900) for such a vast country; Ontario promised more, but gave less,[206] while the Hudson’s Bay Company did more than both combined, donating to the relief fund upwards of six thousand pounds sterling.

On the other hand, the Governor and Council of Assiniboia voted the sum of £250 especially for the Catholics threatened with famine, and, as a result of special collections in the churches of the Archdiocese of Quebec, $3,200 was sent to the Bishop of St. Boniface, to which were added various other sums contributed by the Bishop of Montreal and other prelates.

Then, as if to crown all these calamities, came the news of the appointment by Canada of the bitter enemy of the French, the Hon. William McDougall, Minister of Public Works in the Federal Cabinet, who had been named (28 September, 1869) Governor, with a salary of $7,000 per annum, of the “Territories,” over which Canada was not to have jurisdiction for almost two years to come. He had instructions to repair to Fort Garry pending the transfer of the country to the young Dominion.

Mr. McDougall had always taken a great interest in the annexation of the West, of which he hoped to make a new Ontario,[207] and gossips were giving vent to the rumour that his colleagues in Ottawa were anxious to get rid of his cock-sureness and autocratic ways.[208]

Moreover, the same central Government was taking advantage of the distress then prevailing in the West to force, under the mantle of charity, their agents thereon. In the fall of 1868 they had sent a Mr. John A. Snow, accompanied by a literary man, Charles Mair,[209] acting as paymaster, to survey and build a wagon road from Oak Point to the Lake of the Woods. That was a first infringement on the rights of the Assiniboia authorities, which must have been resented by their head the Governor.

As a matter of fact, Alexander Begg remarks[210] after the Canadian delegates to England, Sir Geo. Cartier and Mr. W. McDougall, that “during the process of negotiations a complaint was made to the Colonial Secretary by the representative of the [H.B.] Company against the Canadian Government, for undertaking the construction of a road between Lake of the Woods and the Red River Settlement without having first obtained the consent of the Company,” that is of the local Government.[211]

From the correspondence which this communication occasioned we gather, however, that, because of the general state of starvation in the country, Mactavish had agreed not to insist on the rights of his Administration in the matter, as the party of the Canadians was known to be bringing in a good stock of provisions.[212]

But the road-builders added insult to injury by paying their employees, most of whom were half-breeds with starving families, in provisions estimated at exorbitant prices, and this in spite of the fact that they gave them the miserable pittance of only $15.00 per month, while it was known that the wages from the Government for that kind of work, which Mr. Snow admitted was as well done as it had ever been, was $18.00.[213]

In the words of Rev. A. C. Garrioch, who is certainly mild in his appreciation, the Métis were then “treated tactlessly and discourteously. Instead of receiving their hard-earned pay in cash, they were mostly paid in goods at stores where they did not want to do business,” for very good reasons, as we shall see, though that author refrains from stating them.

This created dissatisfaction, in the same way as Mair’s letters to the eastern press against the ladies of the Settlement whose hospitality he had enjoyed, resulted in indignation.[214] But it was nothing compared with what was to follow, we mean the innumerable acts of land-grabbing at the hands of the road-builders and the surveyors which we have already mentioned.[215]

Nor were the guilty parties few or far between. “At this time, not only was Mr. Snow in the country, but there was a large number of other surveyors. A report was then circulated in the country and subsequently found to be true, that the surveyors had instructions to lay out for immediate settlement the best lands at Pointe du Chêne and at the Red River and at Stinking River.[216] All these lands were known as the property of the half-breeds.”[217]

All those surveyors were under Col. John Stoughton Dennis, already mentioned, who, with a Major Charles A. Boulton, had arrived in the country on the 20th. of August, 1869, and was to play a nefarious part in the impending troubles. This cannot astonish us when we learn that, from the very start, he fell under the influence of that doughty enemy of the original inhabitants of the Colony, Dr. John Christian Schultz, another of our acquaintances who was “very impatient of restraint and in many ways difficult to handle.”[218] That stormy petrel of the West made it a practice to go after every new arrival of importance and endeavoured to bring him over to his way of thinking.

In the early fall of the same year, however, the Settlement had received a visitor of mark who proved impervious to the blandishments of the wily doctor. This was the Hon. Joseph Howe, then Secretary of State in the Federal Administration, who very discreetly played the role of an impartial observer, and was ever careful to keep non-committing even later with Mr. W. McDougall, now on his way through the American prairies to his intended domain, from which Howe was himself returning.

So bad was Schultz’s reputation[219] and so little honourable were deemed his partisans, who would fain have palmed themselves off as the representatives of the Easterners to come, if not of Ottawa itself, that the Canadian statesman sedulously kept aloof from their intrigues, and especially from those of their chief. Nay, he showed himself so determined to have nothing to do with the disturbers of the peace, that he even refused, it is said, to see their flag raised in his honour, albeit he was himself a member of the Government which their party was extolling to the sky. Some friends there are who are more dangerous than foes.

Meanwhile the unholy campaign of land-grabbing, insult and provocation was proceeding with unchecked fury, despite all the protests of the natives who, often unable to cope with the daring audacity of the intruders because little familiar with their language, were venting their rage in secret meetings, waiting for a person qualified to act as their spokesman.

They had not far to go for him. One day, André Nault, a French Canadian married to L. Riel’s aunt and, for that reason, always considered as a member of the Métis “nation,” saw surveyors drawing their lines through his land, in the parish of St. Vital, which he had legally acquired from the Hudson’s Bay Company and occupied for years. He immediately ran to the intruders; but as they did not understand his expostulations, he had recourse to the good offices of his nephew, Louis Riel, who at once repaired to the seat of the trouble, with Nault, Janvier Ritchot and fifteen other unarmed men.

Riel told the chief of the surveying party that the land belonged to the Canadian, and forbade him to meddle with it. Not only did not the surveyor heed his warning, but he disdainfully directed his chain-men to go on with their work. Then Riel drew himself up and, stepping on the chain, said in a firm voice:

“You dare not go any farther!” while Nault and Ritchot were hurriedly divesting themselves of their coat, ready for a fight.

The braves from the East had not counted on this. Unequal to the task of coping with such opposition, they had to desist with many protests and not a few threats.[220] This was on the 11th. of October, 1869, and this interference of the Métis, with the whites constituted the beginning of momentous events. The ball was set rolling; it was not going to stop until it had done its full work, that is until the rights, landed and others, of the entire Colony had been secured and the wild ambition of the Canadian aggressors curbed.

Unable to proceed with his surveying, Webb—such was the name of the surveyor at the head of the party—reported the reason therefor to his superior, Dennis, who forthwith complained of Riel’s “outrage,”[221] to Dr. Cowan, the chief magistrate of the Colony under Recorder Black, who had nothing to do with such petty cases, while he, Dennis, was writing to Ottawa for directions.[222] Sitting with a fellow judge, a Roger Goulet,[223] Cowan summoned Riel to appear before him and receive the combined remonstrances of both magistrates, which he expected would result in the accused promising to abstain from any further meddling with the land surveyor’s operations.

This promise Riel stoutly refused to make and offered, says Dennis in his report,[224] no “rational excuse . . . beyond the assertion that the Canadian Government had no right to make surveys in the Territory without the express permission of the people of the Settlement,” a contention which we fail to see how the valorous officer could have himself refuted. His own remark suffices to-day to show to what an extent the notions of right and wrong were hazy and confused in the minds of the invaders. Attacks on one’s property no rational excuse for protest!

Dennis then tried to have Father Lestanc, Administrator of the Diocese, intervene, but in vain, as the priest, well aware of the universal opposition of the population to the high-handed proceedings of the strangers, was averse to uselessly jeopardizing the Church’s influence on behalf of a wrong, which furthermore did not fall under its jurisdiction.[225]

Then, on the 25th. of October, Riel was made to appear before the highest authority of the Settlement, the Council of Assiniboia, whose session was on that day presided over by Judge Black, with the Bishop of Rupert’s Land, Dr. Cowan, Dr. Bird, Messrs. Sutherland, MacBeth, Fraser, Dease and Bannatyne, all English-speaking except Dease who, from the start, was against Riel.[226] This unilateral extemporized Court attempted to coax the latter into submission to the natural course of events as they considered it.

“Mr. Riel, however, refused to adopt the views of the Council,” say the minutes of that one-sided assembly, and persisted in expressing his determination to oppose Mr. McDougall’s entrance into the country, declining even to press the reasoning and advice of the Council upon his friends, although he reluctantly consented to repeat to them what he had heard.[227]

Meanwhile pseudo-Governor McDougall was expected every day at the frontier. It was felt by the Métis that, if allowed to enter the Territory without any formal engagements concerning the future having been made by Canada, it would be next to impossible to drive him out without protracted, and probably bloody, struggles with his supporters, who would then be in a position to put to good account the arms brought by him from Ottawa. In other words, his premature presence in the Colony spelt civil war.

This contingency was deliberated on in the house of a John Bruce, French half-breed of St. Vital in spite of his name, and the question was admitted to be one of exceptional importance. This was on the 20th. of October, 1869.[228]

Therefore, considering that the Government of the Settlement, whose English members (representing a section of the population not threatened in its rights as was the French half of it) had already prepared an address of welcome to McDougall, would not be disposed to assist the Métis against such powerful parties as the new supposedly official representatives of Ottawa, the natives of French speech resolved, local Governor Mactavish being known to be very sick in bed, to resort to their traditional policy of uniting for self-guidance and protection under a National Committee designed to cope with the present difficulty.

This decision was arrived at all the more readily as there was nothing revolutionary in it. It was, on the contrary, a strictly conservative measure for the French—not an attempt on their part at interfering with the privileges of the powers that be, much less an effort to overthrow the local Government, as had been the object of a meeting held in the village of Winnipeg at the secret instigation, it was claimed, of that archagitator Dr. Schultz. Then as ever, in order to serve his own interests and further his hatred of the Hudson’s Bay Company, he pretended to work for the people who, he contended, should get their share of the £300,000 allotted that body by the Imperial authorities.[229]

Because of the subversive character of that meeting and its intended meddling with things that were beyond the normal sphere of action of mere individuals, it was not countenanced by the Catholic clergy, and Father Noël Joseph Ritchot, of St. Norbert, cautioned his flock against its aims, while he had nothing to say derogatory to the assembly held in Bruce’s house.

The formation of such a committee, of which John Bruce was elected president and Louis Riel secretary, had no reference to strictly political affairs. It was of a class with that which was put up in 1849 by Louis Riel the Elder,[230] when it was felt necessary to put a stop to the Hudson’s Bay Company’s fur monopoly. It was “the old custom of the country that when any difficulty arose in which it was necessary to take up arms, the inhabitants used to organize of their own accord after the manner they had organized for hunting in the prairies. . . .

“In 1863, when the Sioux made a descent upon the country, the Council of the half-breeds organized a meeting in St. Norbert and met a deputation of the Sioux. . . .[231]

“The meeting of the Métis at St. Vital was held of their own motion, as was their custom. And it is not within my knowledge that they were advised to do so by anybody,” declared Rev. N. J. Ritchot to the Select Committee of the House of (Canadian) Commons.[232]

This unequivocal assertion of the one who knew best concerning the commencement of the Red River Insurrection should not be lost sight of by him who does not want to shift the responsibilities on the wrong parties.

As time pressed and the would-be Governor from Ottawa might reach the frontier any day, the National Committee of the Métis[233] drafted the following note, which they immediately sent him to Pembina, just beyond the “line,” where he was bound to pass on his way north, in the course of his “wanderings:”[234]

“Daté à St. Norbert, Rivière-Rouge, ce 21ème jour d’octobre 1869.

“Monsieur,

“Le Comité National des Métis de la Rivière-Rouge intime à Monsieur William McDougall l’ordre de ne pas entrer sur le territoire du Nord-Ouest sans une permission spéciale de ce Comité.

“Par ordre du Président John Bruce,

“Louis Riel, secrétaire.”[235]

The die was now cast.