Читать книгу A Critical History of the Red River Insurrection - Rev. A. G. Morice - Страница 7

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“It is not without misgivings that the historian of the Catholic Church in Western Canada comes upon the years 1869-’70. Everyone knows the trite saying that history is a conspiracy against truth. We doubt if there is a period in the whole past of man in America to which that remark can be more appropriately applied. Hence, in order to reproduce the events of those troubled times with the complexion that is really theirs, we must run counter to the fables and fabrications, the groundless surmises and misrepresentations which racial and religious prejudices have so far given as the expression of truth in nearly all English works.

“While we firmly propose to continue in our role of dispassionate historian, we run the risk of being accused of partisanship simply because our knowledge of the real facts, their causes and effects bids us keep clear of the slanders, gratuitous innuendoes and erroneous assertions with which English-speaking readers have hitherto been regaled.”[1]

Such are the opening sentences of our account of those events in our History of the Catholic Church in Western Canada.[2] This work being now out of print, except in a four-volume French edition which is not of much use to most of the English readers, it is our purpose, in conformity with an implicit promise in the same,[3] to give in the following pages a fuller and no less authoritative account of those troubles. Now as then we shall base our assertions, especially those of a contentious nature, not on Catholic writers, even when they were eye-witnesses to the facts they relate, but on Protestant authorities and the official documents of the time.

On the other hand, in order to explain the startling discrepancies between those facts and the disfigurement of the same current in most English books on the subject, it seems expedient, if not necessary, to give the reasons of such differences and to point to the causes of the wild misrepresentations which have long passed for the truth, misrepresentations which even a few ill-advised writers of our day try to put back on the pedestal of History, after they had been knocked off their usurped place by the above mentioned work.

And lest we should be suspected of exaggerating the effects of that book on public opinion, at least among people who are not above confessing a wrong, and thereby make all the clearer the guilt of those who would fain resuscitate obsolescent calumnies, we must be allowed to reproduce the following passages from the press and regional literature of twenty-five years ago, which may be taken as representative of others.

The reviewer of the Winnipeg Telegram then wrote of our History:

“One of the most interesting portions of the book is Father Morice’s account of the troublesome days at the time when Manitoba was taken into confederation. He approaches the subject from a different standpoint to the generally accepted histories. Time is softening the bitter feelings and the racial and religious prejudices which that outbreak occasioned, and there is a growing inclination to regard Riel with kindlier eyes.

“Father Morice takes strenuous objection to the term rebellion as applied to the Riel uprising. Insurrection is the word he uses, and the writer must admit his arguments in favor of his contention, which are strong ones.”

Then, after having summed up those arguments, the same writer concludes by a sentence which is in itself a revelation, after the unbecoming tirades against Louis Riel which were then an obbligato accompaniment to the mere mention of his name: “History is coming more and more to take the view of Father Morice.”[4]

So far the daily press, of which many other testimonies could be adduced which go to show that the falseness of previous accounts of that uprising had been duly noted and implicitly admitted.[5]

As to the literature of a more permanent character, a subsequent author, Isaac Cowie, though a former official of the company which practically had the power in its hands when Riel’s action commenced in Red River, made, after the publication of our History, the following remarks in an interesting volume of reminiscences.

“The proper course for Governor McTavish and the Council of Assiniboine[6] to have taken was to have suppressed the Nor’wester[7] newspaper for seditious libel against the constituted authorities, to have arrested the surveyors of the Canadian Government as trespassers, and, if ‘Governor’ McDougall and his retinue entered [the] territory as unwarranted invaders, to cast them also in gaol as rebels against the de facto Government of the country, as recognized by the Imperial authorities.”[8]

But there is not to-day an author conversant with the circumstances as they were then who imagines that anything of the kind could have been expected of an Administration which was moribund and incapable of any show of energy.

Farther on, the same writer goes even to the length of making this significant confession: “I think now—though, in common with those of my kind, I was far from so thinking then—that the first intentions of any action taken by the French half-breeds in resisting the illegal entry of Mr. William McDougall and his party of ‘carpet-baggers’ (the first of a subsequent host) was admirable and, in view of the inaction of Governor McTavish and the Council of Assiniboia, that it was justifiable and even legal.”

Of the Métis in arms Cowie says: “When we consider the passions aroused and their easy access to the rum casks of the Company at Fort Garry, it is truly remarkable how few outrages on person and property were committed in that period of excitement by these wild hunters of the plains. Compared with the Boers of South Africa, the Métis of Rupert’s Land were gentlemen.”[9]

Another western author, Dr. Norman Fergus Black, has written a voluminous History of the Province of Saskatchewan, wherein he never dares call the Red River outbreak a rebellion, but says that “by way of protest against the colossal folly and unpardonable bungling of the Imperial and Dominion authorities, an extra-constitutional government [Riel’s] held full sway for a period of about nine months.”[10]

Farther on in the same book, that historian, who so far disagrees with his fellow English authors by merely refraining from the use of a slandering word to which they almost all resort, comes formally to concur in the present writer’s views when he has it that “the French clergy, like the writer of this book (italics ours), did not look upon the establishment of a provisional government by Riel and his associates as in any sense an act of rebellion.”[11]

Finally, a still better known author, Robert Watson, though connected with the Hudson’s Bay Company, but lately (1932) declared in a public speech that “Louis Riel is undoubtedly the most lurid and tragic individual figure to stalk across the pages of Manitoba’s wonderful history. It is well within the bounds of probability that, before fifty more years have gone, there will be a monument to his memory on the Parliament Building grounds, erected by a forgiving and grateful Manitoba public.”[12]

In the face of these and other testimonies of which we shall avail ourself in the course of the present work, we may be warranted to ask: Why then this formerly general hostility of English authors to Riel and followers, an hostility which some of to-day’s writers would fain revive? What were the causes of it?

These were many, and certainly those we are going to indicate. The least culpable and most easily excusable were ignorance and credulity, as well as a lack of comprehension of a complicated situation based on diversity of language. The greater part of the English-speaking population of Red River never understood the aims and aspirations of the French half-breeds, and those who went to them for information were sometimes given as an answer the wild declamations of a young Irishman who, politically, was at the antipodes of the Métis.[13]

But it is our painful duty to declare at the outset that the main reason for the ludicrous deformation of facts and travesty of intentions as presented by English historians has been that great mischief-maker, prejudice, a many-headed hydra which has been responsible for all the trouble, and has at times rendered well-nigh ridiculous authors who were privately perfect gentlemen and honourable citizens.

The first form of that mental disease which caused those falsehoods was racial prejudice, that subtle innate aversion for the French which is so often lurking hidden in the folds of British brains. Of which more will appear in the course of these pages.

If the usual Briton can hold in such low esteem those who descend from what other people called la grande nation, what will be his disdain for a batch of mere half-breeds: Indians on their mother’s side and French through their father or grandfather? To him these are, or were in 1869, scarcely worth a thought, beings almost unfit even for the humble role of a servant.

And to say that it was bands of those lowly and thoroughly despised people who kept at bay and utterly defeated hundreds of blue-blooded Britons, or descendants of Britons! This was altogether too much, and could not have happened without recourse to machinations of the deepest dye. Hence the wild statements and perfidious innuendoes which have been resorted to as some sort of compensation for the inglorious fiasco of Riel’s adversaries.

Let the candid and unprejudiced reader keep this well before his mind, until we come to the exposé of the various phases of the resistance offered by the Métis to the unwarranted intrusion with which the present work is concerned. Most of the aspersions on the natives of Red River who forestalled oppression by the new-comers are nothing but the result of the spite, soreness and vexation at having been worsted by them. Once more, let this be ever remembered.

In connection with this contempt of the Métis by English authors and the ridiculous fables it has engendered, we may refer to the assertion of one of them, Dr. Charles Mulvaney, himself no friend of their leader, since he had to relate the measures taken to put down his first and only rebellion, that of the Saskatchewan.

“Notice may be taken,” he says, “of the many recklessly false tales set forth as to Riel’s career, by authors who get up what purposes to be ‘histories’ on the plan of the dime novel. One such writer informs his readers that the reason Riel had for the Scott murder (sic) was that both were in love with the same girl.[14] As a matter of fact, Riel could not have seen the young lady on whom Scott’s affections were placed, who lived, or still lives, in a city of Ontario never visited by Riel.”[15]

Though we have but lately noticed in that author this reference to the many inventions of the Simon-pure historians hailing from the East, we have from the start been conversant with the particular detail which occasioned it, but had deemed it below our dignity to as much as notice it in our previous works. While, for the sake of illustration, we had mentioned some of the epithets lavished on the Métis chief and his followers by that prince of anti-French scribblers, we had not even stooped to give the title of his scurrilous production. In order that our present reader may have an idea of the orgy of contumely, the foamings of impotent rage which the hatred of some writers can resort to at the mere mention of him who, according to the first Lieut.-Governor of Manitoba, saved the country to the British Crown,[16] here are some of the pearls which the coarse quill-driver in question generously throws at the feet of Riel:

“Rebel, murderer, wily traitor, cunning deceiver, agitator, ambitious adventurer, dangerous Guiteau[17] of the plains, rebel ruffian, autocrat, vengeful Riel, miscreant, tyrant, greasy rebel, presumptuous crank, arch-rebel, vindictive tyrant, blood-thirsty president, bloody Guiteau, greasy murderer, beastly and murderous tyrant, worthless vagabond, rascal, felon, criminal, unhung felon.”[18]

Is that enough? Is not the anonymous pamphleteer sufficiently betraying his soreness at Riel’s success? If not, you may presume that he has exhausted his stock of nasty epithets. He furthermore constantly speaks of the Métis leader’s “murderous and wolfish eyes”; he asserts that his “eyes gleamed with a wolfish light”—he seems quite familiar with wolves—that “he was possessed with a spirit of the most devilish rage”—an eloquent crescendo—that “he raged like a wild bull”—how terrible!—that he spoke “in a tone of diabolical raillery”—better and better! etc.

Such are the excesses to which racial antipathies and passions can lead! And all this of a man who is universally recognized as having been not only essentially religious, but the very soul of courtesy and politeness; a man whom even one of his modern traducers, the Rev. R. G. MacBeth, declares to have been “by no means without heart”[19]—and MacBeth knew him personally—a man who, the same author admits, was “true to his French politeness even in his rage,”[20] and whom another of his enemies, Capt. W. F. Butler, despite his evident desire to ridicule him, shows to have acted towards himself in a much more creditable manner than he (Butler) did towards him, who was then somewhat in the position of his host.[21]

But that is not all. To the author of that travesty of history to which we were referring above, Father Ritchot, parish priest of Saint Norbert, on the Sale River, is the “great swaggering, windy pére (sic) Richot (sic), a coarse person, a crocmitaine priest,” whatever that may mean.[22] As to Ambroise D. Lépine, that beautiful specimen of physical humanity, according to MacBeth,[23] he was, of course, Riel’s “infamous lieutenant,” one of his “bloodhounds,” etc.

Nay, even that prototype of the Christian gentleman, sweet Bishop Taché, who had made the sacrifice of attendance at the Œcumenical Council of the Vatican to oblige the Canadian Government, is to that vile slanderer “the same bishop whose name so many hundreds of thousands of our people cannot recall without bitterness and indignation.”[24]

And why? What a naive question! Was he not French as was also that real, though not infallible, statesman and promoter of the Canadian Confederation, Sir Georges Etienne Cartier, whose “short-sighted policy” another French-eater, Capt. G. L. Huyshe, deplores,[25] at the same time as he sneers at the “puny efforts of Bishop Taché and his party to check [Manitoba’s] growth!”

The above-mentioned fanatic and dealer in dime novels has at least the decency to keep himself in the back-ground and remain anonymous. What shall we say of responsible parties such as, for instance, Dr. George Bryce, who accuses the St. Boniface priests of 1869 of forming: “A dangerous religious element in the country—ecclesiastics from old France—who had no love for Britain, no love for Canada, no love for any country, no love for society,[26] no love for peace!”[27] The same author who, as a clergyman, should have been a lover of truth if not of charity, calls them in the same breath “plotters” who act “with Jesuitical cunning!”

As to that humble, meek and almost scrupulous Oblate, Father Lestanc, he was, in the eyes of the Presbyterian minister, nothing else than “the prince of plotters, who has generally been credited with belonging to the Jesuit order”[28]—how awful!—“a daring and extreme man—risum teneatis amici”[29]—in a word “the violent and dastardly Lestanc.”[30]

One of Bryce’s co-religionists, the Rev. R. G. MacBeth, is not quite so hysterical. Yet, but one page after he has assured us of Riel’s good heart, he declares that he was a “mad man,” an individual who “played fast and loose with pledges”; and he professes to recall “the imprecations invoked upon his arrogant insolence,”[31] while, five pages farther, he credits him with the intention of “sending a party of men out to meet [Wolseley’s soldiers] with snow-shoes,” to facilitate their coming in winter, in case they cannot arrive before!

Rev. Geo. Young	Rev. R. G. MacBeth
Rev. Geo. Bryce	Rev. A. C. Garrioch

A REVEREND QUARTETTE OF ANTI-RIELLITES

This does not prevent another Protestant clergyman, the Rev. George Young, from styling Louis Riel an “upstart tyrant,” whose “tyranny was felt for ten long months.”[32] Further on, the same writer derisively dubs him “our little Napoleon,” and, still later, he believes he is smartly sneering at him when he refers to him as the “devout (?) ‘President,’”[33] though the Métis chief never claimed the possession of any military talent, and while, as a matter of fact, the whole Riel family were remarkable for their religious dispositions.[34]

To the same Reverend author, his associates in Red River were only “well-fed bandits, oppressors of the people,” who had set up a “reign of terror,” and ultimately formed “an abominable confederacy.”[35]

The reader who is familiar with a certain type of non-Catholic literature will have recognized in these last passages from the writings of Rev. Bryce, MacBeth and Young another, and still more dangerous, kind of prejudice. After that which is based on ignorance through diversity of language, as well as on racial differences, we now have that which originates in religious rancour, or the mania for “protesting” when the good name of Catholics is at stake.

This leads us to the most terrible species of prejudice, that which flows from religious fanaticism. This, needless to add, has been a most potent factor in the wilful distortion of facts to the detriment of Riel and his people. Here we fully realize that we are entering upon dangerous ground; but why undertake to write history if we are not free to reveal the true causes of animadversions as we know them?

There is in the British world a set of people an excuse for the legal existence of whom we have always sought in vain, since even human law should carefully eschew all pretexts for fratricidal struggles and social strife. We refer to the order of Orangemen, whose object is supposedly to uphold the rights of Protestantism which nobody dreams of impugning, while in reality that society is primarily intended to coerce through intimidation and oppress such of their fellow citizens as cannot share their opinions.

The necessity for the existence of such an Order, whose history is written in letters of blood,[36] is something which no law-abiding people, nay, no good Protestant, can see. There is no dearth of ministers who will willingly denounce week after week the “iniquities of Rome” and are ever ready to “protest” against practices and tenets of Catholics, based on what these hold as clear ordinances of the Bible. Why still another cause of intestinal dissension, which can bode no good to either religion or society?

As to their pretended loyalty to the Throne, he must be very ignorant indeed who does not know that Orangemen have shown themselves loyal only to those who approve of their peculiarly narrow views. If unwilling to abet their undisguised bigotry, a king of England would have a good chance of being reminded that they are ready to “cast his crown into the Boyne,” and it is still within the memory of middle-aged Canadians that, because the authorities hesitated to countenance their religious fanaticism, they noisily announced their intention to “smash Confederation to its original fragments.”

Who then can wonder if modern British monarchs have spurned away their windy loyalty? When, in the summer of 1860, the Prince of Wales, who was to become that accomplished king known as Edward VII, visited Canada in the name of his august mother, he refused to go to Kingston and Belleville, because “the Orange society of those neighbourhoods insisted on receiving him with the insignia and other emblems of their order,”[37] while at Toronto he “refused to pass under an Orange triumphal arch.”[38]

Now let the reader carefully mark this: When Riel repelled the invaders of Assiniboia, in order to be all the better able to successfully negotiate with Canada with a view to obtaining the rights of the West, he did two notable things, which particularly shocked those extremists. He stopped at the frontier and turned out of the country William McDougall, who had prematurely been appointed its first Lieut.-Governor; now McDougall is said by some to have been an Orangeman.[39] When harassed from all sides by malcontents, newcomers who several times rose against his government, he felt bound to make an example and restore peace and quiet broken by people from Portage la Prairie, he allowed Thomas Scott to be executed: but Scott was undoubtedly an Orangeman!

Is not this double circumstance sufficient in itself to account for the furious execration with which his memory has ever been pursued? When the reader couples this sectarian resentment with the various kinds of prejudice reviewed above, prejudice from ignorance of the language, prejudice from racial antagonism, prejudice from religious passions, he will have more than he needs to account for those “fables and fabrications, groundless surmises and misrepresentations” hinted at in the beginning of this chapter which, under the willing hands of some English authors, have woven around the real facts of the Red River Insurrection an impenetrable tissue of falsehoods rendering them scarcely recognizable to the unprejudiced student of history.