Читать книгу A Critical History of the Red River Insurrection - Rev. A. G. Morice - Страница 9

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Most of the circumstances which have since occasioned that perversion of truth were also the prime movers in the rising of the French people against, not their fellow English-speaking settlers, with whom they had always been, and ever remained, at peace, but against the newly arrived strangers, a lot of domineering Ontarians, and the eastern governments they were supposed to represent.

Let us first get a proper idea of the field in which the events with which we are concerned were going to develop.

The colony of Assiniboia, as it was officially called, or the Red River Settlement, as it was popularly known, was made up of a population of about 11,500 souls divided into two sections: French or Catholics, and English, generally Protestants, the former slightly predominating. The French-speaking natives were mostly half-breeds, the number of pure French Canadians among them not being large at all, while, by the side of about 4,000 English half-breeds, there was quite a population of unmixed Scotch and Irish blood, who were the descendants of the original settlers.[40]

Before going farther and to show how well posted (!) on things Assiniboian some of those were who presumed to write on the events which this work is to relate, let us quote the ridiculous assertion of a Capt. G. Mercer Adam on the inhabitants of that country. “All told,” he said, “there were not over five hundred people in the Settlement including the half-breeds.”[41] There were considerably more than twenty times that number. If the inaccuracies of the English writers, especially those of a military complexion, had affected only statistics! We give this as a sample of the rest; but the reader must not expect us to deal with even the largest number of the others. Our own narrative, based on the very best of sources, will have to be taken as an implicit refutation, or at least denial, of the same.

In spite of this diversity of race—and we neglect a few Christianized Indians settled not far from the centre of the Colony—there was therein much more unity than it would seem possible at first glance. Nay, the greatest harmony reigned in the tiny State, a fact which will easily be accounted for if we remember that the immense majority of its inhabitants being of mixed blood, whether of partially French or English extraction, realized their close relationship on their mother’s side, no less than the practical equality of their social standing.[42]

There was, however, some difference in the usual avocation, or characteristics, of the two chief groups. The half-breeds of English speech, quite a few of whom were familiar with the French language, were generally more sedentary in their habits and took more kindly to farming than those of French origin, most of whom were the great hunters of the plains, and, as such, the purveyors of venison to the other half of the community, when they did not act as guides to the whites and traders as well as “voyageurs” or canoe-men, while a few eked out a more prosaic existence by fishing on the lakes.

As there was scarcely any market for wheat, which could not be exported except, under the shape of flour and in small quantities, to the trading posts and missions of the north, and as the English-speaking section of the Colony was growing all that was needed for home and abroad consumption, the French usually limited their agricultural efforts to the cultivation, around their one-piece log houses, of one or two acres of oats for their horses, barley and peas for themselves.

With a minimum of manual labour they felt happy, and remained gay and courteous under the most trying circumstances, ever ready to oblige[43] and have their full share in a dance or other social party. Mirth and pleasure were apparently the very essence of their life.

More swarthy in complexion, they were physically superior to their English compatriots. In fact, as early as 1859, a land surveyor, Simon J. Dawson, sent out to reconnoitre the region between Lake Superior and the Red River, wrote of them: “In physical appearance the half-breeds are far superior to the races to which they are allied. Among the habitants of Lower Canada, they would look like a race of giants, and they are much more robust and muscular than the neighboring Indians.”[44]

That the explorer had in mind the Métis, or semi-French, is made plain by his reference to the farmers of Quebec and what follows that passage in his text.

Nay, a contemporary of the Red River Insurrection, contrasting the two races of half-breeds then in the country, does not even recoil from stating that “There is a large section of the English half-breeds who will undoubtedly sink, through idleness and other causes, into a very low situation of society, while the French are not without men of intelligence and capability in various walks of life.”[45] Which declaration might profitably be put side by side with what all other English writers have had to say of the transcendent superiority of the Scotch over the French half-breeds.

As to the offspring of the original immigrants from Scotland and Ireland, known as the Selkirk colonists, they were simple, honest and upright folks, with some quaint customs, most of which were being copied by the half castes of both origins.

Whites, half-breeds and Métis, as those of semi-French extraction were called, formed a patriarchal, law-abiding and generally God-fearing community, which was so honest that door locks were unknown among them as long as they were left to themselves—in a word some sort of American Arcadia.[46]

Unfortunately, reckless, pretentious and turbulent individuals hailing from the province of Ontario, as Upper Canada was beginning to be known, had, during the last few years, made their appearance into the hitherto isolated Settlement, and were speedily sowing the seeds of discord and discontent in that peaceful population.

These were called “Canadians,”[47] and their avowed object was to do away with that patriarchal state and annex the country to the newly formed confederation—a most worthy aim which, however, was not to be achieved before an orgy of illegal aggressions, blunders of all kinds and bungling galore had stirred the population to its innermost fibres, inasmuch as, having never seen Canada, but originating directly or indirectly in Europe, even the full-blooded whites of English speech cared very little for what we now call the East.

The leader of the Canadians, and one of those among them who had been the longest in the West, was a young physician of powerful build immigrated from Ontario, John Christian Schultz, an able, enterprising and most daring, but not over-scrupulous man. Beckles Willson refers to him as “a certain obstreperous Dr. John Schultz, a Titan in stature and energy.”[48]

The Hon. Joseph Howe, Secretary of State for the Provinces of Canada, sedulously avoided his company in the course of a visit he paid the Red River Settlement just before the troubles that were already brewing, confessing that, “with a very insignificant private character,” Schultz “had been assuming an absurd position,” and that he kept him “at arm’s length.”[49]

Another party, a Major James Wallace, wrote of the same in an official report: “[Howe] had held very little intercourse while there[50] with that party calling itself the ‘Canadian party,’ for he firmly believed that Schultz, Mair and Bown, with his Nor’-Wester, had acted in a very unbecoming manner towards the half-breeds, and he only wondered how these men were tolerated in the Settlement.”[51]

We have no wish to unnecessarily blacken the reputation of this worthy, whose after-life was to be a very apt illustration of the appropriateness of the Latin proverb audaces fortuna juvat, fortune favours the brave. But since he was Riel’s most outspoken adversary, we must be allowed to make him known as he then was, so that the reader may form a sane opinion of the conflicts in which both of them were concerned.

In February, 1866, an action for 300 pounds sterling having been brought against the “redoubtable doctor”[52] the case had at first been postponed because of his absence. In the following May, he challenged the competence of the Court, which he claimed was prejudiced against him, or at any rate could not act impartially. He would not abide by the sentence which was then passed against him.

Yet so lenient were the authorities that nothing was done to enforce the same until January, 1868, when the sheriff with a posse proceeded to the trading post of Dr. Schultz, who forcibly resisted the seizure of his goods, and, in the scuffle which ensued, both sheriff and posse were ejected.