LOUIS RIEL
The First Three Chapters of a Historical Novel
CHAPTER 1
He stood upon the street in St. Paul and watched the people go by. Here he was a stranger, a lonely man with an aching in his heart that he did not understand. He wanted the nearness of people, but something within held aloof, feeling the difference within himself.
This was Minnesota, and off to the north lay his own land. Yet even here he glimpsed the blanket-coats of the métis, the half-breeds from the northern prairies and rivers, his own people.
For years they had been coming south to St. Paul or St. Cloud for their trading. This was the United States, and the cities of Canada lay far to the east over some rough country that made crossing a struggle. It was so much easier just to come south, to travel with the Red River cart caravans or to take the steamboat on the Red.
People brushed by him. He shifted his valise to the other hand and walked up to the door of the Merchants Hotel. He opened the door, catching the old familiar smell of the place: the stale cigar smoke, the warm, close air of the lobby.
This, at least, remained the same. The worn leather settees, the brass cuspidors, the buffalo head upon the wall. As a child he had once come to this place. To a boy from the vast plains this seemed a mysterious and somehow magical place.
He paused inside the door, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the change of light.
“Louis? Is it you? Mon dieu, but how long it has been?” It was Ambroise Lepine, a welcome face in a city of strangers.
“Ten years.”
“Well, you have your father’s look. More handsome, I think, and broader in the shoulder. He was a man, your father.”
They sat down at a table and stared at each other, amused and curious, Lepine the woodsman and Riel the scholar. Lepine wore a coat made from a Hudson Bay blanket, typical of the country, Riel a plain, black, neatly cut suit.
“You are not a priest, then?” Lepine said. “Not a priest after ten years of study?”
“I am a religious man, Ambroise, but toward the last I believe the good fathers were worried. I doubt if it is in me to become a priest.”
“Was it money? We could have found it. For a son of your father, nothing would be too much.”
“My mother needs me. You know that better than I, for you have been here. I have done little for her, and there are the girls, my sisters. I worked for a lawyer in Montreal but the pay was very poor. Besides…”
“Besides what?”
Riel was embarrassed. “I was homesick.”
Lepine nodded. “I know. A man cannot go far wrong when he is close to the trees, the rivers, and the plains. After all, Louis, we are a part Indian, you and I.”
Riel’s smile was twisted. “I have had cause to remember that, Ambroise.”
Lepine put down his pipe and reached for his glass. “It is better that you have come back, Louis, and better that you are not a priest. We need you.”
“Is Mother well? She never writes of herself.”
“She is well, I think.” Lepine shook his head in awe. “She is a woman, your mother. But she does need you; it has not been easy for your mother, and now with the surveyors—”
“Surveyors?”
“Have you heard nothing? Men have come from Ontario who survey right across our lines. They say we own nothing, that the whole land must be resurveyed and reallotted.
“They say this to us! Three, four generations we have lived on this land. We have built our homes, cut hay in our meadows, fished in the streams, and trapped for fur. Old men have died here and young men have had sons.
“I reached out and touched a tree and it is mine, it has grown with me, as has the grass beneath our feet. I drink from a cold stream, smell the pines and the grass warmed by the summer sun. I turn the sod and see the corn grow where the seeds fell….And now they say the land is not ours, that we are only métis, we are nobody.”
“You have spoken to the Company?”
“The Company is no more. The Company is selling out, it is leaving us. The Hudson Bay Company was our father and our mother and now it goes from us.”
“But who is to govern? The Company administered the land. It has been the government. What will be done?”
“Who knows?” Lepine spread his hands helplessly. “Some say the Queen does not want Prince Rupert’s Land, that Canada does not want it, but Louis…those men from Ontario…I think they want it. I think they mean to have it, and that is why we need you.”
“Me?”
Lepine looked down at his huge hands. “I can lift anything, Louis, anything I can take hold of, but words do not come to me. You are your father’s son, and when in the old times there was trouble, we went to your father, the miller. It was he who led our fight for free trade. It was he who went to Ottawa to speak for us. He was a man of words, as you are.”
“You have spoken to the governor?”
“Mactavish is an old man, and he is ill. He is tired now, and soon will leave us. I do not believe he likes what is happening, for he has always been a just man. A stern man, but just.”
Louis Riel was silent. The love of his people for the land was no small thing. They had not come to get rich and get out. They knew nothing of politics or land speculation, for they were a people of the earth, of the forest, the lake, and the stream. They walked where the grizzly walked, and hunted the elk for meat on its own pastures. They knew the whistle of the marmot and where the beaver built his dams.
When the Company first sent its men west to trade with the Indians, many of them, French, English, and Scottish, married with the Indian girls, and from them came a different people, a fine, strong people. They were woodsmen and canoemen by birth, natural horsemen, confident hunters.
Louis Riel was himself one-eighth Indian; the rest was French, Irish, and Scandinavian. Yet he was considered a métis, a half-breed. He had borne the designation with pride, never really thinking of what it meant to some until…
“We must talk of this, Ambroise. I have been gone too long and have missed much. In Montreal there are rumors, sometimes, but to Montreal this is a far and savage land. They know nothing of us, and care less.”
“They know of us in Ontario. They hunger for our land.” Lepine got to his feet. “I have much to do, Louis. You are going home now?”
“I have no money, Ambroise, and cannot go empty-handed. To have an education is one thing, to have money, another. In Montreal I could save little, then like a fool I stayed overlong with friends in Chicago. I was like a child. My money just seemed to melt away, while I dined and talked with friends.”
Lepine chuckled. “It is the way of money. They make the coins round so they can roll. But when did a métis save money?”
“I kept hoping a way would open for me, Ambroise. Out here there is little need for educated men.”
“Bah! You can do anything, Louis! At St. Boniface you were the brightest of the lot.”
“I had too many questions, Ambroise. There were books to read, and I read them, but it worried the fathers that what I saw in the books was not always what they saw, so I did not become a priest; but what is a man to become who studies to become a priest and then is not a priest?”
Lepine chuckled. “He becomes a politician, Louis. Come home; help us. You know them, these men of the cities. You know their minds.”
The big man scowled, but it was worry, not anger. “Louis, men come among us and say disturbing things. You will meet them in Pembina, when you go north. One of them is an American who has no legs.”
“No legs?”
“From the waist up, he is magnificent. He has a special saddle, this one, and you should see him ride. It is a miracle that he rides, but he does.”
“What about him?”
“He wishes to see Rupert’s Land a part of the United States. He wishes us to sign a paper to the United States asking them to govern us.”
“We are Canadians,” Riel objected. “We are not Americans.”
“Agreed. But do we not have more in common with the men of Dakota and Minnesota than with Ottawa? When we ride north from here, where is the line between us? The color of the grass does not change, nor does the air have a different smell, or the wind blow in a way other than it does here. God made no line upon the earth; it exists only in the mind.”
“We are British subjects,” Riel objected. “We should remain so.”
Lepine nodded unhappily. “So I believe. I believe it in my belly, but I have no words to answer the men from Pembina. They say the Queen does not know we are here, and they say the men in Ottawa wish to please the voters in Ontario, so they will give our lands to them, and who are we to object? They say Ottawa will not listen.”
“They will listen, Ambroise. We must send somebody to talk to them.”
Riel was silent, thinking of what had been said. “You spoke of men who would resurvey the land? Who are they?”
“They come from Ontario, most of them. They are Protestants.”
“There are many Protestants, Ambroise. The Company was Protestant, and we got along with the Company.”
“I do not believe the Company had any religion but fur. They treated us fairly…most of the time.” Lepine grinned cheerfully. “And we treated them fairly…enough of the time. These men are not the same.”
“They have a leader?”
“A man named Schultz. He is a Swiss, I believe. A very big man, very strong…but not so strong as me, I think.” Lepine hesitated, no longer joking. “There is MacDougall who says he will be a king out here. And there is Dennis.”
“MacDougall I know of. There are others?”
“There is Scott…Thomas Scott. He is a loudmouth and a troublemaker. He gets along with no one, but he hates Catholics, Indians, and métis. He says we are dogs.”
“He said that to you?”
“Not to me, nor does he say it where I am. If he did I would squeeze him…so,” and he closed his huge fist.
When Lepine had gone, Louis Riel stayed at the table. Only a few men remained in the lobby. Two were talking in a desultory fashion of the wheat crop, and across the room a big man was telling of a cattle drive he expected to meet in Rapid City.
“Longhorns,” he was saying. “They’re big and they’re mean, but they could walk across the world. These come from Texas. Last year, in ’68, nearly three hundred thousand head came over the trail from Texas to Kansas!”
Riel was scarcely listening, for his thoughts had gone back to his last meeting with his father, who had been returning from a business trip as Louis left for school in the East. They met on the trail, and none of the words they had to say to each other had anything to do with what they were thinking.
The bond between them had been strong, but unspoken. Why had he not told his father he loved him? Why had he never said it aloud? Yet his father had not said the words to him, either.
How could he guess the father he loved would die while he was away at school?
Yet when the news came it was his mother of whom he thought. She had always been strong, original, and with a great appreciation of the amusing. Never while her husband was alive had she had to exert her strength or her will, for Louis Riel the elder had been a forceful man, although quiet, lifting his voice rarely, his hand never. He had given off a feeling of strength, of quiet assurance, and his mother had drawn upon that, and been all the more warm and loving because of it, there being no need to expend elsewhere the strength she herself possessed.
His was a strong heritage. Was he worthy of it? Was he half the man his father was? Or a quarter the person his mother was known to be?
The Merchants Hotel was old, born with almost the first breath of St. Paul, and over the years it had become a hodgepodge of logs, lumber, bricks, and stone with all the various repairs and additions. During the late summer and fall rooms were scarce, but Louis Riel went to the desk and asked for John Dodge, the clerk.
“I would like a room,” he said, “and I should like to stay for a while.”
Dodge hesitated, puzzled by the half-familiar features. “Have we met before, Mr….?”
“Riel…Louis Riel.”
“Of course. I knew your father. Knew him well.” He glanced over the register. “Yes, yes. I think we can find something for you.”
“Thank you, sir. I will be also looking for employment. If you hear of anything I would appreciate it.”
“Of course. Yes, I have a room for you, and Mr. Riel? Do make yourself at home. Your father was very helpful on many occasions and your people have been coming here for years.”
“Thank you.”
He went up the stairs to the room. A bed, a dresser, a white bowl, and a pitcher filled with water. Two towels, a washcloth, and a bath at the end of the hall.
He put his valise on the bed and removed his coat, hanging it over the back of a chair. When he turned about he found himself looking into the mirror above the dresser, at a reflection which regarded him seriously.
Wavy hair, a high forehead…He had been called handsome, which he was not. Five feet ten inches with shoulders so broad that he appeared shorter. He was physically powerful without wanting or trying to be. He had always been strong, yet curiously, he had never been healthy.
He shrugged. A man could not dwell on such things, but must get along with what was to be done.
In this almost bilingual town—for so it was at the moment—there should be a job for him. At this season of the year the influx of French-speaking trappers and traders was great. Each year the great caravans of Red River carts came down from the north, and after unloading their freight, prepared to load up again for the trip back.
Many Indians came as well, but he spoke several dialects so they would present no problem.
He stared at his reflection. At St. Boniface he had been considered a brilliant scholar, and so attracted the attention of Archbishop Taché. Because of him he won his chance to attend school in Montreal.
There he had done well despite the greater competition, first in his class many times, often second or third, rarely fourth.
What had gone wrong? At what point had he lost his desire to become a priest? Or had he ever desired it? Was it not simply that it offered the only road he knew to an education?
Reluctantly, he admitted to himself that he had never considered himself priestly material. There was too much in him that was impatient, restless, demanding.
Was he ambitious?
He walked to the window and stared out at the gathering darkness. No, he decided after a few minutes, he was not really ambitious. He did not want wealth. Security for his mother and sisters he did want, and his own lot sufficient enough that he was himself not a case for charity. Searching himself, he found no need for luxury or power.
Yet he did want something.
He had come from a land where all things were useful. A man had an ax to cut wood, a plow to break the soil, a canoe with which to travel lakes and rivers, traps to take fur, a pole or a net for the catching of fish.
Everything must be useful, so it followed that he himself must be so. A priest was a useful man, a necessary man. So, if not a priest, somehow he must become useful and necessary.
He removed his vest and hung it over his coat, then taking off his shoes he lay down on the bed, clasping his hands behind his head. Then he prayed.
Prayer had been his custom since childhood, but he did not always kneel or bow his head. He prayed when he felt like prayer…yet that, too, left him uneasy.
Was he actually talking to God through prayer? Or only to his better self? Did it matter?
That was always his problem: He questioned all things, even his own decisions, his own plans.
He did not lack faith. He had never lacked faith. He was, and had always been, a deeply religious man, yet he was a reasoning man as well, with a naturally cautious, judicious, measuring attitude of mind.
His eyes remained closed when his prayer ended, but his thoughts drifted like a soft wind toward his northern land. The land he loved, the land that was home.
His eyes opened to reality. He must find work. He must have something to take home, even if it was ever so little.
Tomorrow he would look. He knew a few people by name, and had friends from the north who had traded here. He would find something.
He sat up on the edge of the bed, suddenly worried. What right had anyone to survey land the métis had held for generations? What was happening up there?
If the Hudson Bay Company was leaving, and no other government stood by to take its place, what would happen to his people?
The métis numbered only a few thousand, and if The Bay no longer controlled Prince Rupert’s Land, which was virtually all that lay between Hudson Bay and Lake Superior west to British Columbia, then hordes of people from the east or from the United States could rush in and deluge his own people, taking their land, their privileges, their all.
Lepine, he realized, had been more than merely worried. The big man had been frightened.
CHAPTER 2
It was wet and cold in the morning streets. A late storm had blown down from the north, pouring rain upon the town, but he turned up his coat collar and walked along, unminding of the rain. He walked slowly down to the river and looked at the swollen waters.
This was the Mississippi, flowing away from here to the south, toward a sunny land he would never know, for it was not his river. His river was the Red River of the north, flowing out of the United States into Canada, flowing through one of the most fertile valleys on earth.
When he returned home it would be along that river by steamboat, for the Red River carts would soon be a thing of the past. He remembered those great caravans and the wild, screeching, caterwauling sounds that had come from those wooden, ungreased axles….One of the caravans had numbered as many as five hundred carts, and the sound of them could be heard for miles.
He must go home. He must hear the troubles of his people, and if necessary he must speak for them. As his father had been before him, he would be their voice.
First…a job.
When he found one it was in a store selling dry goods and hardware, a store to which the métis came, and to which more of them came when they discovered he was working there. They brought not only their trade but gossip as well, and he needed the one as much as the other.
Again, several times in fact, he heard the story of the surveyors, and always they spoke of Schultz…John Christian Schultz. Not a surveyor, but one who cooperated with them, possibly even invited them to make their surveys.
He was a doctor, a storekeeper, and a Swiss. He detested Indians, Catholics, and the métis. “Bastards,” he supposedly called them, “the misbegotten sons of riffraff and savages.”
Whether Schultz actually said such a thing Riel did not know, but it was widely quoted and widely believed.
He had been behind the counter but three days when a lean, dark man came in and stood about, waiting until Riel was alone. “You are Louis Riel?”
“I am.”
The man glanced quickly right and left. “Come across a man from up your way. He was buyin’ rifles.”
“It is a country where all men are hunters,” Riel replied mildly.
“This man wanted a hundred rifles for delivery at Pembina. He was gettin’ them through some of them whiskey-peddlers at Fort Whoop-Up. He said somethin’ about showin’ a bunch of breeds who was boss.”
“Why do you tell me?”
“Heard you was a breed, although you surely don’t look it. I’m half-Sioux myself, an’ just figured you should know.”
“Thank you,” Riel said, and the man left.
One hundred rifles…It was a lot, yet the métis could muster several thousand if need be. If there was someone to call them out and to direct their actions.
There had always been rough characters along the border, men who would lend themselves to any action if the price was right or if there was a chance of loot. The Fenians, too, had been talking of invading Canada again. They were an Irish organization inspired by hatred of all that was British.
Of course, they had been talking for years, threatening and blowing off steam, yet there were hotheads among them prepared for any desperate action, and if there was an invasion there would be violence…and his mother and sisters were there.
The thought disturbed him. What if some such an attempt were made? Who was there to stop it? If the Bay Company was stepping down, who would act? Who could act?
There was no one.
The métis were men accustomed to the quick, iron discipline of the buffalo hunt and the fur brigade. Such groups could move like a well-oiled machine, but so far as he knew they had no leader, nor any plan of action.
Such lawlessness as was known in the mining and cattle towns of the American West had never existed in Prince Rupert’s Land because of the Hudson Bay Company. From the beginning The Bay had complete authority, and it was there first, firmly established and in command before there was any possibility of others coming into the country.
Their authority had been complete, and from their decision there was no appeal. Without The Bay no supplies were to be had, no ammunition, food, or liquor available. Access to these things depended on conformity to a pattern of behavior that suited the Bay officials. They also offered the only market for furs west of Montreal.
Any westward movement had been held in check by that desolate wilderness that lay between Hudson’s Bay on the north and the Great Lakes on the south, and particularly that area north of Lake Superior.
If one wished to migrate westward it was far easier to go to America, as many were doing. The Ohio, the Missouri, and the Platte offered easy access to the heart of the plains country and the mountains that lay beyond.
There was talk of a railroad that would join British Columbia to eastern Canada, but thus far it was no more than talk, and most of those who knew the land ridiculed the idea. The easiest way to go west, or even to Rupert’s Land, was to take the Grand Trunk Railway from Toronto to Detroit, then westward to Chicago and La Crosse, Wisconsin. From there it was a short ride by steamer to St. Paul.
He shook his head irritably. It was madness. All men needed some restraint, for few could restrain themselves. If there was no government there would be anarchy, and he was a man who believed in order.
If Rupert’s Land was abandoned by the Bay Company and no other government existed, settlers might rush in, and he could see fighting and confusion, for none of the inhabitants of Rupert’s Land would relinquish their lands without a fight. Yet if the area was to become a part of Canada, it should be as a province, with its own government and proper representation at Ottawa.
Several days passed. He was paid, and carefully put aside all but what was needed for the bare necessities. He was doing well at his job. His quiet dignity and reserve were perfectly suited to selling to the métis, Indians, or settlers. They came seldom to town, but one and all they loved shopping, fingering the materials, wandering through the stores and trading posts to see what was available.
He knew his people, and he let them look, offering suggestions only when asked or when there seemed some hesitation; at other times he simply listened to them talk.
Between the store, the hotel, and a boardinghouse where he ate most of his meals, he was gradually coming to understand what had happened in his homeland, and what seemed about to happen.
The fur trade was no longer as bountiful as it had been, and although there were buffalo, even they seemed to be thinning out. The great profits the Hudson Bay Company had once known no longer existed, and the problems were increasing. The Bay, wisely, was stepping out to avoid an impossible situation.
Lepine came around to the hotel when several weeks had gone by. The big leather chair creaked when he dropped into it. “Louis? When do you come home?”
“Soon, Ambroise.” Riel leaned his forearms on the table. “Have you heard any talk of rifles? A lot of rifles?”
The big man looked up. “I have heard such talk.”
“Who would want so many rifles? Who do they plan to shoot?”
Lepine leaned forward. “Look, my friend, you must have forgotten your homeland. Think, man, is it not a prize worth taking? Do you think those who talk of confederation are thinking of anything but our land?
“Who cares about us? We have no voice in Ottawa! We are scattered people on a far frontier, and those who would take our land from us have voices to speak for them. I think you had better come home, Louis, and see what can be done.”
“Do you think there will be fighting?”
“Louis, they have sent surveyors, and we have stopped the surveyors. I do not think they intend to be interfered with again.”
“I want no fighting.”
“There need be none. But we must have someone to speak for us. There is enough land for all, but we wish to keep that land we have….Let them take other land.
“However, there are some who threaten violence. That Orangeman named Thomas Scott is a troublemaker. He had trouble when he worked for Snow on the road they are building, and he threatened Snow. He is forever starting fights and threatening to kill people.”
“He is a leader?”
“Only of a few like himself. He has no intelligence. He is a child. He worries me because he could start trouble. He could begin trouble where there need be none.
“Then there is Schultz. Schultz uses Scott, and Scott follows him as much as he will anyone, but Schultz is no fool. He is very intelligent, but I think he has no scruples….I think he would stop at nothing, but that is only my idea.”
Riel was silent and worried. If there was trouble—and certainly all the ingredients were there—his mother and the girls might suffer. Also, his people were regarded by many Easterners as people of no account. They had had a great hand in building the country, in gathering the furs, laying out the trails. Without them there would have been no Hudson Bay Company, and no opening of the West for many years. But in Canada, as in the United States, the Indian was regarded as an obstacle to be brushed aside, with only a slight claim to the land on which he lived. He had heard such arguments in Montreal.
The white man was taking the land, using it. Just as the Indian had taken the land from those he found when he came, other varieties of Indians or aborigines of some kind. From the beginning of time it had been so, a weaker people displaced by a stronger.
In England the Celts had pushed back the Picts, the Angles and the Saxons pushed in their turn, and then there was the Norman invasion.
Yet this was not conquest. Rupert’s Land—for so it had been called for many years—was being sold by the Hudson Bay Company without any thought for the rights of those who lived there.
There was no question of fighting for what was theirs—it was simply being sold out from under them. Of the open lands, well and good…but what of their homesteads? Their villages?
“I will want a place to stay, Ambroise. My mother will be crowded, with the girls growing up. I would not be a trouble to them.”
“I will speak to Schmidt. I think he has room enough to spare. He is a good man.”
“He is. And I would like that.”
He remembered Schmidt. They had been in school together and he was an easy man to be around, one who did not intrude upon another man’s thoughts.
Mentally, he counted his money. The sum was small, but soon he would be paid again, and he owed very little.
He would go north. He would take the steamer.
“Tell me about Schultz,” he asked.
Lepine hesitated, then said, “You will have to meet him, to hear him. He used to operate a newspaper, The Nor’wester. Ran it four years, from ’64 to ’68. He’s anti-métis, he’s for annexation, and he thinks we’ve nothing to say about it. Near as I can get it, he was born around 1840 and started to practice medicine when he was twenty, but he’s been so busy with his store and the newspaper that he’s had little time for medicine except what he prescribes over the counter.
“He was thrown into jail when he refused to pay a judgment the court declared against him, and he simply broke out and stayed out, defying them to move against him.
“Whatever he says, Louis, do not take him lightly. He is an ambitious man and he refuses to be balked by law, custom, or anything that gets in his way.
“There’s a man named Mair who is or was living in his home who is a very able journalist. Some of his writings about this part of the country have been getting into the Toronto papers. Of course, he’s preaching the Schultz side of things.”
Lepine hunched his shoulders and folded his hands before him. “He is one of a small group,” he explained, “who wish to set themselves above all others. They would like to bring to us again what our fathers escaped in coming to America. They want a small aristocracy, Schultz and his friends, to be the ruling class. He has frankly said that when Rupert’s Land, or Assiniboia as it is called, becomes a part of Canada, he will rule.”
“He and MacDougall?” Riel said wryly. “I think we will have too many kings, when all we want are citizens.”
He sat silent, brooding. There were too many complications, and he wanted simplicity. He wanted only to be home, to see his mother and sisters, and to find a place for himself.
“It is all right, Ambroise,” he said, finally. “I shall come home now.”
CHAPTER 3
He stood on the street before the Hayward Hotel in St. Cloud and waited for the stage. A dozen others waited beside him, one of them a fat, amiable man with an elk’s tooth on his watch-chain.
“The Northwest’ll be part of the United States soon,” he was saying, “and that will solve problems for them as well as us.”
A lean, sour-faced young man glanced at him. “Where’d you get an idea like that? Do you suppose the British would let all that country slip through their fingers? Besides, you don’t know how the people feel about it. It is their decision.”
Riel glanced at him. The man was perhaps thirty, or even younger. In the hotel lobby he had seen him reading Vico, a writer on the philosophy of history too little known.
“Sure it’s their decision!” The fat man waved a hand. “But how else could they decide? Most of their trade is with us; lots of them have relatives this side of the line. You just wait until the U.S. government moves in—”
“It will not ‘move in,’ as you say.” The young man was impatient. “Do not be misled by such windbags as Alexander Ramsey and his like. Grant will have no part of it, nor will any of the others. There will be a lot of hot air over it, and then nothing will happen.”
“Nothing will happen?” The fat man’s tone became shrill. “You just bet something will happen! Those French Indians up there will rise up! They’ll want to be American citizens! Why shouldn’t they?”
“Perhaps they will wish to remain British subjects,” the young man said mildly, “and there is no reason why they should not.”
“You a Canadian?” the fat man demanded suspiciously.
“I’m a Vermonter,” the young man replied, “and in Vermont we tend to look at realities. There will be fears north of the line and a lot of shouting south of the line, but nothing will happen, believe me.
“I have talked to several senators, and they do not want it. We have had our share of trouble with the war, and we want none with England. We would rather have a friend north of the line than a suspicious enemy, and we have enough to do with what we have.”
“You just wait and see! I happen to know there’s a movement up there to join up with us, and then there’s the Fenians—”
“A bunch of hotheads,” the Vermonter said.
“They’d better join up,” the fat man argued. “I happen to know there’s some as expect to get rich up there when Canada takes over the government. The only chance those folks have is to join us.
“This outfit I’m talking about, they figure to grab title to most of that farmland, and if there’s trouble they’ll have support from the Army—”
“I doubt it,” the Vermonter said. “Anyway, that’s no hide off my nose as long as we’re not involved.”
“You’ll be involved. You take them métis, they’re mighty fine rifle shots, and they can outwalk, outride, and outshoot anybody around. They’ll stop anybody tryin’ to take over, but then they’ll come to us for help. You’ll see.”
Riel was irritated. They talked like children, at least the fat man did, but he supposed there were many who felt as he did. Yet how right was the Vermonter? He glanced at him thoughtfully, and the Vermonter caught the glance and winked.
“How about you?” he said, with an amused glance at Riel, but speaking to the fat man. “Will you shoulder a rifle and get into a fight for Rupert’s Land?”
“Me?” The fat man was startled. “I am not a fighter, I’m a lover. I’m just telling you what will happen. I happen to know—”
“Nothing…just nothing at all.” The Vermonter’s smile took the sting from the words. “You make a mistake, sir. Those who talk of Rupert’s Land becoming a part of the United States are indulging in fantasy. No sober, serious student of affairs would have anything to do with it, and most of the citizens are well pleased to have the late war ended and to get down to business again without going off on tangents.
“Grant is a serious man. Despite his cronies, he is no fool. He will lead us into no foreign adventures. You will see that all this talk of annexation is so much wind.”
The fat man was not persuaded, but Riel had not expected him to be. Personally, his opinion was that of the Vermonter. If some of the border Americans and promoters wished to indulge in foolish dreaming, that was their affair. He was sure neither the government in Washington nor the rank and file of citizens had any such idea.
He wanted no part in the discussion. He simply wanted to be seated in the stage and moving toward home. He waited, shivering a little in the predawn chill, and when the stage finally drew up he was the first aboard, taking a seat on the far side, where he relaxed and closed his eyes.
Despite the fact that he was at last on the road home, he was uneasy. What would he find there? What would he do himself?
When the stage stopped at Sauk Centre he got down to stretch his legs. He had been very young when he had come this way before…or had it been exactly this way? He scowled, trying to remember.
Whether or not he had come exactly this way, the town had a flour mill, obviously new. There was a blacksmith shop, a lumber mill, a store, and a saloon. When they left Sauk Centre their way took them over rolling prairies dotted with clumps of oak and poplar, with occasional lakes or sloughs.
From Lake Osakis they took a road cut through the Big Woods to Alexander, and then on to a night station with a log stockade, called Pomme de Terre.
“Riel?” the stage driver said confidentially. “Better sleep in your clothes. The bugs will eat you alive.”
It was good advice, and he took it, but even so the bugs did their best, and their best was far too good.
They crossed the Otter Tail River above its junction with the Bois de Sioux and turned west to avoid the alkali and came at last to the Red River and halted at McCauleyville, opposite the fort.
There was no room in Nolan’s Hotel, but Nolan advised he sleep in the hay-barn. “Damn sight better, anyway,” he admitted frankly. “They’re sleepin’ four an’ five in a bed, and some of them snore something fierce. If it were me, I’d take the hay.”
Riel shrugged. Why not? He had slept in hay before this, and enjoyed it.
The restaurant was crowded with a rough, casual crowd of would-be settlers, farmers, drifters, and trappers. He found a place at the table and helped himself to the trays of food that were continually refilled. The meat was good, the gravy and potatoes even better.
“You goin’ north?” his neighbor asked.
“Yes…to Fort Garry.”
“Me, too.” The man was a burly, affable sort, roughly dressed. “I want a piece of that land. They say the soil is deep, rich, and black.”
“Are you a farmer?” Riel asked politely.
“Hell no! I’ll just grab onto a piece of it an’ sell it to the first one offers me a good price.”
“How do you propose to get a piece of land?”
“How? Just take it. How else?”
“What of the people who live there?”
“You mean the Indians? Hell, they don’t own any land! They just drift across it. A few years from now they’ll all be settled down to farming. At least, the smart ones will.”
“They probably enjoy the life they are living,” Riel suggested.
“So would I. That there’s a good life, but it isn’t practical anymore. Times are changing, and a man, Indian or white, who won’t change with them just doesn’t have a chance.
“Look, there ain’t no way to avoid it. Folks want land, and one way or another, they’ll get it. Down here in the States, for example. How’s the Army going to stop people? Tell them they can’t go any further? They’ll slip by at nighttime. Shoot them? The public wouldn’t stand for it.
“Sure, the Indians kill a few here, and a few there, but there’s always more a-coming. Look at the Little Crow massacre. The Indians rose up when the Army was away fighting in the Civil War, and they killed nigh onto a thousand men, women, and children; now there’s twice as many living there. They just keep comin’. It’s land hunger; folks want homes, a chance to improve their lot.
“I like the Indian way, myself, but it surely isn’t practical. The Indian lives off wild game, wild seeds and roots, and in the same area that it takes to feed a hundred Indians, you can be plowing and planting and feed fifty thousand by the white man’s way.”
“I hear much of that land is lived on by the métis,” Riel offered mildly.
“The half-breeds? It don’t make no difference. From what I hear they are a shiftless lot.”
“But good with their rifles. Most of them have been hunting all their lives, and are dead shots.”
“Well, that’s another kind of thing. Me, I don’t want any land that belongs to somebody else. There’s plenty that stands empty. But I’m only one, and there’s men right in this camp who don’t care who they ride over. They aren’t much worried about the breeds, because they’re scattered and they won’t stand together. They’ve got no leader.”
“Americans?”
“Some of them. A good many are likely Canadians. Most of them don’t care if the American government takes over or the Canadian, just so they get in, and get in they will.
“But, hell…look around you. See the big black-bearded one by the end of the bar? He’s a Russky, and that man next to him is a Swede. Used to be a sailor. There must be fifty Scotsmen in this crowd, and twice as many English….You can’t just call them one thing or another.
“They tell me that once you’ve seen that land—”
“I have seen it.”
“You have?” The man’s interest quickened. “Is it as pretty as they say, or is that all talk?”
“It is one of the most beautiful lands under the sun,” Riel said quietly, “and it has everything—deep soil, good grass, timber, lots of running water, lakes, ponds, game…especially game—and that’s why I think the métis will fight.”
“Look,” the man protested, “maybe they will, but whether it is the Canadians or the Americans in charge, they stand to lose. The Hudson Bay Company sold out and nobody could care less about the breeds. The Bay owned the land. The breeds just lived on it, so what title can they have?”
“They have lived on the land for generations,” Riel replied. “It is theirs by right of possession. In many cases The Bay upheld their right of ownership.”
“Maybe…maybe.” The man shoved back and got up. “Nice talkin’ to you. My name’s Graham.”
“Mine is Riel…Louis Riel.”
“French?”
Riel smiled gently. “Yes, it is, Mr. Graham. I am a métis.”
The International was lying a hundred miles from Fort Abercrombie at Frog Point.
At breakfast Graham came around and straddled the bench beside Riel. “You catchin’ the boat? If you are you’re welcome to ride with me. I got one of those Red River carts and I’ll be pullin’ out in maybe thirty minutes.”
“Thank you. I will appreciate the ride.”
Graham glanced around. “Can’t carry more than you and one more. Get your bag and slip away. Meet me down the road maybe two hundred yards into them trees. All right?”
Riel glanced after Graham as he walked away. For a moment, he hesitated, then shrugged. The man seemed honest enough, and probably was. He wanted no trouble, but if attacked, he felt himself strong enough to handle any one man.
Borrowing a cord, Riel hung his bag from his shoulder and walked out from the settlement as though starting to hoof it. If anybody noticed, they apparently did not care, for there was no comment. Soon he was lost in the oaks and giant cottonwoods along the river.
He had walked almost three hundred yards and was prepared to give up when a voice called, “Hold up there!”
Glancing quickly to his left he saw a Red River cart drawn by a single horse waiting in the shadows under a tree, but well hidden by brush.
“Climb in.” Graham glanced around apprehensively. “If they guessed I had me a cart hid out there’d be fifty men wantin’ a ride to Frog Point,” he explained, “and some of them I’ve known for a while. Seemed to me, you going home and all, that you might need the ride most of all.”
“Thank you.”
Creaking and groaning, they pulled out into the muddy road.
“You’ve ridden this way before? I mean in a cart?”
“I came down from Fort Garry in one, a whole caravan of them.”
The carts, with two giant wheels, were made entirely of wood cut from the forest. No oil could be used on the wooden axles, for it caught the dust and sooner or later the axle would “freeze” in place. The sound of such a cart was like what one imagined a tortured banshee would sound like.
“Been wet,” Graham commented. “You being from this country know what that means.”
Riel nodded. It meant mosquitoes…and mosquitoes in such clouds they had been known to kill a horse or an ox that was left tied and unable to escape. Mosquitoes so thick they drove both men and animals wild in their efforts to escape.
“Got an oilcloth. If it gets too bad we’ll tie the horse behind and cover cart and all with the oilcloth. It won’t keep ’em out, but it will help some.”
Prairie chickens flew up and away. Within the first mile after leaving the forest they started a dozen coveys. The groaning and screaming from the wheels was such that it precluded conversation, and Riel was just as pleased. He wanted time to think, time to get the feel of the country once again.
They met no one. Once, off in the distance, they glimpsed a buffalo…perhaps two.
“Don’t see many this far east,” Graham commented. “Getting mighty scarce.”
They stopped to eat at Georgetown, then moved on, then camped alongside the road, but it was just a brief rest, and then they were moving once more. The steamboat would not remain long, nor would there be another for some time.
Graham seemed tireless. Twice, for brief periods he handed the reins to Riel and dozed, but the horse needed little guidance, and just a slap of the reins every now and then to keep him moving. The trail wound in and out of the brush, allowing glimpses of the river from time to time through the willow, chokecherry, and cottonwood that lined the stream.
Finally, they caught a glimpse of white through the green. It was the steamboat. The International was tied to the bank, moored to a couple of large trees, and already crowded with passengers.
To Riel’s surprise, Lepine was one of them. The big man moved to him at once. “Got to talk to you,” he said, low-voiced. “Trouble’s brewing.”
They stood together in the stern near the huge paddle-wheel.
“What is it, Ambroise?”
“Some of this crowd are landing at Pembina. Listen to them when you get a chance. They’re all going north after land…our land.”
The International backed slowly out of her berth along the bank and swung into the current. The big stern-wheel reversed itself and slowly the steamboat began to edge upriver, gaining speed.
One hundred and thirty feet long, the International drew but two feet of water. Already a veteran of seven or eight years upon the river, she showed the harshness of hot summers and the bitter cold of winter when she lay idle.
The green banks slipped away behind them, now and then permitting a glimpse of the prairie beyond. There were many twists and turns in the river, so actual progress in miles amounted to very little.
Riel walked aft and stood watching the great wheel turning, crystal drops falling back into the water. For two hundred years the Hudson Bay Company, under a charter granted in 1670 to Prince Rupert and his associates, had ruled the vast territory known as Rupert’s Land which lay east of the Rockies to the shores of Hudson Bay.
Not that their control had been unlimited, for in 1783 a group of “free-traders” had combined to form the North West Fur Company, and there had followed for nearly forty years a bloody rivalry.
In 1812 the Earl of Selkirk planted a colony upon the Red River, a colony of Highlanders displaced from their own land in Scotland. They were viciously attacked, and many, including the governor of the Hudson Bay Company, were shot down.
Later, the earl imported portions of two bodies of foreign troops, marched them west, and took possession of Fort Douglas. They in turn were attacked, and peace was not finally resolved until the two companies merged to leave only the Hudson Bay Company in the field.
The inhabitants of what was called Assiniboia were not all métis. Many were retired Hudson Bay Company factors and servants, others their descendants, often of mixed blood. Aside from occasional disputes over religious matters the colony was singularly peaceful, considering the time and the place. Now all that was to change, and Louis Riel paced the deck, hands clasped behind his back, considering what might be done.
Graham found him on the top deck. “Looking for you,” he said mildly. “You’d better go ashore at Pembina. That’s my advice for whatever it’s worth. You listen a mite. There’s talk to be heard there that’ll teach you more about your country than weeks of living in it.”
“Where do you stand, Mr. Graham?”
For a moment, he seemed to be thinking about it. Then he said, “I’m not a well-off man, Riel, not at all well-off. I’m an American, but there’s little choice, seems to me, whichever side of the border a man decides on.
“I’m looking for land, and I’ll be looking there, I imagine.” He paused a moment. “But I’ll look for unsettled land, and that’s more than most of them expect to do.”
COMMENTS: Louis Riel went on to lead two resistance movements in Canada, seeking to preserve the rights of the métis people. He was elected three times to the Canadian House of Commons, though he was never able to attend due to being forced to live in exile in the United States. One of the most controversial figures in Canadian history, he was executed by the Canadian government for high treason in 1885.
Growing up in North Dakota with a father who had spent a good deal of his life in Canada, Louis L’Amour was raised on stories of Louis Riel, debates on his sanity, and discussions of French versus British and Catholic versus Protestant Canadian identities.
The idea for this book was suggested to Louis by Governor William L. Guy of North Dakota in 1972, and fairly quickly a motion-picture production company jumped on board, taking an option on Louis’s yet-to-be-written novel. Dad went and did something like this every once in a while, and it nearly always got him into trouble.
He loved making the deal, or the idea that he could make the deal (he’d struggled for so many years), and there was that part of him that always figured it would be easy. And often it was easy, when he’d had time to get the whole story settled enough so he could write with a minimum of conscious thought. In this case, he seems to have optimistically assumed that he could research, plan, and write this book just about as fast as he might have written a story he’d had in mind for years. The further he got into the research, the more interesting yet more demanding the story became, and the more he realized that the schedule was simply not going to work. Almost as soon as he started writing he was offering to return the option money. In a letter to his movie agent he wrote:
I have to take my time on these projects. I have worked very hard and given a lot of time to this one and look forward to completing it, but I simply can’t work with demands being made on me for pages or such things. I am sorry. I would like to have completed it in the time specified, but new materials kept developing and new aspects of the story that deserve consideration.
The story is a very involved one, with many political ramifications and many characters. I have turned up a manuscript written by one of the major participants, and some letters, that have been permitted to my view in confidence by a Canadian reader. It has made it necessary for me to backtrack and revise some of what I have written, and make it essential for me to rewrite several portions of what I have done. There is no doubt as to their historical accuracy and they permit a greater understanding of the material.
However, that is beside the case. This is a book that in many ways resembles a jigsaw puzzle with bits and pieces that need to be fitted with care. It is not a simple, straight-line story, and cannot be written as such. It is utterly fascinating material and the characters are remarkable, and of course, the events led at least to the formation of the province of Manitoba, and to other wider effects.
If I am wanted at all it is because I approach my work with a feeling for history and a sense of its overall meaning. I would be contemptuous of my readers and of the history of Canada if I were to hurry this through.
I insist on returning the complete $5,000 myself. I want no strings attached.
By “the complete $5,000” he means that he did not expect his agent, Mauri Grashin, to return his 10 percent of the fee. Louis would pay it all back himself.
Some unknown element, however, seems to have kept this deal puttering along, because these comments start showing up in Louis’s journal two months later:
October 11 1973—I am working on LOUIS RIEL, and occasionally the first Sackett, to take place in Shakespeare’s time. The Riel book is an irritation. I want very much to do it, but Kathy [Kathy L’Amour, Louis’s wife and my mother] is right and I should never take on such jobs. I agreed to do this, and I prefer to write on what excites me at the moment. This does not…at the moment.
November 7 1973—Working on the Riel book; I want to write it, but not now and because of the commitment, I must. I like to write what takes my mind at the moment, and to write swiftly upon what excites me.
On the third of December he finally returned the option money, writing:
I want to write the book but to be free of deadlines. Kathy happy, and I also.
Louis eventually did end up using Riel in a more limited way in his novel Lonely on the Mountain.
Here are a few more notes:
Open with action.
RIEL - suffered from the handicap of being a fair man. His loyalty to the Queen and to his people did not waver. He wished to do the best for the latter without in any way failing in loyalty to the Queen.
Had he been a fanatic he would have had no decision to make. Rebellion would have been his course; he could have been more dynamic, he could have given unlimited scope to his speaking, he could have and would have resisted the Canadian Army, and might have stopped their advance.
His fault lay, if fault it is, in being a reasonable man. He hesitated at points where a fanatic would not. Yet, considering the situation, his end was inevitable.
His vision of lost opportunities brought him back to seek a victory when the time was past.