In 1909 the leaders of the Métis Nation met in Joseph Riel’s home in St. Vital, Manitoba. These were the men who survived the Red River Resistance of 1869–70 and the North-West Resistance of 1885. With them that evening were their younger siblings and some younger men, the next generation of Métis. These men who met in 1909 have many names: les anciens, lii vyeu, les fidèles à Riel.1 In this book they are the Old Wolves.
The men gathered at Joseph’s home that night were on a mission to tell the truth—they would have called it God’s truth—about their people, the Métis Nation of the Canadian North-West. They were gathered that night for one purpose. They wanted to carve out a strategy that would counter the many stories of the Métis Nation and Louis Riel that were being printed in the Canadian media and books of their day. For the Old Wolves these stories were illegitimate and one-sided, a propaganda campaign that justified the government’s denial of the Métis Nation’s existence and the dispossession of the Métis from their lands.
That night the Old Wolves vowed to take action. They vowed to tell their own stories and rebut inaccuracies and attacks on the Métis Nation. They were determined to keep the Nation alive by commemorating Louis Riel, promoting their Michif language and defending Métis Nation rights. They would tell their history as they knew it and as their people had experienced it.
They were already taking action. In 1887 they had established the Union Nationale Métisse Saint-Joseph, an organization intended to keep the Nation alive.2 In 1889 they were inspired to continue in their efforts when Gabriel Dumont, one of their famous hunters and military leaders, visited St. Vital and encouraged them to keep up the fight for Métis rights. In 1891 they erected a monument on Louis Riel’s grave. In 1910 they created a new national flag and a national historical committee.3 It is impossible to miss the constant references to “nation” and “national” in their institutions. They have always considered themselves a political entity, a nation.
The Old Wolves created a historical committee charged with telling their story. They focused their efforts on what Canadians call the “Riel Rebellions.” They hated the word “rebellion.” To their minds a “rebellion” was a group of people who took up arms to separate from the country or to overthrow or undermine the government. This, the Métis Nation had never done. They had taken up arms only to defend their lands and their rights. They never believed fighting for their rights was a rebellion, and this was a distinction they insisted on; it mattered deeply to them. In a letter published in Le Devoir in 1913, Joseph Riel chastised Henri Bourassa for just that transgression. Joseph insisted that the Métis were “fighting for their rights and never wanted independence or annexation to the United States, and it is not fitting for the grandson of the great Papineau to talk of struggles in such a good cause as ‘rebellions.’”4
The Old Wolves and Union Nationale Métisse, 28th anniversary of the hanging of Louis Riel, November 16, 1913 (Société Historique de Saint-Boniface 14482)
Such an objection might not seem, in this day, to be anything out of the ordinary. But the Métis still vividly remembered their defeat at Batoche, the final battle in the North-West Resistance of 1885. So objecting to the term “rebellion” was a calculated decision.5 The defeated are not supposed to throw pebbles at the victors, not even forty years later. A deferential manner is expected. But wolves are not deferential. It’s not in their nature.
It took time for the historical committee to gather their facts and to work with the legacy of fear and silence that continued to oppress their people. When Canada hanged Louis Riel on November 16, 1885, their best and brightest voice, all the Métis voices fell silent. Silence was the price of defeat. But in the minds of the Old Wolves, that silence roared with injustice. Their bones were waxing old but they would not go silent to their graves.
The committee’s first public foray was a recounting of their history of 1869 to 1870, the Red River Resistance. Guillaume Charette, the Métis Nation’s “Old Storyteller,” also a historian and lawyer, spoke to a shocked audience at the Jesuit college in St. Boniface on November 25, 1923.6 They were shocked because, as the editor of the Queen’s Quarterly in Kingston, Ontario, would later write,
[T]he public of our country is not yet prepared to face frankly the facts . . . and those of us who are interested in the ultimate victory of truth must be content with slow and gradual progress in that direction . . . the opinion in Ontario . . . has been largely tinged by the reports sent East by such men as Charles Mair . . . and . . . Toronto papers such as the Globe, created an attitude of mind which succeeding years have not been able to modify substantially.7
In 1931 when the editor of La Liberté began to regurgitate all the old lies about the rebellions and labelled the Métis defence of their rights as criminal and crazy, the Old Wolves called an assembly of all the Manitoba Métis to debate how they would respond.
The Old Wolves decided to publish their own history of the Métis Nation. The historical committee began to take sworn declarations from Métis survivors, the men still alive who had played key roles in the Red River Resistance of 1869–70 and in the North-West Resistance of 1885. There are affidavits taken in 1909, and twice in 1929 the committee visited Batoche, the site of the last battle in the North-West Resistance. Virtually the whole town came to their community meetings. They hired Auguste de Trémaudan to be the author of their history.
The Old Wolves left their papers and notes behind. There are copies of Louis Riel’s writings and Métis Nation meeting minutes from the early 1870s. There are sworn declarations from Métis. There are attempts to organize the facts of the resistance movements and to answer the questions that would eventually form the appendix to Trémaudan’s book, a 1930s version of FAQs (frequently asked questions). The committee’s original intention was to publish a simple narrative followed by a complete work supported with references. Unfortunately, Trémaudan died before he completed his task. It was a terrible setback, but the historical committee stubbornly kept editing Trémaudan’s work for years.
The committee exercised great control over the content of Trémaudan’s history book while he was alive. They demanded that he tone down some of the language in the book. It was not that they disagreed with what he wrote, but they wanted Canadians to hear their story. If the tone was bitter, too accusatory or just too anti-English, Canadians would not listen. Trémaudan resisted this instruction. He thought the book should be a direct attack on lii Canadas, the Canadian Party who so violently stole the North-West away from the Métis Nation. But the historical committee insisted that Trémaudan sweeten his words. The published version of the book describes the Canadian Party as a “band of cheats, criminals and thieves.”8 That is the toned-down version!
The historical committee understood the power of words. They knew that in addition to countering the “rebel” label, they had to counter the claim that Riel was insane. The Métis have always seen Riel as a man of God, a prophet and a great leader who was dedicated to his people and did everything in his power to help them. For the Métis, Riel’s sanity has never been particularly relevant. Still, the Old Wolves knew the Canadian obsession with Riel’s sanity. They knew that if Riel was labelled insane, his actions and the cause he fought for could be dismissed. This they would not allow. Louis Riel was their greatest leader, a comet that appeared on the horizon in 1868, shone brightly for seventeen years and flamed out in 1885. The Riel years have left an indelible mark on the Métis Nation, which now mostly describes itself as Riel’s people. Though the Riel years are the best-known parts of the Métis Nation’s history, they are only a small part of a history that really began in the 1790s and continues today.
On July 9, 1935, the Old Wolves proudly announced the forthcoming publication of their book, Histoire de la Nation Métisse dans l’Ouest Canadien, at an annual Métis gathering of over two thousand members of the Union Nationale Métisse.9
For 27 years the members of that Committee stuck together and worked consistently and arduously with the one and almost unique object in mind: The publication of what they considered a true version of . . . history. Old ones dropped out or disappeared, but new ones replaced them and kept on going and working stubbornly. Many of them cherished the idea of reading the book, their history, the history they themselves made and really wrote with their blood and sacrifices. At the same time their children and grand-children are proud and justly so of their deeds . . .10
Until that book was published, the Métis Nation’s history was passed down orally. These are the stories they told their children and grandchildren. They are the stories most Métis still know and tell today.
The Old Wolves’ book is mainly concerned with two Métis Nation resistance movements, the Red River Resistance of 1869–70 and the North-West Resistance of 1885. This book covers that same ground but benefits from access to new analyses and evidence. It also attempts to fill in more detail of the early years leading up to the Red River Resistance and continues the story of this new nation, the Métis Nation of the Canadian North-West, into the twenty-first century.