The Fourth National Resistance
GABRIEL DUMONT
If Louis Riel was a comet, Gabriel Dumont was a lodestone, a magnet firmly grounded on the earth of the Plains. At a very young age, he earned a reputation as a warrior and hunter. Dumont was thirteen years old when he fought at the Battle of the Grand Coteau in 1851. The man he became was forged in that battle. In later years Dumont was often elected the chief captain of the hunt. People followed him and they trusted him with their lives. He was a man of his word and a man who cared for the people he led. Every time Dumont hunted he gave his first kills to the needy. He was the best of men and a mighty hunter.
He had two seemingly incompatible reputations, as a peacemaker and as a warrior. It was the warrior Dumont who offered Riel five hundred men to fight Wolseley’s forces at Red River in 1870. It was Dumont the peacemaker who kept a line of communication open with the Sioux and the Blackfoot throughout the 1860s, ’70s and ’80s. Sometimes Dumont’s peacemaking skills were used to facilitate Métis access to a share of the resources. Sometimes they were offered to assist the First Nations. Assuming the role of peacemaker in such situations meant that Dumont spoke fluent Cree, Ojibwa, Sioux and Blackfoot. In the 1870s one did not acquire such language fluency from books or in school. The skill was acquired from long acquaintance, family ties and constant interaction, even with traditional enemies such as the Sioux and Blackfoot.
Gabriel Dumont, circa 1880–82 (Glenbow Archives PA-2218)
He was a deeply religious man, and over the years he and his wife stood as godparents for dozens of Métis children. Godparents took on important family responsibilities. Assuming the role was an agreement to care for the children if something happened to their parents. In those days, when diseases swept the Plains leaving hundreds dead, Dumont’s many godchildren had a special call on him.
Dumont was educated on the Plains. He never learned to read or write, but he learned diplomacy, politics, leadership, religion and trade. Dumont’s education gave him a deep knowledge of the land and the resources of the Plains. On Métis hunts and in their camps, he absorbed Michif ways, language and culture. He travelled deep into the United States and knew people of many languages, cultures and religions. He lived a life of movement on the Plains. He was an ardent Métis nationalist and a classic Métis buffalo hunter.
Dumont tried to strengthen the ties between the First Nations and the Métis Nation on the Plains. He wanted to create an alliance similar to the ancient alliances that had long existed in the North-West, such as the Blackfoot Confederacy, the Sioux Confederacy, the Dakota Confederacy and the Nehiyaw Pwat (the Iron Alliance).1 Being part of the Iron Alliance did not preclude the Métis Nation from forming alliances with bands in the Sioux Confederacy. After 1862 there appears to have been just such an alliance between the Sioux and the Métis Nation. Gabriel Dumont and his family were credited with making that alliance. These were political alliances and the world of politics is not always smooth sailing. There are some reports of uncomfortable hunting camps where distrust and discord reigned. The people didn’t always like each other and they didn’t always agree. But the whole point of the alliance was not to make war on each other. They didn’t have to be best friends.
When Dumont offered five hundred horsemen to Riel in 1870, it is likely he thought he could get them from the Iron Alliance. Dumont was not a man to promise support he could not deliver. Métis from the South Saskatchewan, Qu’Appelle and Fort Edmonton would have made up the bulk of the force. The Iron Alliance might have provided more warriors. This was before the treaties were signed and there were young Cree, Assiniboine and Ojibwa men who would answer a call from Dumont.
But by the 1880s things had changed. The buffalo were gone and the Iron Alliance was no more. The First Nations had been cut up by the American border and then cut further into small bands living on what the Cree call iskonikan or “leftovers.” Canadians call them reserves. The Indian agents made sure the Cree were poorly armed, mounted and fed. Canada, like the United States, used food to control the bands.
The First Nations had treaties. They had signed solemn agreements with the Crown, with the queen. Treaties were supposed to mean something. Indeed, some of the internal disputes within the bands about whether to go to war were about loyalty to the Crown and the treaties. The ink was barely dry on some of their treaties when the promises were broken. The reserves were simmering—the loss of the buffalo, disease, starvation rations, vindictive Indian agents and Ottawa’s ruthless disregard had all contributed to a mounting tension within the tribes. They were watching their people die. The taste of life in the early 1880s was bitter and hard to swallow. It made it difficult for chiefs like Poundmaker and Big Bear to control their young warriors.
Dumont travelled extensively to the reserves and he personally visited the chiefs. He kept open lines of communication because he hoped there was enough common cause for the Métis Nation and the First Nations to work together. There wasn’t. They were all heading to war.
It’s usually called the North-West Rebellion, but the Métis Nation has always called it the North-West Resistance. Like the Red River Resistance, the North-West Resistance was not about disloyalty and it was not an attempt to overthrow the government. The Saskatchewan Métis called their part in the North-West Resistance “La Guerre Nationale” (The National War). Like that of the Victory of the Frog Plain in 1816, the name tells us how the Métis saw things.
First Nations were also heading to war at the same time as the Métis. They were all part of the North-West Resistance. There were some Indians who fought alongside the Métis and some Métis who fought alongside the Indians. But the First Nations weren’t fighting the Métis national war and the Métis weren’t fighting the First Nations war. They were walking separate paths on the war road. They were both in desperate battles to defend their own people.
THE CLIQUE
In 1874 the federal government reserved whole townships for colonization companies. The idea was that the companies would find it profitable to purchase land from the government and then resell it to settlers. The scheme didn’t work, largely because there were too few settlers to purchase the lands and there was little profit to be made. By 1877 none of the tracts set aside for the colonization companies had been successfully settled. But in 1882 Macdonald breathed new life into the scheme. He proposed a grant of 10 million acres to the companies. The much larger land base and the prospect of a railroad was a land speculator’s dream. Fortunes would be made, and everyone wanted in on the action. The land grants went to political cronies and friends of the Conservative government. The best bets were placed on lands along the future route of the Canadian Pacific Railway. So, colonization companies made it their business to have connections within government. They all wanted to know the planned route for the railroad. The newspapers reported on bribes to officials who got stock in the companies in exchange for information about the railroad route.2
For the Métis Nation on the Saskatchewan River, the Prince Albert Colonization Company was a problem. When twenty-four Métis families tried to file entry for their lands, they were told that the parish of St. Louis de Langevin had been transferred to this colonization company and that they would have to register their claim with the company’s agent. For the Métis, this sale of their parish to Conservative Party cronies was the single most important factor that would lead to the coming war.3 A list of the board of directors provides evidence of the Conservative Party’s inside dealing. The board members included two sitting and one about-to-be-elected Conservative member of Parliament, and two sons, one brother, one son-in-law and one brother-in-law of Conservative members of Parliament.4 It is not too difficult to see what was going on.
Some of the players in the coming war are already familiar to us. Macdonald was still the prime minister. He had learned the value of propaganda, and in July 1884 his Indian commissioner, Edgar Dewdney, secured an interest in The Prince Albert Times, after which the tone of the newspaper, formerly sympathetic to the Métis, changed dramatically.5 Schultz and Charlie Mair were carrying on their familiar activities of land speculation and the promotion of the Canadian Party’s agenda, with its lethal dose of anti-Métis and anti-Riel poison. Mair wrote several articles for The Prince Albert Times. Colonel Dennis was the surveyor-general for a while and then jumped into the land speculation game.
Lawrence Clarke was part of a Conservative clique in Prince Albert. These were the men who held all of the political power. The Indian commissioner, Dewdney, thought the clique was intentionally stirring up the Métis in the belief that a war would bring profits. Clarke worked hard to make the Métis think he was acting in their interests, and he was very successful in hiding his real agenda. He dropped money into the coffers of the priests to get them to exercise their influence with the Métis, and that worked well for a while. The priests urged the Métis to vote Conservative and they did, even though the Conservatives did nothing to assist the Métis and actively worked against them.
Then Clarke cut the wages of the freighters. This third source of revenue for the Métis was drastically reduced at a time when they were also experiencing the loss of the buffalo and crop failures. Dewdney thought Clarke’s wage cut was deliberately intended to provoke the Métis.
The clique also infiltrated and then took over the local Farmers’ Union, which until then had been a staunch ally of the Métis but now began to separate itself. The surveyors fixed any survey problems for white landowners. The only outstanding claims left were those of the Métis in St. Laurent whose land was claimed by the Prince Albert Colonization Company. The excuse for not surveying the Métis lands was feeble. In a land where francophone Métis were a significant part of the population, the land office could not be bothered to get someone who spoke French.
The Métis on the Saskatchewan were fighting to keep their land. They were poor and getting poorer, but they had chosen their land and they were prepared to defend it. Everyone, especially the priests, had pressed them to settle on the land. They did settle and they were making a go of it. But their land was under threat. In the 1870s Canada took Métis lands in Manitoba, claiming that the Métis were mere users, not owners, so the lands were empty and up for grabs. Now the Métis had come to the Saskatchewan, and the Canadian Party men were still taking their lands. The justification now was that the Métis were not settled exactly as Canadians settled. The Métis must settle on the land in squares; no other shapes were permitted. The Métis preferred their long, narrow rangs on the riverfront. That’s what they had in Red River. That’s what they had on the Saskatchewan. That’s what they wanted to keep.
Not only did the Métis have to be settled on a square; they had to be on the right square. Each township had odd and even numbered squares. The Métis were permitted to settle only on the even-numbered squares. They could not be on the squares set aside for the Hudson’s Bay Company or the ones set aside for the roads, the public schools or the railway. The fact that the squares were imposed after many of the Métis settled on the land didn’t matter. There was no land office to view maps of the township divisions and there was no place to register their titles. Once again the Métis were seen as mere users of the land, not settlers and not proper owners. So, it really didn’t matter which squares they were on. Even if they were on the right squares, their lack of title meant others could jump their claims. If they were on the wrong squares, they were squatting on someone else’s land—the Canadian Pacific Railway’s or the Company’s. They were supposed to go.
Dumont looked around the North-West and what he saw was not promising. He knew about the dispossession of the Métis in Red River after 1870, and he knew that in 1881 and 1882 new settlers had tried to displace the Edmonton Métis. Ignoring Métis protests, the newcomers built their cabins on Métis lands. When the Métis complained to the police, they were told that nothing could be done. So, the Edmonton Métis took things into their own hands. Some thirty Métis rigged cables to their horses and pulled the newcomers’ houses down into the ravines.6 In so doing they successfully protected their lands. That action inspired Dumont. He knew those men in Edmonton. He thought the Saskatchewan Métis could also take action to protect their lands.
The same scenario was being played out everywhere. The immigrants were taking Métis lands. The South Saskatchewan Métis believed that all Métis had won their rights in 1870 with the Manitoba Act, but those outside Manitoba had not received them. The Saskatchewan Métis tried to get the government’s attention. Their civil protest took the form of petitions to Ottawa and the new territorial capital in Regina. They urged their priests, ministers and local representative to send petitions containing their claims and resolutions to Canada.
EIGHTY-FOUR PETITIONS
The Métis sent the government petition after petition. Later, in 1885, Macdonald told Parliament that the Métis had not presented their claims to the government. But Macdonald knew the Métis had sent petitions—eighty-four between 1878 and 1885. That averages one per month over a seven-year period. One doesn’t need to read all eighty-four petitions to get the idea.7 There is a sorry sameness to them. As one petition penned by Gabriel Dumont and addressed to Sir John A. Macdonald said,
We are poor people and cannot pay for our land without utter ruin, and losing the fruits of our labour or seeing our lands pass into the hands of strangers . . . In our anxiety we appeal to your sense of justice as Minister of the Interior and head of government, and beg you to reassure us speedily, by directing that we shall not be disturbed on our lands . . . since which have occupied these lands in good faith.8
The decision-makers, far away in eastern Canada, never even bothered to respond.
In 1879 many Métis petitioned for reserves. They wanted to live in communities or close together, they wanted to exclude strangers from these lands and they wanted the lands to remain in their hands for a long time. The government disliked this idea, and because there were some Métis families who wanted to live independently, those requesting reserves were rejected. According to Ambroise Lépine the government not only dealt in deception, it liked to deceive those it dealt with. Lépine was not alone in thinking the government was deceiving the Métis. By 1880 the Métis were very bitter about Canada. They were on the move seeking places to settle, and lack of food was driving some of the movement. It drove the Métis from Cypress Hills down to the Milk River in Montana. Riel was drafting Métis petitions from there.9
In 1883 the Métis in St. Laurent were promised, in writing, that their lands would be surveyed in a manner that respected the rangs. Despite the promise no one dealt with the Métis claims in St. Laurent. The Métis sent messages to everyone. But there was only a deep silence. It was all aen mahykamikaahk, “going wrong.”