Part 4 (1/2)
The rebellion, if that's what it was, had been achieved with force but no bloodshed. With the subtlety of a seasoned politician, Riel had drawn enough consensus from the diverse elements of the colony to govern Red River. While the Canadian government dithered, American annexationists were quick to realize the potential of the
*John Bruce, a local magistrate and president of the National Committee, later testified that Mactavish had told him McDougall and his successors should be resisted because Canada's taking possession of the territory was ”an injustice to the people and to the officers of the llu~son's Bay Company, since the Government had given them no part of the Y.300,000 paid for their country.”
t'rhe fleur-de-lis was the proud standard of Samuel de Champlain, the Father of New France. The shamrock was added to recognize the treasurer of the M6tis Governing Council, a professional Irishman named ”' B.
O'Donoghue, who taught matheinatics at St Boni Cace College.
BRINGING LOUIS RIEL TO HEEL 59.
situation, offering Riel. flattering entreaties and generous cash donations if lie would throw in his republic's lot with the Stars and Stripes. Insignificant as Red River was, Was.h.i.+ngton politicians recognized it as the ideal entry point for a takeover of Canada's West-and eventually the entire continent. ”The tendency of North American events is plainly towards the consolidation into one great nation,” chirped the New York Sun. ”From the Polar Sca to the Isthmus of Darien, there will in time be only one national government-that of the United States. Who among us can say that ours is not a glorious destiny or reflect without exultation that he is an American citizen?” Macdonald understood these sentiments all too well, lamenting that while he would gladly neglect the West for the next half-century, if Englishmen didn't go there, Yankees would. Something had to be done fast to bring Riel's upstart republic to heel.
SUCCESS BY INA-DN ERTENCE did not figure prominently in Labrador Smiths cunningly conceived career path, but at this pivotal moment in Canadian history Sirjohn A. Macdonald's ignorance intervened to place the still- obscure fur trader at centre stage. Sir George Simpson, who for most of forty years had operated the Hudson's Bay Company as a private preserve out of his headquarters at Lachine, just west of Montreal, had such an enormous personal impact on Canadian public life that Macdonald quite naturally a.s.sumed the secretive Company was still run out of Montreal, even if he no longer knew who was in charge. That had not been true since Alexander Grant Dallas, Simpson's successor, had moved the headquarters to Red River in 1860 and had himself been succeeded by William Mactavish four years later. Ensconced in Montreal for less than a year, Smith had Company rank only of district manager, and his department wa~ the HB(,S smallest and least typical, taking in 60 LABRADOR SMITH.
eastern Canada and Labrador. The Prime Minister had never met or heard of Smith, but it was a normal reflex for him to call on the highest accessible HBC official to help settle troubles on the western front in what was, after all, still Company territory-particularly since he had been recommended by George Stephen. Smith, who had never even visited a Company post west of Lachine, was the last man on earth to try to set Macdonald straight. As he later explained, it was no part of his duty 61to volunteer to correct any man's opinion or delusion unless it were in the general interest.”
Summoned to Otta-wa on November 2 9, 1869, Smith was closely questioned by Macdonald on the difference in att.i.tudes between the HBCs London head office, anxious to complete the transfer and get its money, and local Company officers reported to be encouraging the insurrection. Not averse to involving himself in a situation he knew nothing about, Smith laid much of the blame on the government for not securing Governor Mactavish's co-operation before dispatching McDougall to the territor-y. To counter claims that the HBC was helping the rebels, he insisted that adjustment of the present difficulty would be of great advantage to both the C ompany and its field officers, then delivered a patriotic sally he must have known would please the Prime Minister. ”If no settlement occurs,” said he, ”there will be no transfer, and if there is no transfer of the territory,, law and order and property will be at the inercy of the most lawless members of the community until the Americans step in and annex it.”
Macdonald interrupted to ask Smith whether he would go to Fort Garry and help settle the dispute, and later the same day sent a memorandum to Joseph Howe, the cabinet minister in charge of the Red River negotiations, praising Smith: ”I am now strongly of opinion that we should make instant use of D.A. Smith. In the chat I BRINGING LOUIS RIEL TO HEEL 61.
had with him to-day he took high ground, declared himself a staunch Canadian and lost no opportunity of emphasizing his own complete impartiality as well as the desire of the Company to effect a speedy settlement of this unhappy business. If the Hudson's Bay officers are implicated in fomenting the disturbance, Smith can, from his position, discourage them. . ..”
Smith was shortly afterwards appointed Dominion Commissioner to Inquire into the North West Rebellion and charged with endeavouring to arrange some system of concerted action in the pacification of the country. The term ”pacification” correctly identified his real mission. He was to use the moral suasion of the royal proclamations he carried with him plus whatever bribes might be necessary to create a political movement that would oppose and, if possible, overthrow Riel, laying the groundwork for future negotiations, not with any puppet administration but directly between the citizens of Red River and the Canadian government. Smith left Ottawa on December 13, accompanied by a brother-inlaw, Richard Hardisty, and Dr Charles Tupper, one of the Fathers of Confederation and former premier of Nova Scotia, now a prominent Tory Member of Parliament. Tupper (after 1879 Sir Charles) came along ostensibly to inquire into the whereabouts of his son-in-law, Captain D.R. Cameron, who was serving on McDougall'.s staff, but was probably included by Macdonald as his personal spy. The party took the fastest route available-by train to Toronto, Chicago, St Paul, and the end of steel at Breckenridge, Minnesota (the last miles aboard the St Paul and Pacific Railway), then bN, stage and canvas-covered sleigh to the C anadian border.
They met McDougall on his way back to Ottawa and were briefed on the horrors of Red River. But what Smith recalled most vividly about that trip was the fertile land along the tracks of the St Paul and Pacific, the 62 LABRADOR SMITH.
bankrupt railroad originally chartered to reach Oregon on the Pacific Coast. For Tupper, one of the more curious moments of the journey was Smith's unexpected attack of megalomania. Tbe fur trader, less than a week after taking on his government a.s.signment (and less than two weeks after.inybody in Ottawa even knew his name), demanded to be named a member of the august Privy Council, then Canada's highest civilian bonour. When Tupper pointed out that, if sanctioned, this should have been done before they had left Ottawa, Smith stopped at the next telegraph post and wired the suggestion to Sir John A. Macdonald, who just as quickly turned him down. The trio fought their way across the frigid plain towards Red River, stopping to rest and warni up at Fort Abercrombie, where the landlord took them to his shed. Six woodland caribou were standing there, like horses in stalls, frozen stiff, and the Abercrombie cook hacked off a hindquarter for the travellers. After leaving his royal proclamations at an IIBC trading post along the way, Smith arrived at Red River on December 27.
lie was received civilly enough by Riel, but when asked to promise he would not try to upset the provisional government's legality, Smith declined and was detained for most of the next two months in a cramped room at Fort Garry. Allowed an unlimited flow of visitors and using his well-connected brother-in-law to recruit the right people, he persuaded several of the settlement's moderates to support Ottawa's intentions of integrating Red River with the growing Dominion. When persuasion failed, Smith had at his disposal several thousand dollars to bribe wavering M6tis, credits to hand out at I IBC stores for winter supplies, and jobs as tripmen for next summer's canoe and cart brigades. Realizing that his support was beginning to drain away, Riel demanded that Smith demonstrate the legitimacy of his BRINGING LOUIS RIEL TO HEEL 63.
mission by showing him the royal proclamations. Smith dispatched Hardisry to fetch the doc.u.ments. M6tis raiders tried to stop him, but some of the Smith converts escorted Hardisty to the fort, spreading the word that there was among them a fully accredited representative of the Canadian government and Queen Victoria with important news foi Red River citizens.
Riel could not refuse Smith's demand that everyone be brought together the next morning to hear his message.
JANUARY 19,1870, DAWNED SULLFN AND COLD, the sun hugging the horizon as if hesitant to venture into such frigid surroundings. It was twenty below zero Fahrenlicit, and the wind snarled across the flat landscape, oblit- crating most point~ of reference with snow. The good burghers of Red River came, more than a thousand strong, to hear the Ottawa emissary. They arrived aboard horse-drawn sleds swathed in buffalo robes, on snowshoes or by puffing dog trains front the outer settlements and gathered in a field inside the fort. They lit small fires, stamping circles in the snow to keep the blood flowing, and, as the temperature dropped, tucked mittened hands inside their 11BC blanket capotes for extra bodywarmth-or indulged in some liquid glow. The steam of their breathing had almost obscured the enclosure by the time Riel and Smith climbed onto a hastily erected platform to begin the historic proceedings.
For five hours Smith read aloud from various doc.u.ments, his words faithfully translated by Riel, including the text of the original commission to the misguided McDougall, proving that the Prime Minister's original emissary had acted entirely on his own. Smith read the lengthy proclamation from Sir John Young, reiterating the Governor General's wordy pledge that the ”Imperial Government has no intention of acting otherwise, or 64 LABRADOR SMITH.
permitting others to act otherwise than in perfect good faith towards the inhabitants of the Red River district of the North-West .... The people may rely upon it that respect and protection will be extended towards the dif- ferent religious persuasions; that t.i.tles of every description of property will be carefully guarded; and that all the franchises which have existed, and which the people may prove themselves qualified to exercise, shall be duly continued or liberally conferred.” Except for the occasional mild tiff between Smith and Riel about which papers should be promulgated, the mutual respect that seemed to flow between the two men impressed members of the audience. By mid-afternoon, the sun was settling into the southwest, and the cold had become intolerable; the small boys who had been collecting wood to keep the fires aglow were too chilled to continue. The meeting was adjourned to ten o'clock the next morning.
On the following (lay, lectured at for another five hours, the crowd-except for the M6tis riflemen patrolling its edges-started to swing towards Smith.
It wasn't so much anything specific lie said or promised as the c.u.mulative effect of his doc.u.ments, their carefully drafted and often stilted phrases demonstrating the fact that central Canadian politicians really did care about Red River's welfare. Alid it was Smith himself, looking fully his fifty years, the leathered skin reflecting his two decades in Labrador's primitive fur trade, who made his arguments persuasive. I le told them, as if it were a hardwrung confession, thai he was married to a Hardisty whose mother had been a Red River Sutherland, and that his own mother was a Grant, related to the great M6t]s leader, Cuthbert Grant. He seemed somehow incorruptible in his dour Scottishness, the tiny beard-icicles bobbing to the rhythm of his earnest pledges. He kept reading all those long doc.u.ments, with their highsounding cadences, transmitting the subliminal message BRINGING LOUIS RIEL TO HEEL 65.
that anyone taking this much trouble to sound officious had to mean it.
He read a personal greeting froin Queen Victoria (delivered through Lord Granville, the Colonial Secretary) a.s.suring his listeners they would enjoy the same status as British subjects in any other part of Canada. At the end of that interminable second day, Smith set aside the dreary doc.u.ments and spoke from the heart. ”I am here to-day in the interests of Canada,”
he intoned, ”but only in so far as they are in accordance with the interests of this country.... As to the Hudson's Bay Company, my connection with that body is, I suppose, generally known; but I will say that if it could do any possible good to this country I would, at this moment, resign my position in that Company. I sincerely hope that my humble efforts may, in some measure, contribute to bring about, peaceably, union and entire accord among all cla.s.ses of the people of this country.”
Not eloquent, exactly, but after ten hours of mindnumbing proclamations, at least genuine, and Smith was cheered for his effort. A chastened Riel now took the stage and moved that a convention of twenty M6tis and the same number of English-speaking representatives meet to consider Smith's commission and draw up a list of rights for submission to Ottawa. When a listener objected that his statement cast doubt on the legality of Smith's doc.u.ments, Riel replied matter-of-factly that the Bay man's commission was valid and that it should be implemented. Riel's agreement to set up a const.i.tuent a.s.sembly outside the sponsors.h.i.+p of his own purview meant that Smith had achieved precisely the breakthrough Sir John A. Macdonald had recognized as the crucial element in any solution: that Canada be able to negotiate directly with representatives of Red River instead of Riel's unelected and radical provisional government. 'rhree delegates to the Ottawa talks were eventually elected and a Bill of Rights framed under 66 LABRADOR SMITH.
which the people of Red River were willing to become part of Canada. Riel was chosen-by representatives of the entire community this time-to continue as head of the provisional government. As a sign of good faith, he later released most of the Fort Garry prisoners, including FIBC Governor William Mactavish, who left for his ancestral hearth in Scotland.*
A few days before Smith was due to leave for Ottawa to report on his mission, Red River's fragile tranquillity was shattered by a series of bizarre blunders. A hundred English-speaking malcontents from Portage la Prairie, west of Red River, marched towards Fort Garry determined to hang Riel. Norbert Parisien, a youngM6tis they had taken prisoner, escaped, s.n.a.t.c.hing a double-barrelled shotgun, and started ru nning across the frozen Red River. When Parisien encountered a popular young settler named HughJohn Sutherland, who happened to be pa.s.sing by, he shot him in the chest. His pursuers, seeing the mortally wounded Sutherland, recaptured Parisien and kicked him to death. Members of the rowdy, now bloodied gang, including a boisterous Irish Protestant drifter named Thomas Scott, were arrested by Riel's riflemen. Not much was known about the twenty-eight-year-old Scott because there wasn't that much to know. He was one of those marginal frontier characters who subst.i.tuted racial and religious prejudice for personal motivation and had spent the past year cursing and hara.s.sing the M6tis. Once in the Fort Garry jail, Scott jeered at the guards, insulted their religion, called them cowards, and at one point physically attacked Riel. The situation deteriorated to the point where Scott's guards could no longer maintain discipline and bluntly told Riel they would shoot bim if he didn't execute Scott. The M6tis leader's more
*Alactavish reached Liverpool on July 21, 1870, and died two days later.
BRINGING LOUIS RIEL TO HEEL 67.
militant followers were already angry that he had ordered the release of so many other prisoners, and Riel had to find a way of quickly rea.s.serting his authority. Scott was brought before a court martial, found guilty of insubordination and sentenced to death. VVhen Smith pleaded with Riel not to spoil his bloodless record with a senseless execution, the Wils leader shrugged and replied, ”We must make Canada respect us.”
At noon on March 4, 1870, the Reverend George Young, a local Methodist pastor, led the terrified Scott to a ditch outside the fort. His hands were bound, he was blindfolded, and a firing squad of six M6t1s shot the trembling Irishman in the chest. When Scott was heard moaning, Fran~ols Guillemette, one of the executioners, pulled out a revolver and at close range put a bullet through his left ear; it came blasting out through his mouth. Refused burial at Red River's Presbyterian cemetery, Scotts body was placed in a rough coffin and taken to a shed, where, according to George Young, five hours after the execution he was heard still pitifully moaning, ”Oh, let me out of this. My G.o.d, how I suffer! ” Riel dispatched two guards to deliver a coup de 9rdce. Scott was buried inside a deep hole in Fort Garry's stone battlements, but a year later when his remains were being disinterred for transfer to a proper graveyard, diggers found his coffin empty - except for the rope that had been used to tie ]its hands at the execution. According to one report, just before the original burial, Scott's body was removed from the coffin by a M6t]s guard named Elz6ar Goulet, weighted down with chains, and dropped through a fis.h.i.+ng-hole in the Red River ice. ”The secret of Thomas Scott's burial will likely never come out . . . ” Alexandre Nault, whose father was one of' Scott's executioners, told the Winnipeg 7~ibune in 1961 on his eighty-seventh birthday. ”An oath was taken never to tell.”
68 LABRADOR SMITH.
Scott's lively ghost harmed no one more grievously than Louis Riel.* The many shots that killed the Irish renegade destroyed any chance of peaceful transfer of the 1113C lands. Dr Schultz, leader of Red River's rabid pro-Canadian party, toured Orange Ontario brandis.h.i.+ng a rope that he claimed had bound Scott's hands during the execution and a via] of the martyr's blood.t Schultz and others whipped tip public outrage, demanding revenge on those the Globe in Toronto labelled as desperate, depraved, devilish Papists. In Quebec, Riel and his praetorian guard of M6tis were raised to the status of folk heroes-champions and victims-of French Canada's crusade against Anglo-Saxon bigotry. It was one of the many ironies of the situation that only, five days after Scott's execution, Bishop Tach6 arrived in Red River bearing word from Sir John A. Macdonald of a general amnesty and the promise of welcoming Red River into Confederation as a province, to be called Manitoba. Riel immediately released all remaining prisoners and prepared to join Confederation. The trio of Red River delegates-a priest, a magistrate and a store clerk-left for Ottawa to negotiate the terms of what became the Manitoba Act, pa.s.sed into law on Mav 12, 1870. It included nearly all of Riel's demands, such as guarantees for the French language and Catholic rellgion, and set aside 1.4 million acres for the N16tis, preserving their precious river lots.
*After Louis Riel was hanged for treason in Regilli on November 16, 1885, One of the jurors at his trial admitted, ”We tried R~iel for treason, and he was hanged for the murder of Thomas Scott.”
tVolunteers must have provided refills, since Schultz freelv sprinkled blood on the handkcrchiefs of tearful women at the climax of his melodramatic lectures.