My UPS man is a Salois but his great-grandfather’s name was Toussaint and he came to Montana’s high-line in flight after the disastrous sequence of events that ended the attempt of the Red River people to break away from Canada, first in 1870 when it was “Rupert’s Land” and then later when it had become a British Commonwealth country, in order to form their own nation. In the preceding century, the French trappers who came to the prairies had married Cree women and created Metis families. The classic account of the people, “Strange Empire,” was written by one of their own, Joseph Kinsey Howard, a key member of the Montana literary community, who had a cabin up Blackleaf Canyon near Choteau though he employed as a newspaperman in Great Falls.
Salois had bet a friend, another amateur historian, that the the events of Duck Lake and later Frog Lake had happened in the early spring of 1885 rather than 1886, because Toussaint had taught Salois directly about what had happened. He wanted me to document that he was right, so I got down my copy of “Strange Empire” and confirmed that the year was 1885. Over a century ago and yet still bright in some minds, though others have never heard of the Red River Nation nor Louis Riel, their religiously obsessed leader, nor Gabriel Dumont, Riel’s cousin, general and protector. Metis names are well-represented on the Blackfeet rolls, because they took refuge in St. Mary’s valley, in Heart Butte, and other niches and pockets of the area. Riel himself taught school at St. Peter’s Mission School near Sun River.
Last night my movie was Gore Vidal’s “Lincoln,” gently told with Mary Tyler Moore in a sympathetic version of Mary Todd Lincoln and Sam Waterston as a martyr Lincoln. That was on my mind when I sat down to read Howard’s account of Duck Lake and Frog Lake. (So was Gaza.) According to Vidal, Lincoln’s problem was generals who would not fight relentlessly, as is necessary to win a war. But Riel’s problem was his religious conscience which made him urge restraint on Dumont, a man who knew how to fight without giving quarter. When Dumont could nearly taste victory, Riel would worry about the number of dead and call him off. Dumont was only restrained by his love and admiration for Riel.
Catholic by upbringing and education, Riel was caught between breaking away and making peace with the standing order -- he was “half-assimilated.” He tried to see himself as a part and representative of his people, whom he called the Exovidat, a word he invented to mean “of the flock.” But ovine, sheep, are not suited for warfare. He proclaimed universal salvation in the form of a time-limited hell and tried to make his local priests join the movement. When they were defiant, he declared himself a priest and said the Holy Spirit had left the Roman Pope.
Howard felt there were three causes for the defeat of the Rebellion: alienating the priests, restraining Dumont, and terrifying the Anglo-Saxons who had begun to filter in to the trading posts and early settlements. He also points out that if the Blackfoot/Blackfeet (both sides of the line) had not been devastated by starvation (no more buffalo) and disease (small pox) and if they had backed the rebellion, there might very well have been a new nation brought forth upon this continent. The Fenians (Irish diaspora) were very interested in all this and might have participated.
The numbers involved were very few, in the dozens on both sides, but the archetypal pattern was that of many rebellions. Discontent, denial on the part of those who should respond, an end to patience, desperation, and blind fear. Then, violence more like train wrecks than battles. When Father Moulin was threatened in Carlton before the action began, he said, “My country is the universe. I am not afraid.” Would that more people thought that way.
At Stobart (Duck Lake) a small community was invaded and the Mounted Police and volunteers were put to flight, one-fourth of them killed. A supply depot and store there was so well-stocked that it took the invaders two days to remove the commodities. Major Crozier, a seasoned Mountie officer, set out with 56 Mounties and 43 Prince Albert volunteers. (PA wanted all forces kept as close to PA as possible to protect that larger town.) They had a seven-pound cannon. (Is that the weight of the cannon or the weight of the ammunition? My guess is the latter. I’m not good at battle stuff.) They were ambushed and thrashed, while Louis Riel, horseback on a ridge just out of reach, waved a huge cross from a church and exhorted his people. Gabriel Dumont’s skull was creased but he staunched the blood with snow and continued with the help of a brother. The wounded and dead were dealt with in “civilized” fashion, that is, helped and returned. Crozier evacuated Carlton and withdrew to PA, going through a narrows perfect for another ambush, which Dumont itched to perform, but Riel forbade it.
Canada had no Western military force since they had not participated in the Prairie Clearances. The Mounties were police. Moving army to Saskatchewan from both coasts seemed impossible because the Canadian Pacific Railroad was not complete. But the weather was still cold enough that temporary tracks were laid right on the ice of rivers and over the snows of the foothills, the men in open cars with short windbreak sides and straw bedding. In the worst gaps, they had to get out and walk many miles in temperatures well below zero. Their suffering was intense and sometimes fatal.
Riel and Dumont split along the assimilation line, you could say. Riel was constantly preoccupied with being civilized while Dumont wanted to “fight like an Indian.” Now Poundmaker’s Cree people heard the news and wanted to join in. Assiniboine near Battleford lit the fuse by attacking and Poundmaker’s uncontrollable young men joined in. About five hundred whites, maybe three hundred of them women and children, forted up and watched as their pleasant and nicely equipped little homes were trashed and burned. Then surrounding farmsteads were destroyed, fires burning in the night. The warriors returned to stake out the fort and wait for the occupants to starve, but didn’t know the stores were enough for three months plus there was access to livestock across a river.
On April 2 at Frog Lake two Oblate fathers were observing mass when Protestant settlers began to slip in. Then in strode “L’Esprit Errant,” Wandering Spirit, “vain, ambitious and brutal” in his full battle regalia, a man feared even by Big Bear, though Big Bear’s son, Imasees, was his deputy in leading the young and disaffected warriors. Wandering Spirit hated whites. At the end of the Mass, he and his men herded the whites out towards Agency buildings. Quinn, the agent, tried to oppose them and Wandering Spirit shot him in the face. Chaos and murder ensued. The interpreter, a half-blood, saved two women by hiding them in a wagon and getting them out of there. Boundaries between rebels and loyalists were blurred because so many people were of mixed blood as well as mixed allegiances. Friendships crossed the lines. Think Gaza.
The commander of the nearest fort, which was that in name only, was Inspector Francis Jeffrey Dickens, son of the novelist born about a month after the publication of “A Christmas Carol.” He was described as “secret and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.” He was small, red-bearded, precise and gloomy. When he was small, his father had dubbed him the “chicken stalker.” He stammered and was going deaf. Previously he had served in India with the Bengal Police. He set about organizing the defense of the few flimsy buildings, putting even a couple of teenaged girls on sentry duty. One was fascinated to discover she could spit on her gunsight, rub it with a phospor match, and cause it to glow in the dark.
Big Bear and his band demanded the surrender of the whites and got it, except that the Mounties slipped away in a scow they had built. (Dickens, a year later and out of the Force, died of a heart attack in Illinois.) Meanwhile, the Plains Crees and Woods Cree, related but separate groups, herded the forty-plus captives back and forth over the prairie while they raided supply depots. The Plains Crees suggested killing the captives and joining Poundmaker. The Woods Crees refused. Their women hid the young white women from the rambunctious young men. Finally the Woods Crees set the whites free with enough food and horses to get to Battleford.
Thus ends this part of the story, which goes on, even today reverberating into the politics of Montana as well as prairie Canada. Buy the book. Maybe send copies to Gaza. Or Obama.
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