Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont (9 page)

News of the Métis victory doesn’t travel only to the whites. Indians on reserves across the North-West take the news with mixed reactions. Some see joining the bearded holy man and his tough war chief as a sure way to end up in an even worse place than the one they’re in now. All Indians know the vicious savagery a white government will bring down upon red people who dare try to protect themselves. The ghost dance movement is still a few years away, a desperate last chance for some prairie peoples to stave off their own destruction, but already so many Indians recognize the misery of their situation. Others are far too proud to consider joining forces with a group they have a difficult time considering themselves part of and understand that patience is a very important part of Indian life. Besides, who is this Riel who preaches of the god of the whites and dismisses the old ways?

But important men do seem to share the same vision as Louis: that the government must be forced if it is to be fair. The Cree leader Big Bear, who was the last to accept reserve life and its restrictions just a few years before, and Poundmaker, the peace-loving chief whose young warriors push hard against patience, watch as their people starve, their young men growing restless and speaking with the anger that comes when your loved ones grow skinny with sickness.

Just one week before, Louis and Gabriel had shown that you can stand up to the police, to the authority of the government and win, and some young Cree men begin to allow this to fill their bellies. Big Bear pleads with his warriors to not act rashly, but one of his war chiefs, Wandering Spirit, has gained a voice among the young and angry. All of them, fed up with the position they find themselves in, break away from Big Bear and enter the community of Frog Lake, taking hostage the Indian agent Thomas Quinn in his home before dawn on the morning of April 2. Quinn, who treats the Cree with arrogance, is a tall man whom the Cree see as short. He’s become the focus of their anger because of his harshness and his racist world view. Against his father’s wishes, Imasees, Big Bear’s younger son, is among the party. They take more prisoners as the morning progresses and begin to occupy the village, gathering the locals in the church.

Before noon on this fateful morning, Wandering Spirit orders the prisoners moved to an encampment outside of town. Quinn is stupid enough to try to fight this decision, and in the ensuing argument Wandering Spirit shoots him in the head. Panic follows, and the Indians begin shooting. When the smoke clears eight more men lie dead, including two priests, one of their lay assistants, and local businessmen. With the remaining villagers functioning as his prisoners, Wandering Spirit and his group take Fort Pitt. News of an Indian uprising out west only feeds the flames, and General Frederick Middleton, in charge of the expedition to crush it, uses this latest violence, forever after termed the Frog Lake Massacre, to keep his soldiers pushing west at a brisk pace.

The violence of Frog Lake is exactly what Louis abhors, and yet he struggles to understand that his desire for the Indians to join forces with the Métis will certainly lead to killing. He remains convinced that things have not gone too far for the government to sit down at the table, despite Gabriel’s not being shy in telling him that he gives every advantage to the enemy by not allowing guerrilla tactics. Louis continues to hold his ground, telling the Métis that the Lord speaks through him, and that the outcome of all this will be positive. The doves, they continue to escape from his chest.

At this point, as the first week of April draws to a close, the Exovedate moves back from Duck Lake to Batoche, basically taking over the village. The most important date of the Catholic calendar, Easter Sunday, arrives, and Louis, along with many of his supporters, attends a mass given by Father Moulin. As the priest gives his sermon on the importance of the Métis’ obedience to the clergy and to the government, Louis is able to remain silent, but after mass he can no longer contain himself and chastises Father Moulin for his refusal to support the Métis cause. Moulin calls Louis a heretic, and if there were any confusion among those in earshot as to how wide the split between Louis and the priests is, it’s certainly clear now.

The next day, Easter Monday, General Middleton and his army, having crawled their way through the worst of the breaks in the CPR in northern Ontario, set into motion his plan of attack. Middleton divides his army into three: Major-General T.B. Strange will pursue Big Bear and Wandering Spirit via the North Saskatchewan River; Lieutenant-Colonel Otter will head to Battleford, where the population hides in the fort, fearful of the Indian uprising and Chief Poundmaker’s warriors, who sacked their village; and Middleton will attack Batoche and deal with the madman Riel.

Middleton marches from Qu’Appelle with just a little over four hundred men, and within a week will find himself only a hundred miles from Batoche. He has no plans whatsoever to enter into negotiations with the traitor. Middleton prepares to bring the full weight of the law onto the Métis’ heads instead.

Gabriel, he knows this, but how to convince Louis?

CHAPTER SEVEN

Decimation

Gabriel knows what he must do to win this war that has started. For that is what it now is. Gabriel has excellent scouts and an excellent communications system of fast horsemen. He even has a friend who is serving as a freighter for General Middleton’s army, and all tell him that forces approach at a speed Louis did not think possible. Poor Louis. He is a great spiritual man, but not a great military strategist. This army doesn’t approach in order to sit down at the table and talk. They are coming to fight.

Thankfully, it’s already become apparent that many of the Canadian soldiers are green volunteers who, it appears, have never even camped outside. The army wears bright red tunics that can be spotted from miles away, and like any large force, it marches in a noisy column that makes it difficult to manoeuvre through some of the thicker river bush of aspen and willow and poplar. Gabriel and his people know this area well, though, and know when to hit and when to run. But Louis refuses to allow Gabriel to go on the offensive, using every excuse he can muster: what about the police in Prince Albert? They might attack if they hear that Batoche is lightly guarded. But the most nonsensical of all is that guerrilla tactics are too much like Indian tactics, which means that they are too savage. Louis worries that if Gabriel and his men fire into Middleton’s camps at night, they might accidentally kill Québécois volunteers. Gabriel, though he would never say anything against Louis in public, must feel himself to be at wit’s end.

But Gabriel doesn’t like second-guessing himself, which is what he’s been doing. Does he do this simply because he can’t read or write and Louis can? Gabriel knows how to deal with the Métis; he understands their culture and politics. What he fears, what he’s always feared, is that he doesn’t understand the workings of the Canadians, of their politicians. But Louis does. He’s already changed the course of the country’s history once. And so Gabriel won’t question Louis’s actions and decisions anymore. Louis understands, obviously, in a way that Gabriel can’t.

This is what Gabriel could do if he were allowed to act, or if he shrugged off Louis’s decisions and acted regardless: he and his horsemen would ride southeast, the way the army will be coming, destroying railway tracks and especially bridges along the way. This will slow down Middleton hugely by causing chaos for his supply teams and reinforcements, but will especially cause severe stress for his green troops, who will realize that they are now cut off from civilization to the south, that it is suddenly just them versus the savage Métis and Indians. Gabriel creates plans to constantly engage the camps with gunfire and raids at night, causing even more stress. As he says in his own words, “I am sure we should have made them so edgy that at the end of three nights they would have been at each other’s throats.” Preventing soldiers from sleeping is classic guerrilla warfare that works, and Gabriel knows it. Just as important, Gabriel’s plans include the raiding of supply trains and depots. The headache that will not go away, however, is that Gabriel’s men, despite being great and willing shots, are sorely under-equipped.

In his memoirs, Gabriel explains why he agrees to listen to Louis and goes against his own gut: “I yielded to Riel’s judgment although I was convinced that, from a humane standpoint, mine was the better plan; but I had confidence in his faith and his prayers, and that God would listen to him.” Gabriel has, in the end, been won over by Louis’s faith. There must be a grand design, and Gabriel, who is a hunter and a man of action, makes the decision, for now anyway, to put his trust, indeed his life, in the hands of the mystic. But with each passing day that Middleton’s army marches closer, Gabriel watches as his own men begin to allow anxiety to eat away at them. Gabriel understands that to sit idle can destroy resolve. And worst of all, with each passing day of inaction, his small and poor army’s chances of success become more and more impossible.

Finally, on April 23, more than four agonizing weeks of waiting since the battle at Duck Lake, Gabriel’s head wound far from healed and the intense pain causing him to sometimes pass out if he coughs too hard, his scouts bring word that Middleton’s army has camped only six miles south of Fish Creek, the same place where just eight months ago Gabriel, with Louis and family in tow and freshly arrived from Montana, was treated to a hero’s welcome. General Middleton wanders freely on Métis land and Gabriel and his captains sit here uselessly? This is the final straw. Gabriel confronts Louis, informing him that he plans to ride immediately and attack Middleton’s camp by night.

“Very well! Do as you wish!” Louis snaps, and, upon short reflection, adds that he will accompany Gabriel and his men. Louis now shares with Gabriel his great fear that Gabriel is not healed well enough yet, and that if something happens to him it will be a deadly blow to the Métis. Gabriel knows that this type of concern, as kind as it is, has no place in a military confrontation. He’s been held back long enough; the time to strike has come and gone numerous times. Maybe, just maybe, if he strikes hard enough at Fish Creek, a perfect place for an ambush, it won’t be too late. But time is of the essence. Gabriel must start the twenty-six-mile journey now if he hopes to use the night’s cover for an attack.

Gabriel immediately sees the effect of waiting so long on his men’s courage and drive. He’s able to leave just thirty men behind in the charge of his brother Edouard to protect Batoche and rides out with fewer than two hundred, a mixed group of Métis, Saulteaux, Cree, and Sioux. Along the way Gabriel chomps at the bit while Louis has the men stop numerous times so that they might pray the rosary with him, slowing the group even further. By midnight, after killing and consuming two of a local farmer’s cows, the men are full and exhausted. Scouts approach, informing Gabriel that mounted police have planned a sneak attack on Batoche from a different road and that Gabriel’s brother Edouard is requesting an additional thirty men to return and help protect the town. Gabriel doesn’t believe the police will be doing this at all, but he’s somewhat relieved to allow Louis to return with thirty of the men Gabriel will least need. He is not happy, though, to find that almost all his men want to go with Louis to Batoche. They aren’t afraid of Middleton and his army, they say; they fear for their families’ safety and wish to be close to protect them. Gabriel reassures them, and the ragged army continues to Fish Creek.

With dawn quickly approaching, Gabriel divides up his diminished force and gives strict word to obey his commands. Do not ride upon the trail. Scouts will see your horses’ hooves and be alerted. Do not burn a fire. It will be seen, and smelled, for miles. Stay silent and alert.

Gabriel orders the majority of his force to hide along game paths on Fish Creek, which runs east from the South Saskatchewan River, carving a forty-foot deep ravine into the earth. But he cannot keep track of all of them, especially some of the younger ones with cotton in their ears. The Canadians will have to pass by here and try to cut across the creek. And they will most certainly be following this road, which leads straight to Gabriel’s house on the river only twenty miles away. The bush is thick and easy to hide in, and despite the typical thinking that having the high ground is always best, Gabriel does the exact opposite. His men, hidden below in the ravine, will easily spot Middleton’s army backlit by the sun, as big as the easiest targets the Métis have ever shot at. And the ravine’s dense bush offers excellent cover. Most important, Middleton’s two cannons, which he’s dragged behind him for thousands of miles, will be useless at such an angle, trying to fire down on the Métis below. Even a bad shot will be able to pick off the artillerymen as they try to load.

Once Gabriel has given his strict orders to the 130 men in the ravine, he heads south a short way to a coulee with twenty horsemen. His plan is an old prairie tactic, and Gabriel knows it will work if he keeps the surprise. Gabriel and the others hide themselves in the dense brush. They will watch the Canadians pass and then, when Gabriel’s main force engages the Canadians at Fish Creek, Gabriel and his riders will ambush them from behind, closing his trap on Middleton’s men. Gabriel calls this tactic his buffalo pound, carefully orchestrated to lead the animals into a long and narrow natural pen where escape becomes impossible, before picking them off, one by one.

But once Gabriel has left with the horsemen, a few foolish young Métis and Indians disobey his orders and chase a couple of cows along the road for sport, leaving notice of their presence for any sharp-eyed scout to see. And indeed, just after dawn, a wily little group of English halfbreeds hired by Middleton to do exactly this kind of work spot the fresh hoofprints and race back to sound the alarm.

Gabriel himself only makes matters worse. Soon after he and the horsemen go into hiding in the coulee, Gabriel spots a lone Canadian scout approaching. In his obsession to gather as many arms and ammunition as he can, as well as count coup, he tells his men that he will chase this scout and club him off his horse and take his weapons. Gabriel clearly doesn’t want to shoot him, for firing
le petit
will surely alarm the Canadians. He brashly rushes off to pursue the scout, and as he chases him out of the coulee, a Métis horseman in a good viewing position shouts that a group of forty lie just beyond the bend. Gabriel’s ruse is up and he’s just lost the vital tool of surprise. He shoots the man he’s pursuing and turns just in time to avoid the enemy’s volley.