Louis Riel

“ CHAPTER I. Along the banks of the Red River, over those fruitful plains brightened with wild flowers in summer, and swept with fierce storms in the winter-time, is written the life story of Louis Riel. Chance was not blind when she gave as a field to this man's ambition the plains whereon vengeful Chippewas and ferocious Sioux had waged their battles for so many centuries; a country dyed so often with blood that at last Red River came to be its name. ”

“ Tyranny and oppression had made rebels of the people of Lower Canada, while justice and freedom made {85} them the true and loyal subjects which they have been ever since. And now to tell us that Louis Riel, simply by his influence, could bring those men from peace to war, to tell us that they had no grievances, to tell us that they were brought into a state of rebellion either through pure malice or through imbecile adherence to an adventurer, is an insult to the intelligence of the people at large, and an unjust aspersion on the people of the Saskatchewan. ”

“ He denied that the people of Quebec were demanding that no French Canadian should be punished, guilty or not guilty. As for Riel, who shared with the Government the responsibility for the blood and sufferings of the revolt, he urged, with Blake, that it was impossible to consider him sane and accountable for his actions. 'Sir,' he declared, 'I am not one of those who look upon Louis Riel as a hero. Nature had endowed him with many brilliant qualities, but nature had denied him that supreme quality without which all other qualities, however brilliant, are of no avail. ”

“ It needs no further words to shew how ready these dusky people would be to rise and follow a crafty leader, who cried out:
"We are despised by these white people. We want no social or political alliance with them. We shall live apart, rather than in ignominy and union with them." Louis Riel was not ready the next morning to rise and lead the people to revolt, for this occurred some years before his bloody star reached the zenith; but the same hatred was there years later, when he turned the governor sent to the colony by the Dominion out of the territories, and set up an authority of his own. ”

“ The people are in open, armed rebellion. They do not want to come into the confederation; and there is an extensive desire for annexation. The head of the movement is Louis Riel, and he is president of the Provisional Government. He has seized and invested Fort Garry, set up laws for himself, and is feeding and supplying his troops with the property of the Hudson's Bay Company. ”

“ The hunting-ground was many miles distant from Riel's home, so that the intention of the sportsmen was to trust themselves to the hospitality of some farm-house in the neighbourhood. The settlers were all, with two or three exceptions, Metis; and the door of the half-breed is never shut against traveller or stranger. One late afternoon, as the two men were passing along the prairie footpath towards a little settlement, they heard at some distance over the plain, a girl singing. ”

“ Every success, however trivial, was fuel to the courage and enthusiasm of Riel's party.
"I have begun this matter," the leader said to one of his followers, "and I do not mean to deal in half measures. Without stores we can do nothing. Fort Garry is worth our having just now, but we must move circumspectly in getting possession of it." So it was ordered that his followers should proceed in twos and threes, as if on no special mission, to the desired point. Presently, Governor McTavish saw in the shadow of the fort the rebel leader and a number of followers. ”

“ The objective point of Major-General Middleton's march was Batoche's Crossing, where Riel had several large pits sunk, and fortifications thrown up, for a grand and final encounter with our troops. The line of march lay sometimes along the Saskatchewan's banks, but more frequently through the open prairie. The position of the rebels prior to the battle was this: Dumont, with 250 half-breeds and Indians, had been retreating slowly before General Middleton's right column on the east bank of the river, their scouts keeping them informed of the General's movements. ”

“ I live in humility.
Is there any one to side
With me? Yes. Sincerity
Will gather up its recruits.
And we will soon taste its fruits.
Louis "David" Riel
The morning dew, with silver drops,
Never shines as much as the word
Of the Preacher who developed
The blessed teachings of the Lord.
———
Happy is the congregation
Which obeys, with true devotion,
The sermons of its Minister,
For the Sake of Christ, the Master!
Louis "David" Riel
This work was published before January 1, 1928, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. ”

“ During all this time the fire of Riel's two-fold passion was not burning lower:—nay, it was growing stronger. His aim now was to make himself such a ruler and master in the settlement that every word of his should be as law, and that no man, not all the people, might disobey his command or censure his action. ”

“ Therefore, when night came down upon the settlement, Indians, smeared in hideous, raw, earthy-smelling paint, would creep about among dwellings, and peer, with eyes gleaming with hate, through the window-frames at the innocent and unsuspecting inmates. At last one chief, with a diabolical face, said,
"Brothers, we must be avenged upon every white man and woman here. We will shoot them like dogs. No harm can come to us; for the great man has said so." (Alluding to Riel.) "When they are all shot the Government will get a big fright, and give the Indians and half-breeds what they ask for." ”

“ There are practically no elections, and it is a sham legislature."
Then, as if wandering from his subject, Riel broke forth and said:
"I was ready at Batoche; I fired and wounded your soldiers. Bear in mind, is my crime, committed in self-defence, so enormous? Oh, Jesus Christ! help me, for they are trying to tear me into pieces. Jurors, if you support the plea of insanity, otherwise acquit me all the same. Console yourselves with the reflection that you will be doing justice to one who has suffered for fifteen years, to my family, and to the North-West." ”

“ Aloof stood the shy wild rose, shedding its scent with delicate reserve; but the wild pea, and the convolvulus, and the augur flower, and the insipid daisy, ran riot through all the grass land, and surfeited his nostrils with their sweets. Here and there upon the mellow level stood a clump of poplars or white oaks, prim, like virgins without suitors, with their robes drawn close about them; but when over the unmeasured plain the wind blew, they bowed their heads: as if saluting the stranger who came to found a colony in the wilderness of which they were sentinels. ”

“ Habit in this had far more power over his mind than even the vast and aspiring talents of Richelieu. No man in France, perhaps, more contemned or hated the Cardinal than the royal slave whom he had so long subjugated to his burdensome sway. Yet Louis, amidst all his dreams for the future, looked with dread upon losing the support of a man whom he detested, but upon whose counsels and abilities he had been accustomed to rely with confidence and security.
Cinq Mars saw plainly the state of his master’s mind ”

“ When I shall speak ze truth I shall say he was one grand rascal, I remember him just so well as you shall see."
"I am glad," resumed Romer, "that you know him for a grand rascal. Rascal as he was, I had great admiration for him. He had three remarkable virtues—impudence, coolness, and audacity. I call these virtues because a man possessing them may go through the world and have a history of his own. It was Louis's ambition to do the State some service one day and ornament society with his presence the next. ”

“ Captain Riley's narrative of his shipwreck on the coast of Africa, and his captivity among the Arabs, was a book which my boy and his brother prized with a kind of personal interest, because their father told them that he had once seen a son of Captain Riley when he went to get his appointment of collector at Columbus, and that this son was named William Willshire Riley, after the good English merchant, William Willshire, who had ransomed Captain Riley. William Willshire seemed to them almost the best man who ever lived ”

“ It must also be remembered in his favour that he advised Louis XIII. to listen to the general voice and at this critical time to demand the services of Richelieu.
But neither he nor the King intended to give that formidable personage any real authority. Louis shrank in terror from “cet esprit altier et dominateur,” replying to his mother, when she pressed him to admit her favourite to the royal Council, in such prophetic words as these—“Madame, I know him better than you do: he is a man of immeasurable ambition.” ”

“ Sitting near the door, on a stone which once served as a horse-block for equestrians, Risler watches with a smile the exit from the factory. He never loses his enjoyment of the outspoken esteem of all these good people whom he knew when he was insignificant and humble like themselves. The "Good-day, Monsieur Risler," uttered by so many different voices, all in the same affectionate tone, warms his heart. The children accost him without fear, the long-bearded designers, half-workmen, half-artists, shake hands with him as they pass, and address him familiarly as "thou." ”

“ Riley is a man of medium size, with thick brown hair and eyes of Celtic dark blue, perpetually sparkling with humor. I have never seen a stronger or more active man of his weight; on his atoll he spends an hour every day in exercise, running, jumping, working with dumbbells and Indian clubs. ”

“ You never saw a more astonished dog than Mr. Riley. With a yell of terror he bolted out to the kitchen, out of the kitchen into the hall, through the hall into the room, and so into the kitchen and round again. With each circuit he went faster and faster, until he looked like a brindled streak with a dash of black and white on top. Such a racket and commotion I never heard, and I laughed until the tears came into my eyes. Mr. Riley flew around and around, and William Adolphus held on grimly and clawed. Alexander Abraham turned purple with rage. ”

“ No background of poverty or early hardship can be provided for this “poet of the [30] people.” His father was a lawyer, an orator well known in central Indiana, and Riley’s boyhood was spent in comfortable circumstances. The curtailment of his schooling was not enforced by necessity, but was due to his impatience of restraint and inability to adjust his own interests to the prevailing curriculum. He spent some time in his father’s office at Greenfield, reading general literature, not law, and experimenting with verse. ”

“ I have not often run across a more interesting man than Riley. Thrown together, as he and I have been, in circumstances which make for an unusual exchange of confidence, I have learned more of him in two months than one knows of many an old acquaintance at home. At thirty-five years of age he is a living object lesson for those who bewail the old days of adventure and romance, and wish that their lives had been cast in other times. ”

“ Riley was a capable meat-cutter earning good wages, who wouldn’t have done a neighbor out of a cent that was his due, a robust citizen with more than his share of good looks, a devoted husband and a doting father, inseparable when at home from little Mike, whose baby trick of squaring off and offering to “bust his father’s face” was the pride of the block. ”

“ Nothing was too high or too low—too mighty or too insignificant, for the grasp of his genius. The stars, his informants, were as communicative on the most trivial as on the most important subjects. If a scheme was set on foot to rescue the king, or to retrieve a stray trinket—to restore the royal authority, or to make a frail damsel an honest woman—to cure the nation of anarchy, or a lap-dog of a surfeit, William Lilly was the oracle to be consulted. His almanacks were spelled over in the tavern and quoted in the senate ”

“ Riley is writing the typically American verse of the day, and his work is now read by a larger public than any other American poet finds. His poems, humorous or otherwise, are full of tender feeling, and in them the tear invariably accompanies the smile. He has a perfect command of the country dialects, and pictures as no other writer seems able to do, the humorous and the pathetic side of American life. ”

“ There was a Riley Day at Miami in February. In April, he returned home, feeling at his best, and, as if by premonition, sought out many of his friends, new and old, and took them for last rides in his automobile. A few days before the end, he visited Greenfield to attend the funeral of a dear boyhood chum, Almon Keefer, of whom he wrote in A Child-World. All Riley's old friends who were still left in Greenfield were gathered there and to them he spoke words of faith and good cheer. ”

“ Riles had the wound dressed by a doctor and met the evening train, where he engaged a harvester just out from Ontario. They drove home through the darkness, the hired man so tired with three days and nights of bumping in a slat-seated colonist car that he would have fallen out of the buckboard had Riles not held him in. When the horses were stabled the new comer was shown to his bedroom, which was reached by climbing up steps nailed to the studs of the shanty where Riles and his wife lived. ”

“ Not much of an ear could John Riley boast, yet he loved to listen to Grace’s singing, and hearkened with something between a pang and a hope to the little thrills of melody into which she would break—just as a bird breaks into a vocal ecstasy—while they walked through the rose-laden gardens, or floated, oars uplifted, over the moonlit sea, the water diamonds dripping from them, making an accompaniment to the last soft notes of the duet sung by his sister and Grace. ”