Louis Riel

Riel was labeled both a traitor and a hero in his time. His work as a political leader for the Métis Nation in the Red River Rebellion led to the establishment of Manitoba. His involvement in the North-West Rebellion did not have a positive outcome.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy B. Wilson. Tracy. Yeah,
Canada is spending celebrating his hundred and fiftieth birthday. I

(00:23):
am aware of this. We know because lots of people
have mentioned it to us and requested that we do
some sort of Canadian history. UM. And one particular topic
has come up over and over and over so many times. Uh. Specifically,
it was requested by Alexander, Jamie, Susan, Nicole, Drina, Stasha
and Tyler. If you requested it and I missed you,

(00:45):
I apologize. Uh. But today this topic is considered by
some but not all historians to be the father of Manitoba,
and that disparity in these some but not all is uh.
And how he's viewed is something that's really been a
part of his agacy pretty much from the beginning of
his life as a prominent figure in Manitoba and Canadian history.

(01:05):
And we were talking today about Louis Rielle. Before we
get into Louis Rielle's story, we need to back up
a little bit and set some context about the mate people.
The origin of the earliest Mayti is traced back to
the sixteen hundreds in eastern Canada. Matie is a French
word that translates roughly to mixed blood or hybrid. As

(01:28):
European fishermen took wives from the local indigenous population, their
children became the first generation of mate. Yeah. There are
a number of different translations that you will see of maytie,
from very sort of mild ones like oh it means
combined to some fairly disparaging type translations uh. Just if

(01:50):
you go looking know that that will happen. And as
the fur trade led French Canadian trappers and traders to
move west, they too often took wives from the Indian population,
marrying primarily Cree, Ogibwa or Salto women. And this was
the result to some degree of an eagerness on the
part of the people that lived there to foster positive

(02:11):
relationships with these Europeans that were moving in. So they
kind of offered them wives who would be able to
care for them uh and serve in in roles as wives,
but also that would translate and bridge any cultural confusion
between the Europeans and these indigenous peoples. The children of
these negotiated marriages became the foundation of the Western Meti Nation,

(02:34):
which was centered in the Red River region of what's
now Manitoba. This became a uniquely blended culture that incorporated
both French, Catholic and Native beliefs and traditions. Yeah, and
there was even like a language that developed that is unique,
which I don't get into in this episode, but it's
quite fascinating. And the mate also had a vast knowledge

(02:55):
of both European and Native to Canada cultures, and so
they could easily work with both Indigenous and European groups,
and many as a consequence, became employees of the Northwest
Company and the Hudson's Bay Company, both of which were
the large fur trade enterprises operating in the Canadian areas
at the time. There is some irony there because initially

(03:18):
the Hudson's Bay Company actually discouraged these types of mixed marriages,
but they soon realized there were some benefits to having
employees with wide ranging skill sets that really helped the
fur trade grow. Yeah. I mean, among other things, they
were able to survive in climates that people that came
here straight from Europe weren't always prepared to deal with

(03:39):
and then they could teach other people, and they ended
up being just such a knowledge base for these companies.
Hudson's Bay Company also owned this massive tract of Canada
known as Rupert's Land, and this land had been given
to the company by King Charles the Second. It was
named for Prince Rupert of the Rhine, who held governorship
over the land when it was first granted in six

(04:00):
teen seventy. By the early eighteen hundreds, there was an
influx of European immigrants into the Red River Valley area,
and those immigrants were given land assignments from the Hudson's
Bay Company, but this was done completely ignoring the fact
that the Eight Nation people were already living there. Additionally,
the Northwest Company had trade routes through the land which

(04:22):
were disregarded in this process. As a result, the Northwest
Company was put in a position where they had no
real option but to merge with the Hudson's Bay Company,
and the combination of the two of them meant that
a lot of land in Canada was owned by one
fur trading company. Yeah, if you look at maps that
overlay like here's Canada, Here's what was owned by the

(04:43):
Hudson's Bay Company at this time. It's like most of Canada,
uh which is interesting that it would all be owned
by a corporate venture. So the Red River Colony was
founded over the years of eighteen eleven and eighteen twelve
by a Scottish immigrant, Thomas Douglas, fifth Earl of Selkirk,
was granted a one hundred and sixteen thousand square mile
that's about a three hundred thousand square kilometer land parcel

(05:06):
by the Hudson's Bay Company, and though its initial years
as a settlement were kind of shaky due to fighting
caused by the rivalry between the then separate Hudson's Bay
Company in the north West Company, once the two for
trew one, things really started to stabilize, and in eighteen
thirty six the Hudson's Bay Company purchased the colony back
from the Selkirk estate. Louis David Riale was born in St.

(05:30):
Boniface and the Red River Colony on October twenty three,
eighteen forty four. His father was a well respected member
of the Mate community and his mother was French Canadian.
Louis was their first child and they eventually had ten more.
At the age of fourteen, Riale traveled to Montreal to
be trained and educated for the priesthood, and when he

(05:52):
was thirteen he had actually been hand picked by the
clergy and Red River as a potential priest and to
go have this education and as a con quence, his
education was financed entirely through a scholarship, but he never
completed his training and he was never ordained. If he
had been, he would have been Canada's first mate priest.

(06:12):
And while he was excelling in seminary, he had also
met a young woman, Marie Julie Gerna, and the two
of them fell in love and became engaged. Real however,
was not really welcomed by her family. They were French
Canadian and they did not really have an interest in
marrying their daughter off to a mate man. After that,

(06:33):
he quit his religious studies. During that timult of his
failed romance, Reel's father died in eighteen sixty four, which
was also a huge blow and part of why he
was sort of willing to make this big sea change
and leave the seminary, and that also left his mother
and the rest of the family without a provider, and
Louis worked first for a time as a law clerk,
sending money back to the family, but eventually he returned

(06:56):
to St. Boniface in eighteen sixty eight. In eighteen say
ex nine, there was a deal in motion to annexed
parts of the Red River Settlement to the Dominion of Canada,
and a sale that would really benefit the Hudson's Bay Company,
but the Mayti people who lived in the area to
be annexed had no say in the matter, and there
were approximately nine thousand of those people. The whole deal

(07:19):
was being handled by the Fur Company, and the Canadian
government appointed a Lieutenant governor to oversee the survey work
that would re evaluate all this land for future use. Yeah,
they were plotting rent along, kind of ignoring the fact
that there were a whole lot of people that already
called that place home, and the mate were concerned additionally
that there would be a massive influx of Anglo Protestant

(07:41):
immigrants crowding out the community that had been building up
the Red River Settlement for decades. There had already been
a steadily growing tension among the different cultures and religions
in the region, and the potential arrival of additional immigrants
from Ontario was seen as a real danger to the
future of the Mate way of life. This conflict led
to the founding of the Mayti National Committee, which had

(08:04):
a mission to defend Mate culture and to have a
political voice. Louis Rielle, whose family was prominent among the Mate,
was elected secretary of the Mayti National Committee and eventually
became its president. In his role and working, he was
able to stop the survey. It was actually halted on
October eleventh of eighteen sixty nine, but that was far

(08:26):
from the end of Riel's involvement in working against the
Canadian government. On behalf of the Mate and November, the
Mayte launched a more aggressive plan. First, the committee set
up a roadblock that would keep William McDougal, the Canadian
government's appointed Lieutenant governor, from entering the Red River Settlement.
In addition to preventing McDougal's visit, the committee also made

(08:48):
a raid on one of the Hudson's Bay Company posts,
Upper Fort Gary, and took over that post. Then they
set up their own government over the Red Middle River Settlement,
and once they had established their authority, the Mainti National
Committee invited delegates both French and English speakers from the
Red River Settlement to come to Upper Fort Gary so

(09:09):
they could all discuss the situation and what they were
all willing to accept as terms to allow the Lieutenant
Governor into the Red River Settlement. This whole sequence of
events became known as the Red River Rebellion and in
the in early December, the Mainti National Committee formed a
provisional government. At this point, John Bruce was still president

(09:29):
of the group and thus of the provisional government, and
Louis Rielle was a secretary. Eventually, Bruce stepped down due
to illness and Rielle assumed the leadership role of president.
And coming up next, we're going to talk about how
the issues with the Red River Settlement and the Canadian
government played out. But first we're gonna pause and have
a word from one of our sponsors. Bruce and Rielle

(09:56):
together issued the Declaration of the People of Rupert's Land
and the North West on December eight. This document stated
plainly that the Canadian government did not have any authority
in the region and offered the opportunity for Canada to
negotiate with the mate provisional government to reach some sort
of settlement. In response to this declaration, the Canadian government

(10:16):
sent three men Hudson's Bay Company wrapped Donald Smith, Colonel
Charles de Salibarry, and Reverend Jean Baptiste Tebou to negotiate.
Initial efforts on the part of Canada's trio were focused
on setting up a structure for the discussions where all
of the stakeholders could be involved. It was decided that
forty representatives of the settlement, half English speakers half French speakers,

(10:38):
would meet in a convention with the Canadian government's negotiators
to see if an agreement could be struck so the
lands under the leadership of the Mati National Committee could
join with Canada. In January seventy the forty men assembled
as delegates made a list of conditions that had to
be met for them to join the Confederation of Canada.
Over the course of the next two months, the convention

(11:00):
formed into a more structured entity with the legislative branch,
an executive branch, and a judicial branch, and it took
the name Provisional Government of a Sinebwa. Three delegates were
selected from this new provisional government to be sent to Ottawa,
and there they negotiated with co Premier George Etienne Cartier
to integrate the territory including and surrounding Red River, into

(11:23):
the confederation. There was not universal support for the efforts
of the MATE National Committee and the provisional government they established, though.
A group of armed Canadians gathered in force and made
their way to Red River, and the MATE quickly took
them into custody and confined them at Upper Fort Gary.
One of the men who was captured by the MATE

(11:44):
was Thomas Scott. Scott was a member of the Orange Order,
which was a pro Protestant group in Canada that viewed
French Canadians and Catholics as inferior. For his involvement in
the attempted attack on Red River, Scott was court martialed
by the MATE leader ship and sentenced to death. He
was executed by firing squad on March fourth, eighteen seventy

(12:06):
and as a consequence, Louis Rielle was despised by many
Protestants after that. But this incident did not halt the
negotiations that were taking place in Ottawa. Yeah, and it
was actually an associate of Louis Rielle that that made
that decision to have Scott executed. But because Rielle was
kind of the leader of this rebellion. At this point
he was blamed and two months after Scott was executed,

(12:30):
the Manitoba Act, which made the Province of Manitoba a
part of the confederation, was sanctioned on May twelfth, eighteen
seventy and according to the terms of the Manitoba Act,
the province would be bilingual and one point four million
acres that's about five hundred and sixty six thousand hectares
of land was to be reserved for the children of

(12:50):
the province's mate residence. One of the first things that
happened after the Manitoba Act was that the Canadian government
sent military troops and to a red river. This was,
according to then Lieutenant Governor A. G. Archibald, intended as
a show of support for him from the federal government
and was peaceful. But no such move had been in

(13:11):
any way discussed when the Manitoba Act was being hashed out,
and so no one had told the provisional government that
it was going to happen, let alone ask them if
they would be okay with it. Yes, it's like you're
going to be part of Canada. We are sending in
the military uh, and it became really clear as well
that Louis Rielle should be very concerned about this military force.

(13:33):
There was still a great deal of anger over Thomas
Scott's execution, and it was discovered that Rielle was very
much in danger of being lynched by federal troops there
was a plan to do so, so he fled to
the United States. Rial didn't stay away for long, though,
he returned to Red River a year later in May
seventy one, but he kept a very low profile and

(13:55):
with good reason. He was still very controversial and on
Harryo to the east of Manitoba, which was still predominantly Protestant,
he was labeled as a murderer responsible for Thomas Scott's death,
and there was a reward offered for his arrest, but Quebec,
which is on the eastern side of Ontario, viewed him
as a in a more heroic light because of his

(14:16):
efforts to make sure French language and the Catholic faith
were part of Manitoba's culture. This clash of opinions about
real concerned Canadian Prime Minister Sir John A. McDonald and
fearing that Riale's presence in Canada would lead to civil unrest.
He actually offered re Real some money. He paid him
to go back to the United States and live in exile.

(14:38):
And Riale took that deal in part because he was
still taking care of his mother and siblings and he
needed the money. But even gone from Canada, Rielle was
a significant figure in Manitoba's culture and politics. After supporters
urged him to enter federal politics, he won a parliamentary
seat in eighteen seventy three and then again in eighteen

(14:58):
seventy four. After his re election in eighteen seventy four,
he traveled to Ottawa on March thirtieth of that year,
went into the Parliament building to swear his allegiance and
signed the House of Commons member register, and then he
had to leave. Emotion had been introduced by an Orange
Order member from the House of Ontario that expelled him.
The following year, a conditional amnesty was offered to Real

(15:22):
by the Canadian government on the stipulation that he must
accept five years of banishment, and Rial agreed to these terms.
And this was also tied into some deals that were
going on with other people that had been involved in
the Red River rebellion, and this would seem like a
really positive moment in his life. Uh. But unfortunately, the
stresses of his leadership role in Manitoba and the ongoing

(15:44):
blame leveled at him for Scott's death really took a
toll and he ended up suffering a nervous breakdown. This
was after a series of episodes that make it apparent
that Rielle was struggling with mental exhaustion. He had been
staying with an uncle, John Lee, near Montreal. When his
public outbursts and and manic episodes became too much for
the Lee household to manage. He was taken first to

(16:07):
an asylum in Montreal, where he was admitted under the
name uh Louis R. David on March sixth of eighteen
seventy six. There was concern, however, that real would be
discovered in the hospital, first clearly against the terms of
his amnesty, but more importantly at a time when he
was vulnerable and could be victimized by political enemies if

(16:28):
they realized that he was there. And the staff at
the hospital who knew who he was, consulted with the
friends and family who had admitted him, and it was
decided after two months in the Montreal asylum that he
should be moved to another facility, the Beauport Asylum outside
Quebec City, and the period leading up to his hospitalization
and while he was convalescing, Real, who had always been religious,

(16:51):
became obsessed with matters of spirituality. He wrote extensive notes
on religion. He also became convinced that he had been
chosen by God to serve as a leader or a prophet. Yeah,
that's that's worded in various different ways when you read
about him. Uh, some people think that he kind of
saw himself as a messiah of the Mayti people. He
definitely didn't think God had chosen him to enact huge change. So,

(17:16):
after a year and a half of rest and treatment,
Real was discharged from the Beauport Asylum and his doctor
advised Real to find a way to live a quiet,
peaceful life, and initially Real traveled to Keysville, New York,
in search of work, and then eventually made his way
to the American Midwest. He joined some of the mate
who had moved to the United States in the Montana territory,

(17:38):
and he applied to be an American citizen. Married a
mate woman named Marguerite Monet de Belle Humur, and settled
down in Montana, where the couple had three children. He
started a new career as a school teacher at St.
Peter's Mission, which sat on a tributary of the Missouri
River known as the Sun River. So at this point
it seems like real had found that a life that

(18:00):
he was prescribed by his doctor. But it wasn't long
before he became embroiled in another conflict. And we're going
to talk about that after we first have a quick
word from one of our fantastic sponsors. So during that
time that Rielle was in Montana, there were still ongoing
issues between the Mayti and the Canadian government. For one,

(18:24):
the Mate were suffering economically because the fur trade in
buffalo hunting industries that had employed many Mayti people were declining,
and some, like the Mate that Rielle had connected with
in Montana, had decided to move on to other places,
and that also included Saskatchewan. One of the major Mayti
settlements in Saskatchewan was Batouche. There was no political representation

(18:47):
for the Mayti in the territorial government, even though they
made up a majority of the population there. There had
been efforts in the eighteen seventies to establish Mayti members
of the Territorial Council, but they had wrapped resented the
Mate of Manitoba, not those in Saskatchewan. When the Mate
of Saskatchewan did finally get a representative in government, the

(19:09):
requests that were made by that position never got any attention.
For one, there had been a request to survey the
land along the South Saskatchewan River so that it could
be best used to suit the needs of the community.
They had also petitioned to have formal titles to their
lands established, fearing that without that, if Batusche experienced an
influx of new settlers, as Manitoba had, they could easily

(19:31):
lose the land that they had been on for years.
Even with support from the Roman Catholic Church working on
their behalf in this matter, the Canadian government gave only
the vagus of responses with no plans for action on
any of the matters that had been raised. So by
the eighteen eighties, the Mate and the European settlers in
the area all had problems with the federal government, and

(19:52):
in additions to lack of clear titles, there had been
a land devaluation because the Canadian Pacific Railway had been
relocated to the Southern Prairie region, meaning Batouche was not
on the line anymore. In June of eighty four, the
plight of the maytee was once again brought to Louis Rielle.
Because he had managed to negotiate with the Canadian government

(20:14):
during the problems in Red River, it was believed that
he could probably help with Saskatchewan's problems too. Gabrielle du Mont,
president of the Maytee Council of Saint Laurent, which had
formed in Saskatchewan, visited Rielle in Montana and asked him
to help his people's cause, and Rielle agreed and he
traveled to Batouche with his family. Once they arrived there,

(20:35):
Rielle and William Henry Jackson, who was Reale's secretary as
well as the secretary of the local farmers union, put
together a petition that listed all of the grievances of
the people in Batouche and send it to Ottawa and
on December sixteenth. This was after more than three dozen
petitions had been sent already, but the federal government replied

(20:56):
to the one drafted by Rielle and Jackson, promising that
it investigated of commission would be appointed in this response
really did not sit well with the Mayti in Batuche,
who had heard similar assurances before and who had frankly
grow tired of waiting. So on March five five they
held a meeting to discuss an armed effort to force

(21:16):
the government's hand. Rielle suggested a few days later that
what they should do is set up of provisional governments
for Saskatchewan. Rielle's motion was not enacted. Instead, the group
drafted a revolutionary Bill of Rights. So the document that
consisted of ten demands, and included in the demands is
a stipulation that a government office to be established that

(21:37):
was closer to them so they didn't have to take
up land disputes with far with far away Ottawa, and
that they had the right to own their farms. In
response to the Revolutionary Bill of Rights, the federal government
sent in a military force consisting of five hundred men.
The mate, hearing about this before those men had arrived,
took possession of the Batouche Church and there established a

(22:00):
provisional government, as Rielle had suggested, and they did that
on March eighteenth. Louis Rielle was the leader. The new
government also sees the Hudson's Bay Company's Fort Carlton Post,
and leading up to the taking of Fort Carlton, Rielle
and five dozen men had also looted several stores for supplies,
and Rielle was heard proclaiming that Rome has fallen. He

(22:23):
also proclaimed that Bishop in nas Bourges was the new pope,
and these odd proclamations were red flags that there was
something amiss in Rielle's mental state. But he was so
charismatic and so invested in the Mayti cause that the
men with him remained loyal and continued to follow his
lead for the next several months, which came to be

(22:43):
known as the Northwest Resistance or the Northwest Rebellion. The
Mate and their aboriginal allies fought the Canadian government. In
the early weeks, the Mate were able to score some
victories at the first battle of the rebellion, the Battle
of Duck Lake three d Maytie defeat did one Canadian men,
but as Canada sent in more troops, the Canadian militia

(23:06):
wound up dominating the fight. On May fifteenth of eight five,
Louis Rielle surrendered to Canadian authorities. He was charged with
high treason and was taken to Regina, Saskatchewan, and his
trial there began on July twentie and in total there
were eighty four trials held for participants in the rebellion,
but Real, because of his leadership in the conflict, was

(23:27):
the only person tried for high treason. His trial was
almost as much of a conflict between riel and his
legal counsel as it was between Real and the Canadian government.
Rielle's lawyers wanted to use an insanity defense and use
his year and a half in asylums in Quebec is
evidence of this, and there was some indication, as we

(23:49):
just mentioned, that he was not entirely in a clear
state of mind when this rebellion started. Rielle hated this idea.
He felt that if they claimed insanity, it was an
insult to everything the mate had fought for, and that
it discredited both the eighteen seventy Manitoba actions at the
Red River Colony and the recent uprising in Saskatchewan. His

(24:10):
plan was to argue self defense. He felt that it
was clear that the mate needed to make the moves
that they had for self preservation. But the trick was
that his lawyers did not actually answer to him. They
were paid for by wealthy friends of his and by
people that he was related to, because Rial simply could
not have afforded that counsel on his own, and the

(24:31):
lawyers employers wanted Riale their friend to go free or
at least achieve the minimum possible punishment. As the trial
neared its end, Real made a speech. Always having been
skilled and passionate as an orator, he left no one
in the courtroom and any doubt that he was in
full command of his faculties, leaving his counsel's work at

(24:51):
cleaning a claiming his insanity essentially in the trash, and
in doing so, he sacrificed himself for the mate cause
because he had convinced the people present that he had
led the mate in doing what they did with just cause.
He was also basically admitting to the treason that he
was charged with. On August one, five, the verdict was

(25:15):
handed down. He was found guilty, but the jury, composed
of six men, all of whom were Protestant and who
were English speakers, recommended mercy in Real's sentencing. Allegedly, the
foreman cried as he read the verdict. The judge, Hugh Richardson,
sentenced Louis Reale to death is sometimes framed as though
the judge disregarded the jury's plea for leniency, but at

(25:38):
the time, a guilty verdict in a high treason case
in Canada meant a mandatory death penalty. There were two
appeals to higher courts, but both of those were dismissed.
Riale was examined by three different doctors, each of whom
gave their opinions on the state of his mental health,
and one actually felt that he could probably be diagnosed
as insane, but the other two did, and so it

(26:00):
got written up that the thing he was just fine.
He could he was in his right mind, so to speak,
and could accept the punishment that had been sentenced to him,
and so his execution order stood as he waited for
his sentence to be carried out. Rielle, who had written
throughout his whole life, wrote poetry in his cell and
in one of these poems he wrote, let us have

(26:21):
peaceful hearts and the infinite will open a little over
three months after his trial for treason concluded, Louis Rielle
was executed by hanging on November sixteenth of eighty five.
Among his last words, he said, I have nothing but
my heart, and I have given it long ago to
my country. His body was transported to his birthplace St. Boniface,

(26:44):
where he was laid to rest in the cathedral cemetery,
and his death, Riale became a martyr to the Matti
and galvanized the French Canadian population. His reputation in other
parts of Canada, however, has been that he was a
madman or a trader, so in the last half century
that view has softened pretty considerably. Pat Martin, new Democratic

(27:07):
Party of Canada member of Parliament, has introduced several bills
in parliament to reverse Riel's conviction. In interview with Canada's
Cable Public Affairs channel, he said, quote exonerating Louis Rielle
would go a long way to healing the relationship between
the Crown and the mate Nation, and other members of
parliament have also tried to exonerate real via legislative measures.

(27:30):
Since two thousand seven, Manitoba has celebrated an annual Louis
Riale Day every February. The mate Nation honors him with
a day of Remembrance each November sixteenth, on the anniversary
of his execution, and the Mate nations relationship with the
Canadian government continues to evolve. Even in the last several
months prior to when we were recording this, there have

(27:53):
been a lot of um legal measures as well as
kind of government gestures that have been made trying to
repair some pretty uh poor relations based on really bad
treatment that that members of the Mate nation have received
in various different ways, some related to a whole separate
thing that could be another podcast, related to very poor

(28:16):
and really terrible treatment of children, as well as being
denied access to certain hunting lands. There have been a
lot of different things that have gone on that are
all kind of uh in in the course of hopefully
having reparations made. So it's an ongoing discussion that will
continue to to blossom and develop. Do you also have
some listener mail for us? I do, and it's I'm

(28:37):
keeping it short since this episode is a little on
the long side. Uh. It is a lovely, lovely thank
you card from two of our listeners, Amy and mary Anna,
and I won't read it because it's all very kind
and really crazy. But they didn't think they like podcasts,
and now they listen to ours, and I love it
and I'm glad that they do. And I hope they
find others that they love just as much, because there
is a world of podcasts out there that are fascinating

(29:00):
and there's so much good content that everyone should everyone
can pretty much find something that they like. They also
sent this um my Little Pony stickers, which I love, uh,
And they mentioned that, um, the history Wonder Woman might
be a good topic. Which might. It's been very prominent
lately Wonder Woman being discussed a lot, but I think
it's getting covered plenty. Yeah. I also the man who

(29:26):
created her as a character is fascinating. Yeah. But we
definitely could not have either of those potential things be
done before the movie. That we would have to run
right out right now, not sleep for the next two days, record,
and then move around our schedule to make it happen.

(29:48):
And that's not We would need a time turner. I
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(30:10):
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