THE NORTHWEST REBELLION OF 1885 Desmond Morton Introduction Canadians were deeply divided by the events of 1885 and they are divided still. Even pride in a military victory that preserved the territorial integrity of Canada was rapidly over-shadowed by bitter disputes over the fate of Louis Riel. In a civil war, there can be no real victors. The events of 1885 did not solve the problems of the Northwest, which are with us still, and Canadians have tended to be ashamed of their contribution to the poor conditions experienced by Métis and Indian peoples of the region. Some Canadians have even gone as far as to deny that there was a rebellion in 1885. A directive from the prime minister's office seventy years later commanded official historians to simply refer to the events as "the Northwest Campaign of 1885." This is absurd. When Louis Riel formed his first provisional government at Red River in 1870 it might have been reasonable to argue that the feeble authority of the Hudson's Bay Company had already collapsed; but the existence of an established government in the Territory of Saskatchewan was not in question when Riel repeated this strategy in 1885. If some Métis with memories of the success of force in 1870 did not understand their actions as rebellion, their leader certainly did. He consciously led an organized and armed insurrection. What was at issue was the willingness of that government to satisfy the demands of Indians, Métis and whites in that part of the Northwest Territories now described as southern Alberta and Saskatchewan. Years of delays were suddenly followed by three months of decisive action. In the face of rebellion, an army of six thousand volunteers, half of them from eastern Canada, overwhelmed the few hundred Métis and Indians who had taken up arms. Sir John A. Macdonald's government reported complete victory with a speed that surprised those who knew the state of Canada's neglected militia and the difficulties of frontier campaigning. Yet the fighting settled nothing. The trial and execution of Louis Riel split French and English Canadians as had no other issue since Confederation. The failure of the rebellion only accelerated the decline of the two proud peoples, Indian and Métis, who had dominated the region. Their grievances remain with us, as urgent and intractable as ever. The Grievances Creating a Dominion a mari usque ad mare was the ultimate purpose of Confederation. To link ocean to ocean, Canadians had to occupy the vast prairie region christened by William Butler, an Irish officer charged with reporting on Hudson's Bay Company affairs in Saskatchewan, as "The Great Lone Land." For a poor, underpopulated nation of less than four million people, this was a stupendous achievement. The desire of a powerful, wealthy neighbour to assert its "Manifest Destiny" to control all of North America made the task all the more urgent and difficult. Every major policy of Sir John A. Macdonald's government, from the purchase of the Northwest in 1868 to the launching of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1881, therefore reflected a single- minded commitment to keep the West Canadian. Unfortunately for Macdonald, Butler's image was misleading. There were people in the North-west with a legitimate concern for their own destiny. There were the Indians, with a culture and life-style ingeniously adapted to pursuit of the buffalo. There were the white traders who for two centuries had exchanged European goods for furs and other by-products of Indian life. There were the "country-born" of mixed Indian and Scottish ancestry. And there were the Métis, the proud off-spring of French and Indian marriages who were gradually emerging as a people in their own right, the "New Nation." It was the young, Montréal-educated Métis, Louis Riel, who had mobilized his people at the Red River in 1869 and who within months had compelled Ottawa to admit the little colony as the new province of Manitoba. Yet not even Riel could have predicted the change that swept across the Northwest like a hurricane in the ensuing decade. To the younger sons of Ontario farmers, Manitoba became an open frontier for settlement, and by 1881 newcomers already far out-numbered the old inhabitants. Many Métis, hemmed in by the influx, resentful of unscrupulous dealings, and yearning for the old way of life, headed west to maintain their involvement with the buffalo hunt. Instead, along with the Plains Indians, they encountered the greatest ecological disaster of the era, the extinction of the buffalo. These lumbering animals had been the staple of prairie life, providing food, clothing, shelter, and even fuel in the form of dried buffalo dung. Vast herds were eliminated by over-hunting, disease, and deliberate slaughter by the American army as part of long, merciless Indian wars. By 1879, the basis of Indian and Métis existence had disappeared. No other factor led so clearly to the rebellion of 1885. Faced with imminent starvation, the demoralized Indians could present no alternative to Ottawa's policy of cooping them up on reserves where they were expected to become farmers. No people could have adapted easily to such a brutal transformation in their economy even if it had been managed with superhuman tact, forbearance and ingenuity. Among the penny-pinching officials in Ottawa, however, and most of their agents in the field, no such qualities were evident. Indian elders, designated as "chiefs" by government agents and policy officers, tried to use their spurious authority to curb the restlessness of resentful young men, but by 1885, their influence was fading. The Métis, at least, appeared to have alternatives. They had more experience with subsistence farming, and they had worked as teamsters freighting supplies for incoming settlers. Yet, because they also expected more of a share in Canadian society, their grievances were more acute than those of the dispirited Indians. What security would they have for the long strips of land they had claimed along the banks of the South Saskatchewan River when government surveyors insisted on a rigid pattern of 640-acre (259 hectare) blocks? How long would they be allowed to freight when the Hudson's Bay Company launched steamers on the rivers and the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) surged across the prairie? Why had they not received equal treatment with the Métis of Manitoba? The white settlers had their own grievances. They had no voice in Parliament and only a single elected representative in the territorial council at Regina. Macdonald's tariff policy forced prairie settlers to pay higher prices than American settlers below the border. And bitterest of all, to people in communities like Prince Albert, Battleford and Edmonton, was the abrupt decision of the CPR to take a southern route across the barren, semi-arid Palliser Triangle instead of serving and enriching their communities. Riel's Seizure of Batoche and the Struggle at Duck Lake By 1884 almost everyone in the Northwest, white, Indian and Métis, had genuine grievances against Ottawa. The once-respected North West Mounted Police (NWMP) encountered great difficulty arresting a suspect on an Indian reserve near Battleford during a Thirst Dance (Sun Dance). When they arrived there following an assault on a government farm instructor, all order broke down, and they were only able to take their prisoner by throwing food to the furious Indians. There was also bitter talk in white and Métis settlements. In Ottawa, Sir John A. Macdonald and his aging colleagues filed worried letters and reports from the Northwest. The Indian question was expected to be settled with time and by cutting government rations to hasten the process. As for the white and Métis farmers, a good crop would improve their spirits. Few in Ottawa understood how hard and risky prairie agriculture was. Patience was no longer a virtue in the Northwest. Whites and Métis met, shared grievances and agreed to summon the man who had forced Ottawa to listen fourteen years earlier. In June 1884, a delegation set out for Montana where Louis Riel was teaching school. Within a month he and his family had returned from their voluntary exile. He was not the man he had been. Persecuted as a rebel and murderer for the events of 1870 and the execution of Thomas Scott, poverty and disappointment had driven Riel to religious visions and such bizarre behaviour that he had spent several years in insane asylums. The whites and Métis expected Riel to be a strong, articulate agent for their grievances; instead Riel spoke of uniting Métis and Indians, of creating a divinely inspired Métis republic, and of designating Archbishop Taché of St. Boniface as a pope for the new world. Nevertheless, Riel and settler's representatives drafted a petition, dispatched it to Ottawa on 16 December 1884, and received a cursory acknowledgement. Riel might then have returned to Montana. Ostensibly to get satisfaction for his personal claims on the government, which he believed amounted to millions of dollars, he in fact stayed to pursue his goal of a new provisional government. Alarmed at Riel's heresies, Catholic missionaries barred him from the sacraments, and other devout Métis were shocked by his religious delusions. Others preferred Riel's obvious piety and devotion to conventional religion. White settlers deserted Riel, while the Indian bands, to whom he sent messengers, largely kept their own counsel. The government increased the NWMP to five hundred and fifty men, concentrating most of them near Prince Albert and the principal Métis settlement, Batoche. On 18 March Riel and his followers struck, seizing government officials at Batoche. Next morning, at the feast of St. Joseph, the Métis patron saint, Riel proclaimed his new government, appointed his exovedate, or council, and summoned two leading Cree chiefs, Big Bear and Poundmaker, and their bands to join him. He ordered NWMP Superintendent Leif Crozier at Fort Carlton to surrender hoping that he could hold Crozier and his men hostages while he bargained with Ottawa. Crozier ignored the demand and set out with one hundred police and special constables on 26 March to seize arms and ammunition stored near Duck Lake. Riel, Gabriel Dumont, and more than a hundred Indians and Métis were ready for them. Dumont, a veteran buffalo hunter and Riel's adjutant-general in the exovedate, met Crozier near Duck Lake. There were angry words, a shot, and then a general fusillade. Crozier's men huddled behind snowbanks and sleighs. After half an hour of shooting, a wounded Crozier ordered his men to retreat. Riel, waving a crucifix, commanded his men to stop firing, thus allowing Crozier's fighters to vanish down the trail, leaving nine of their dead and one badly wounded settler behind in the snow. Dumont was wounded, but his brother Isidore and four other comrades lay dead. Mobilization of Government Forces Telegraph wires carried news of Duck Lake across the country. Terror seized white settlers, and hundreds fled to the nearest police fort. Young Indians thrilled at the news and formed warrior lodges in the old tradition. Over-zealous members of Big Bear's band killed two missionaries and seven other whites at Frog Lake on 2 April. Shocked at the tragedy, Big Bear took charge and, accepting the consequences, led his band to seize the Hudson's Bay Company post at nearby Fort Pitt. As the fort was not constructed for defence, the factor chose to surrender his family and employees to the Indians. The fort's tiny NWMP garrison fled in a leaky barge down the North Saskatchewan River to Battleford where they found five hundred frightened men, women and children crowded into the police fort there. Ottawa had forbidden Lieutenant-Governor Edgar Dewdney to negotiate with Riel. Even before the battle at Duck Lake, Major-General Frederick Middleton, the elderly British officer who commanded the Canadian militia, was sent to quell the uprising. He reached Winnipeg as news of the battle came in. By nightfall, a CPR train bore Middleton and most of Winnipeg's militia west to Qu'Appelle. Via telegram from Ottawa, the Minister of Militia, Adolphe Caron, and his small staff mobilized approximately six hundred of Canada's tiny permanent force of eight hundred and fifty, along with the better organized city militia regiments. Militia colonels in Ontario clamoured for a chance to serve. Excitement and a yearning for adventure filled the armouries with men. Within hours, the Queen's Own Rifles and the Royal Grenadiers in Toronto each mustered two hundred and fifty men for service. It was more difficult to find enough volunteers in Caron's own province where he selected the 9th Voltigeurs de Québec and the 65th Carabiniers Mont-Royal. The latter regiment recruited most of its men from the streets. Although the Grand Trunk Railway promised to deliver troops and supplies quickly and cheaply by means of its lines through the United States, the Macdonald government insisted on using the unfinished and bankrupt CPR. The company needed the business. North of Lake Superior, between Dog Lake and Red Rock, gaps totalling one hundred and sixty kilometres had to be crossed by foot or in sleighs. Three thousand Canadian militiamen made the journey in March and April, enduring blizzards, freezing rain, snow-blindness and appalling food. One soldier deliberately crushed his foot in a train coupling to escape the torment; another went insane. Veterans later recalled the journey west as the worst ordeal of the campaign. When the people of Port Arthur met each contingent with a huge banquet, spirits were temporarily revived. At Winnipeg, troops were dispatched to one of the three points along the railway line where forces were being organized. In the face of the Indian and Métis threat, the urgency of the white settlers' grievances diminished. More than three thousand western volunteers joined improvised battalions, formed troops of mounted scouts, or organized as local home guards. Many hundreds more, including Métis, volunteered as teamsters to carry Middleton's supplies. Adolphe Caron's telegrams authorized creation of field hospitals, corps of sharp-shooters and land surveyors, and bevies of staff officers. All the energy that had been lacking when it came to addressing western grievances surfaced in abundance when rebellion threatened. The reason was obvious: Canada had to prove to the United States that she controlled the Northwest. The Strategy The fate of the Northwest depended on the actions of two men, Louis Riel and Fred Middleton. Riel appeared to be at an advantage. The approaching spring thaw would make movement very difficult for the government troops. There was no grass to feed their horses, and prairie gumbo would dog their footsteps. Only a few hundred Métis and Indians backed Riel's vision, but thousands more would join if he seemed successful. After Duck Lake, the NWMP commissioner, Colonel A.G. Irvine, had abandoned Fort Carlton and now he waited passively at Prince Albert. At Battleford, a few police and hundreds of settlers waited nervously behind the frail walls of the police fort while men from Poundmaker's reserve pillaged the town and surrounding farms. Contrary to Riel's hopes, the next step was not a repeat of the 1870 scenario. Thanks to Riel's humane gesture, Crozier and his men had escaped captivity. Ottawa had sent troops instead of negotiators, and they were delivered by an unfinished CPR in a week, not months. This time Canada's leader on the scene was a stout, red-faced military veteran who exhibited pomposity and common sense in equal measure. Unlike the rash lieutenant-governor, William McDougall, who was in charge in 1870, General Middleton had a plan, simple, clear, and rational. As the heart of the rebellion was Riel's exovedate at Batoche, Middleton knew that if he captured Batoche the resistance would collapse. The panic stricken prairie settlements would be safer than if he scattered his men in tiny garrisons. Moreover, an early victory was a necessity for a country heavily dependent on nervous foreign investors. The plan to capture Batoche had two major drawbacks. Except for a few permanent force soldiers, Middleton's army was composed of raw, ill-armed militia. His officers' inexperience was exceeded only by their self-confidence. The Métis and Indians, Middleton was told, were experienced, crack shots, the kind of fighters who had destroyed General Custer's cavalry just eight years earlier at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. The second problem would be moving men and wagons across the prairie in springtime. To ease the latter problem, Middleton sent part of his force to Swift Current where steamers could carry them down the South Saskatchewan River as soon as it opened for navigation. Middleton opted to move overland to Clarke's Crossing to meet the steamers. The goal was to strike fast. As for inexperience, his men had no choice but to learn soldiering on the move. When, on 6 April, Middleton's men climbed out of the Qu'Appelle Valley into a freezing prairie wind, little did they know that among the teamsters in the long creaking wagon train was a Métis spy, Jerome Henry. Ahead, at Batoche, Dumont and Riel were aware of the movement of Middleton's troops. Dumont pleaded for authority to make a night attack, the most terrifying experience the raw recruits could face, but Riel refused. Rejecting Dumont's proposal because it was too barbarous, Riel failed to suggest an alternative. Meanwhile, Middleton's plan underwent alterations due to public and political pressure. News of the Frog Lake killings had raised public demands that Battleford be rescued. Though he believed the town was safe, Middleton reluctantly ordered Lieutenant-Colonel William Otter at Swift Current to abandon the plans for his group to come down-river. Instead, Otter was directed to head north to reassure the self-imprisoned settlers. From Calgary, a third column, under a retired British officer, Major General T.B. Strange, was to march to Edmonton and then east in pursuit of Big Bear. Fish Creek and Cut Knife Hill By the time Middleton reached Clarke's Crossing fifty or more kilometres up river from Batoche, eight hundred soldiers and four guns had joined him. Advisers urged him to wait for the steamers, but the general decided to press on. Even without Otter's men, his force greatly outnumbered Riel's estimated three hundred Métis and Indians. First, however, he ferried half his troops to the far bank of the river, for no one knew on which side Riel would make his stand. The march resumed on 23 April. That night, as Middleton's soldiers slept off the fatigue of a thirty-kilometre march, the old general made his usual rounds, self-consciously aware that he was almost the only professional in an army of amateurs. He did not know that Dumont was camped barely a kilometre away. Riel had given in. On 23 April, Dumont had ridden south with two hundred Indians and Métis, although Riel had still ordered a quarter of them back. That night, most of them camped by the deep coulee of Fish Creek, while some crossed over with Dumont to hide in the scrub woods near the trail. When Middleton's army marched into the deep gully, Dumont planned to close the trap and shoot them down like buffalo. Next morning, 24 April, Middleton and his scouts were well to the front. The Métis fired first. Middleton's men raced forward, only to become easy targets on the skyline. Hidden in the wooded gully, Dumont's fighters held off the soldiers. Frightened by their first experience of battle and by the cries of wounded comrades, the government forces became paralyzed. Middleton had a bullet through his cap and both his young aides were wounded. Neither he nor Dumont could do anything. It was the soldiers who gave way first. As dusk approached and heavy rain began pelting the ground, Middleton pulled his men back to form a camp. On the other side, Dumont's brother, Edouard, led fifty fresh men into the battle, only to discover it over. He escorted the weary Métis commander home to Batoche. That night, their nerves made raw by rain, darkness, and fear of attack, Middleton's men waited sleeplessly. The next day, the newspapers called Fish Creek a victory but it was not hard to read between the lines or to weigh Middleton's fifty-five dead and wounded against vague estimates of rebel losses. While the British general had stumbled, the Canadian-born Colonel Otter had saved Battleford. A six-day march of two hundred and sixty kilometres broke the suspense created largely by journalistic warnings of imminent massacre. Otter was an instant hero. His orders were clear: stay put. Flushed with fame, his men demanding action and local settlers clamouring for revenge, Otter yielded to temptation. With the approval of Governor Dewdney in Regina, Otter set out with three hundred and fifty men on 1 May to deliver official vengeance. He was ignorant of Poundmaker's moderating role. At dawn, Otter's column had reached the supposed Cut Knife Creek site of the Cree camp only to find it gone. The column wearily ascended nearby Cut Knife Hill and found the Cree village spread out below. As guns unlimbered to open fire, dogs and early morning hunters spread the alarm. Women and children fled to shelter. Warriors grabbed their weapons and raced through familiar coulees and poplar bluffs. It was Otter's men, not the Indians, who were now under attack, pinned down on an open hill. Otter's two cannon collapsed under their rotten carriages. A Gatling machine gun, loaned by its American manufacturer, blazed away into the distance without effect. By noon, Otter had to retreat. With scouts and Mounted Police forcing a passage, and most of the eight dead and fourteen wounded piled on wagons, somehow the soldiers got away. There was no mystery. They had escaped safely because Poundmaker had forbidden his warriors to follow. "When my people and the whites met in battle," he said later, "I saved the Queen's men." It was the truth. Nevertheless, in eastern Canada Cut Knife was portrayed as a victory. "Otterism," was the remedy for Indian "ingratitude," claimed one editor. The Freeing of Batoche and the Defeat of Riel At Fish Creek, Middleton was appalled by Otter's folly and disgusted by his own immobility. The risks involved in taking his untrained troops against a skilled enemy were more apparent than ever and, worst of all, he was at the limit of his horse-drawn supply system. Food and medical supplies were running short, and the Northcote, a Hudson's Bay steamer pressed into service to deliver reinforcements and supplies, was hopelessly aground, confirming that river navigation was hardly more than a speculator's dream. The troops began blaming "old Fred" for being too slow. On 5 May, some ten days later than expected, the steamer finally appeared. Middleton fortified it with bales of hay and sacks of oatmeal so that the Northcote would be his secret weapon. He would run soldiers to Batoche by water as well as by land. The armed steamer was not a secret to Dumont. At Batoche, the Métis dragged the heavy ferry cable out of the river and stretched it between the high banks. There it should catch the Northcole, causing it to capsize like a toy boat on a brook. Others perfected the concealed rifle pits they had dug around the village. Meanwhile, Riel prayed, recorded his visions in a diary and prepared fresh orders for the exovedate. Smoke pouring from her funnels, the Northcote appeared early on 9 May. Both sides opened fire. The captain spotted the ferry cable too late. Mast and smokestacks tumbled to the deck. Dumont's men jeered. The little ship passed through and raced down river with her frightened American captain vowing that he had risked enough in a foreign quarrel. Then, from the banks above, came the booming of cannon. Middleton's troops had reached the priest's house south of Batoche and were bombarding the village. Dumont's men poured up the slope, through the poplar bluffs, to fight. Once again, the troops were caught on the skyline where they became easy targets for skilled marksmen. Rather than retreat, Middleton summoned his wagons, formed a zareba, or makeshift fort, and by late afternoon had made camp. Lord Melgund, his chief staff officer and a future governor-general, rode south to order supporting militia to come closer. He knew he would be the guide for an avenging army of British regulars if Middleton and his men were wiped out. By the next morning, they had recovered their courage and Middleton hunted for tactics that would keep the losses of his citizen-soldiers as low as possible. On 11 May, he led his mounted scouts north and east of Batoche and, as he rode, Middleton saw Dumont's men race across to face him. He realized that his diversionary tactic would make it possible to strike at the Métis when their defenses were weakest. The Métis again followed Middleton's men when they rode out the next day. The militia were under instructions to attack the half-empty Métis trenches on the signal of cannon fire, but the gun went off and nothing happened. An angry general returned to find his officers protesting that they had not heard the shot. After lunch Middleton then ordered the militia battalions out to their old positions. One unit of rural Ontarians kept right on going. Its commander, a member of parliament, was still fuming at Middleton's rebuke. The other battalions, from Toronto and Winnipeg, followed. In a few moments, troops poured down the hill towards Batoche, cheering and shouting. Dumont and his men had long since run out of ammunition. They fired pebbles or bits of metal at the attackers. Old men stayed and died; others fell back, firing as they went, killing or wounding thirty of the militia. At dusk, the battered Métis village was looted on the pretext that a favourite officer, Captain John French, had been killed by a Métis sniper. Dumont pleaded with Riel to flee but he refused. In the darkness they separated. Dumont escaped to the United States. Three days later, on 15 May, Riel surrendered to some of Middleton's scouts who smuggled him back to camp. He was interviewed there by Middleton, loaned an overcoat, and taken south to Regina as Ottawa directed. The campaign resumed. The Surrender of Poundmaker From Batoche, Middleton took his troops north to Prince Albert where they boarded steamers to take them up the more navigable North Saskatchewan River to Battleford and Fort Pitt. Before leaving, the general took the opportunity to vent his scorn on Colonel Irvine who had remained at Prince Albert with a strong NWMP force throughout the campaign. Both troops and civilians disdainfully referred to the police as "gophers" for hiding in their fort. On 26 May, as Middleton joined forces with Colonel Otter at Battleford, Poundmaker brought his Cree band to surrender. He might easily have escaped, but he chose not to abandon his people. Frenchman's Butte At Calgary, General Strange had improvised a tiny army of police, cowboys, Winnipeggers and the 65th Carabiniers from Montréal. Indian agents felt relief when he set out for Edmonton; "Gunner Jingo," as Strange was known, was a threat to the shaky peace with Crowfoot's band of Blackfoot Indians. At Edmonton, Strange's column loaded into makeshift leaky scows to head east along the North Saskatchewan. With a single field gun and barely two hundred men Strange met Big Bear at Frenchman's Butte. The militia abandoned their attack when they became lost in dense poplars and swamp. Meanwhile the Indians, alarmed by shells from Strange's only gun, had fled from their position, heading deep into the bush north of the river with their prisoners from Fort Pitt. For most of June, columns of militia and police vainly combed the muskeg and woods for Big Bear and the men, women and children he and his Plains and Wood Cree followers held captive. Internal divisions among the Indians resulted in the prisoners being turned over to the Wood Crees who released them. Once the prisoners were recovered, Middleton abandoned his pursuit of Big Bear. Weeks later, on 2 July, Big Bear and a young companion surrendered to an astonished policeman at Fort Carlton. The rebellion was over. Aftermath Pessimistic experts in the East had warned that war in the Northwest could last through the summer and perhaps even for years, bankrupting the young Dominion and discouraging settlement for generations. Yet Riel and Middleton between them had ended the campaign in three months. Forty soldiers and police and eleven civilians had died. Although no one officially counted rebel losses, they were perhaps half as great. The government was desperate to cut its losses. The homesick militiamen clamoured to leave the Northwest; their employers threatened to give their jobs to others. Middleton hoped for a grand review of his victorious army at Winnipeg, while his soldiers grumbled furiously at the delay. Militiamen scoffed when heavy rain forced cancellation of the review and rejoiced when Winnipeg's mayor ordered taverns to stay open through the night. The return trip was much easier: the CPR line was now complete, and some soldiers were carried by steamer from the north shore of Lake Superior to Owen Sound or Collingwood in southern Ontario. From London, Ontario, to Halifax, Nova Scotia, committees celebrated the soldiers' passage with banquets, banners and triumphal arches. The 9th Voltigeurs, ragged and bronzed from the campaign, formed a guard of honour when Parliament adjourned. A grateful government bestowed upon campaign veterans a quarter-section of land in the West in the hope that they would settle there. Most sold the grant to speculators. Reluctantly, the British government paid for a campaign medal. Parliament granted Middleton twenty thousand dollars as a reward, and both he and Adolphe Caron were knighted for their services. Within the militia, pride and good feeling rapidly degenerated into nasty disputes about who deserved credit for the outcome. Considering the aftermath of the rebellion, such squabbles seem petty and absurd, yet they were symptomatic of the ill-feeling that seemed to affect most Canadians. In June Macdonald appointed government lawyers to investigate the rebellion and to prepare charges. Their conclusions have hardly been challenged by historians. Despite Ottawa's initial belief in a network of conspiracy, extending to Liberal sympathizers among the Prince Albert settlers, government investigators soon agreed that only Louis Riel could have caused the uprising. The official charges, framed in the obsolete language of Edward III's Statute of Treasons, followed from the investigation. The government carefully followed legal procedures. By the end of July when Riel came to trial in Regina, a dramatic reversal in sympathy had brought much of French Canada to his side. In spite of Québec's horror at the killing of missionaries and Riel's own heresies, Riel became a symbolic French-Canadian persecuted by an English-speaking majority. In the new scenario, his faults were excused by his insanity. His Québec lawyers denounced the jury's verdict. The death sentence, pronounced by the judge and confirmed by two levels of appeal tribunal was easily dismissed as English-Canadian fanaticism. In fact, as Thomas Flanagan and Neil Watson have shown, the trial was fair by the rules of the time, the verdict inescapable, and the sentence inevitable. After three reprieves and an examination of his sanity, Riel was hanged in Regina on 16 November 1885. Page 1 of 2 (Click "more" to go to part 2)