The event was a catalyst for the slow destruction of Québec conservatism. Wilfrid Laurier, the young Liberal who proclaimed that he, too, would have borne a musket on the banks of the Saskatchewan, became prime minister eleven years later. In Ontario opinion was divided on Riel, but the prime minister's stubborn insistence that the law take its grim course owed nothing to public pressure. He felt Riel's death must serve as a warning that Canada would safeguard its sovereignty in the West.
While Canadians clamoured over the fate of Riel, hardly a voice was raised on behalf of the eight Indians hanged for their role in the uprising, or for Big Bear, Poundmaker and the forty-two Indians and Métis who were sent to jail. Just four years before the rebellion, Poundmaker's reputation for integrity and leadership was such that he was asked to accompany the Governor General of Canada on a tour of the Northwest. Although he had rebuked his young men for the destruction at Battleford and had allowed government troops to escape annihilation at Cut Knife Hill, he was convicted of treason. The time served in jail by Poundmaker and Big Bear brought them both humiliation and early death. Like Macdonald, neither Laurier nor his successors took any effective action to solve the terrible problems which had driven the Métis and their Indian allies to seek Riel as their leader.
Was the rebellion in vain? A Half-Breed Claims Commission had been appointed in response to Riel's petition even before Riel proclaimed his exovedate, but, thanks to the outbreak, its members could serve only in the wake of Middleton's army. Without rebellion, the Northwest might not have won a voice in the federal Parliament by 1887. For the Indians, so much on the margins of the rebellion, neutral, divided, and half-heartedly engaged, the rebellion offered no gains and some bitter losses. The reserves policy remained. The government persisted in trying to further Indian assimilation by attempting to turn hunters into farmers. The once-terrified settlers were persuaded by a seemingly easy military victory that they owed nothing to the people who had made the Prairies livable long before they had arrived.
It was easy to forget that in the various battles and skirmishes of their campaign for self-determination, Indians and Métis had won every battle except Batoche.
