Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont

by Joseph Boyden

  Move ahead a week: the trial of Louis Riel for high treason opens on the morning of July 28, 1885. Six male jury members are seated. The Crown then outlines its evidence against Louis, including his breaking with the priests of Saskatchewan and his offer to return to Montana if he was given a large sum of money from the federal government. The Crown then declares, “I think you will be satisfied before this case is over that it is not a matter brought about by any wrongs so much as a matter brought about by the personal ambition and vanity of the man on trial.”

  Not a matter brought about by any wrongs? Louis thinks. The Métis have been wronged countless times by the government and by greedy land-grabbers. It is completely based on wrongs! As for personal ambition and vanity, Louis knows that his ambition is for his people and that God disdains vanity. The Crown doesn’t know him at all. Louis looks around this tiny courtroom, no more than fifty feet by twenty and filled with reporters and the fancily dressed wives of the Crown prosecutors and General Middleton and the judge. No, these people don’t know him at all, and they are a world away from the hardscrabble life of the children of the prairies. His stomach must sink at this thought. He will not be given a fair trial. It is impossible.

  The Crown’s first witness is John Willoughby, a Saskatoon doctor who’d purportedly talked to Riel at the outset of the rebellion. When it comes time for the defence to cross-examine him, Louis listens as his lawyers question Willoughby about what had been discussed. Mainly, it seems they’d talked about Louis’s idea to divide up the vast lands of the North-West, not just among the Métis but among different groups of immigrants who were arriving weekly to settle and farm. The defence makes it sound as if Louis’s idea that there is enough land for everyone isn’t a sane one. When one of Louis’s lawyers asks Willoughby if this seemed like a very rational proposition, the witness replies quickly, “It did not.” But it is! What exactly is the defence up to? They’ve kept their strategy quiet. Louis suddenly feels worried.

  Witnesses for the Crown continue to line up through the rest of the day, each piling on more and more damaging evidence. A man who was a prisoner of Riel’s testifies that he witnessed the prophet commanding armed Métis and remembers hearing Louis brag about ordering his men to open fire at Duck Lake, as well as talking of needing another victory. Other witnesses acknowledge that Louis was the brain behind the whole operation. Again and again in cross-examination, Louis watches in growing horror as his lawyers push the witnesses to discuss what will surely be viewed as his oddities, including frequent mood swings and eating cooked blood for his health. While the Crown tries to make Louis appear cold and calculating, his own lawyers are clearly building the argument that Louis is sick mentally. He now sees where this is leading: they will argue that he is insane, and therefore not guilty as charged. But if they are successful in arguing this, then the rest of Canada and the world may think that the Métis cause is just as insane. Louis ponders this as the day wears on, realizing with each attack against his sanity that he cannot allow this to happen, for it will destroy his people, and his dream.

  On the second day of the trial, the Crown continues to argue that Louis acted in a cold and calculating manner, actively and sanely fomenting rebellion among a group of poor half-breeds, manipulating them with his devilish ideas. George Kerr, the store owner in Batoche, takes the stand and recounts the meetings Louis held in the lead-up to the rebellion. The brother of Louis’s former secretary, Honoré Jaxon (previously known as Will Jackson), speaks of how Louis was able to control the poor bastard, who himself is mentally unstable. Louis watches and listens carefully as first General Middleton, then Captain Young (who accompanied Louis from Batoche to his trial), speak to his intelligence and knowledge of world affairs. Louis watches with deep sadness when his own cousin, Charles Nolin, takes the stand to speak against him. Charles, who supported a Métis uprising in the beginning, has turned against his own blood and people, supplying key knowledge of the intricacies of the rebellion. This is not the first time that Charles has been a Judas. Back in 1870 after Red River, he’d done the same thing, crossing his own cousin for political gain. But Louis, rather than feeling anger, feels only sadness for the spineless man.

  Louis does get angry, though, when his defence team begins questioning cousin Charles about Louis’s sanity. Charles admits that Louis believes he can prophesy the future based on how his body’s organs react to his commands, and that he becomes uncontrollably excited and angry whenever he hears the word “police.” This questioning must stop! Louis is not insane! He must set things straight. Louis stands up and begins speaking to the judge. “If there is any way, by legal procedure, that I should be allowed to say a word, I wish you would allow me before this witness leaves the box.”

  The judge responds by telling Louis that he must bring this up with his own counsel through the proper channels, but Louis continues. “Do you allow me to speak? I have some observation to make before the court.”

  Louis’s lawyers are mortified. Fitzpatrick tells him that this is not the proper time. Pointing to Louis, he says, “He must not be allowed to interfere,” and the judge points out that Louis has the right to counsel but also the right to defend himself.

  Filled with emotion, Louis speaks again. “Your Honour, this case comes to be extraordinary, and while the Crown, with the great talents they have at their service, are trying to show I am guilty—of course it is their duty—my counsellors are trying—my good friends and lawyers who have been sent here by friends whom I respect—are trying to show that I am insane.”

  Once again the judge orders Louis to be quiet and tells him that he must put his questions through his counsel. Fitzpatrick, sensing he’s losing control not just of the case but of his client, again asks the judge to forbid Louis from interrupting.

  Richardson, suddenly realizing that Louis hasn’t been informed of their plans, addresses Louis’s lawyers. “I don’t like to dictate to you, but it strikes me that now an opportunity should be taken of ascertaining whether there is really anything that has not been put to this witness that ought to have been put.”

  Angry now, Fitzpatrick quickly answers that he has the discretion to make his case. A quietly delighted Crown prosecutor steps in to say that he’d be happy for Louis himself to ask questions if this is what Louis desires.

  Judge Richardson asks Louis the question that hovers in the courtroom: “Prisoner, are you defended by counsel?” Louis doesn’t answer, just stares down at his notes in front of him. Again the judge asks, then again and finally again, “Prisoner, are you defended by counsel?”

  Finally, Louis gives his answer:

  I will, if you please, say this. My counsel come from Quebec, from a far province. They have to put questions to men with whom they are not acquainted, on circumstances which they don’t know; and although I am willing to give them all the information that I can, they cannot follow the thread of all the questions that should be put to the witnesses. They lose more than three quarters of the good opportunities. Not because they are not able! They are learned, they are talented; but the circumstances are such that they cannot put all the questions. If I would be allowed—as it was suggested, this case is extraordinary!

  Again, Judge Richardson tells Louis that he will have the opportunity to speak at the appointed time.

  “I cannot all,” Louis says, “I cannot all. I have too much to say. There is too much to say.”

  After a few minutes’ recess for the defence to pull itself together, Louis makes the decision to keep his counsel. What other choice does he have? His English isn’t good enough to defend himself, and there is so much to say, so much to explain, that it would take him months of preparation. It is better to keep this counsel than to be left alone. Once more though, against the wishes of the court and his defence, Louis feels the urge to explain himself. “I cannot abandon my dignity! Here I have to defend myself against the accusation of high treason, or I have to consent to the animal life of an asylum. I don’t care much
about animal life if I am not allowed to carry with it the moral existence of an intellectual being.”

  Angrily, the judge raises his voice. “Now, stop!”

  “Yes, Your Honour,” Louis whispers.

  For the rest of the day the Crown piles on the damaging evidence: a letter Louis wrote to Poundmaker, begging him to join the rebellion; witnesses who recall seeing Louis, crucifix in hand, exhorting the half-breeds to carry on the killing of policemen. By the end of the second day when the Crown rests its case, Louis has been painted as a calculating instigator and mastermind.

  Now it’s the defence’s turn. On the morning of July 30, the defence opens by calling on Father Alexis André, the priest who, above all, considers Louis a heretic and a madman. Expecting to hear the priest denigrate him, Louis is instead surprised to hear André explain how for years, petition after petition, the Métis begged the federal government to treat them with justice and fairness, to settle their title for the land upon which they’d lived and settled, and how year after year, the government ignored the half-breeds.

  The Crown angrily interjects that the defence is playing unfairly by having André describe why the rebellion might have been justified, when their true aim is to prove that Louis is insane. The two defences are inconsistent, the Crown argues, and this argument rages through the length of the priest’s testimony. By the end of it, Louis is excited to see that André has made it clear that the government is also to blame for the violence that erupted. But just as quickly, Louis is dismayed once more when the priest speaks to Louis’s mental state, calling him a “fool,” “not in control of himself,” and “not responsible.”

  Other witnesses contend that Louis is a madman. A member of his own Exovedate, Philippe Garnot, admits, “I thought the man was crazy,” especially when it came to his rather bizarre prayers. Father Fourmand, who follows, talks more about Louis’s religious oddities and his grave mood swings. But when they are cross-examined, all three men only strengthen the Crown’s case by admitting that Louis was clearly the leader of the Métis.

  The fourth witness, Doctor François-Elzéar Roy, a partowner of the asylum in Quebec City where Louis spent nineteen months, testifies that he suffers from what the doctor labels megalomania. Roy’s cross-examination becomes the battle of the day. For more than an hour he fences with the Crown about the nature of insanity. The Crown insults the doctor by claiming his asylum is nothing more than a boarding house, but Roy, without benefit of his files or records of Louis’s stay, argues lucidly in English and then in French. By all accounts, he bests the Crown at its own game and offers a glimmer of hope to the defence.

  The next witness for the defence is Doctor Daniel Clark, another psychiatrist, this one from Toronto. He has arrived at the last minute as a substitute for a doctor who treated Louis but wasn’t able to come. Doctor Clark spoke with Louis three times over the course of two days, and his limited knowledge of the half-breed and his temperament does little good for anyone.

  And with these five men, and in less than one full day, the defence rests its case. The Crown calls its rebuttal witnesses and steadily builds its case through the rest of the third day and into the fourth. A doctor who runs an asylum in Hamilton, Ontario, argues that Louis is indeed sane, as do Captain Young and General Middleton, who speak to Louis’s intelligence. A minister and two Mounties who spent time with Louis also agree about his sanity.

  Day four ends with Fitzpatrick giving a two-hour address that spills over into the fifth day. The crux of his argument is what Louis and Gabriel and the others had been saying all along: that the Government of Canada “had wholly failed in its duty toward these North-West Territories.” He also maintains his stand that Louis is not sane, ending his talk by pleading to the six-man jury, “I know that you shall not weave the cord that shall hang him and hang him high in the face of all the world, a poor confirmed lunatic—a victim, gentlemen, of oppression or the victim of fanaticism.” With that, he rests his case.

  Judge Richardson now turns to Louis, and the moment Louis has been both looking forward to and dreading arrives. Some say Louis’s speech is brilliant, others that it is rambling and confused. The fact is that Louis decides to speak in English for fear of not being able to control any translation. Although he can speak English, it isn’t his strong suit. But what other choice does he have?

  “Your Honours,” Louis begins, “gentlemen of the jury”:

  It would be easy for me today to play insanity, because the circumstances are such as to excite any man, and under the natural excitement of what is taking place today (I cannot speak English very well, but am trying to do so, because most of those here speak English), under the excitement which my trial causes me would justify me not to appear as usual, but with my mind out of its ordinary condition. I hope with the help of God I will maintain calmness and decorum as suits this honourable court, this honourable jury.

  Louis looks to all the strangers staring at him. There is so much he needs to explain to them. But how? Where to begin? He remembers, right then, what is most important. Begging the audience not to think of him as insane, Louis then recites a prayer, asking God to bless all of those present.

  And then Louis begins to try to explain himself, to explain his actions, to explain the plight of his beloved people:

  When I came into the North-West in July, the first of July 1884, I found the Indians suffering. I found the half-breeds eating the rotten pork of the Hudson Bay Company and getting sick and weak every day. Although a half-breed, and having no pretension to help the whites, I also paid attention to them. I saw they were deprived of responsible government, I saw that they were deprived of their public liberties. I remembered that half-breed meant white and Indian, and while I paid attention to the suffering Indians and the half-breeds I remembered that the greatest part of my heart and blood was white, and I have directed my attention to help the Indians, to help the half-breeds and to help the whites to the best of my ability. We have made petitions, I have made petitions with others to the Canadian Government asking to relieve the condition of this country. We have taken time; we have tried to unite all classes, even if I may speak, all parties. Those who have been in close communication with me know I have suffered, that I have waited for months to bring some of the people of the Saskatchewan to an understanding of certain important points in our petition to the Canadian Government and I have done my duty. I believe I have done my duty.

  The words come to Louis, and he is excited about this. He pushes on, tries to explain the complexities, defending himself against the charges the Crown has made that he is vain, that he works to enrich himself. He tries to explain that his lawyers could not ask the right questions of the witnesses because they don’t fully understand the situation, but Louis’s English words begin to fail him. He must pull it together; he must find the thread again.

  “It is true, gentlemen, I believed for years I had a mission, and when I speak of a mission you will understand me not as trying to play the role of insane before the grand jury so as to have a verdict of acquittal upon that ground. I believe that I have a mission, I believe I had a mission at this very time.” Yes, this is it. Louis explains his mission in the past, how he helped Manitoba and how he was punished by the government for doing so. But then Bishop Bourget was able to recognize that Louis had a mission to fulfill, and others did as well. Louis explains that other holy men have blessed him too. But he begins to get lost in the details, needs once again to find that thread.

  Today when I saw the glorious General Middleton bearing testimony that he thought I was not insane, and when Captain Young proved that I am not insane, I felt that God was blessing me, and blotting away from my name the blot resting upon my reputation on account of having been in the lunatic asylum of my good friend Dr. Roy. I have been in an asylum, but I thank the lawyers for the Crown who destroyed the testimony of my good friend Dr. Roy, because I have always believed that I was put in the asylum without reason.

  Yes, defend y
ourself, Louis. Explain to them all that you are not mad. But then Louis again becomes lost in the English words when he begins speaking of his Judas cousin Charles Nolin, and so he turns back to the agitation that he helped begin and his respect for the police. But it’s too easy to become lost in the blame, to blame the priests who are wrong, who are instruments of God but who have been broken. Louis struggles to find the right words again. The people in the courtroom stare at him; some fidget, others yawn in the midday heat. He must find the thread again. The people here must understand!

  Louis explains what he means when he says Rome has fallen, that the plagues of the Old World don’t need to continue in the New. But then the hurt of what his cousin Nolin said about Louis claiming he can predict the future by the noise of his bowels leads him astray again. Find the thread! Find the thread! Louis tries to defend his thinking that the North-West should be divided into sevenths and given to the immigrants from Europe alongside the Métis and Indians. And, despite what the jury might think, Louis can’t help informing them one more time, “I am no more than you are, I am simply one of the flock, equal to the rest. If it is any satisfaction to the doctors to know what kind of insanity I have, if they are going to call my pretensions insanity, I say humbly, through the grace of God, I believe I am the prophet of the New World.”