I recently finished reading Joseph Boydon's excellent biography of Gabriel Dumont and Louis Riel, part of the "Extraordinary Canadians" series curated by John Ralston Saul. If you are at all interested in Canadian history, you should go out and buy some of these books - they're fantastic. I plan on writing a longer post about Louis Riel and how our perceptions of him probably says a lot more about us than it does about him, but for now I want to focus on one specific point.
Every year, as the November 16th anniversary of Riel's hanging approaches, calls for his posthumous pardon increase. I suspect that this year, the 125th anniversary, we'll hear more about Riel than normal and the historical case for his pardon will be argued. Whenever the topic comes up, his detractors often point out that Riel did in fact commit treason by setting up a provisional government at Fort Garry and he did in fact execute Thomas Scott; that regardless of his place in Métis/French Canadian history, he is a treasonous murderer and should be treated as such. That is all well and fine, but the pardon discussed doesn't apply to that event. He was not hanged for his role in the Red River Rebellion of 1870, he was hanged for his role in the 1885 rebellion at Batoche Saskatchewan. For that earlier uprising (and the execution of Thomas Scott) his initial 1874 death penalty was subsequently reduced to a 2 year prison term for which he was granted amnesty in 1875 on the condition that he remain outside of Canada for 5 years. Riel remained in Montana until 1884, even taking the step of becoming an American citizen, so one can rightly surmise that he fulfilled the obligations of that amnesty.
Riel didn't return to Canada until 1884 at the behest of Gabriel Dumont, the Métis chief who thought that the legendary Riel could help win the same concessions from the Canadian government that he so famously did in 1870. As Boyden and Chester Brown point out - Riel had very little to do with the armed insurrection that occurred at Batoche - by that time he was increasingly falling prey to the mental illnesses that had stalked him for most of his adult life. Upon his return to Canada, Riel was convinced that the Métis were the lost tribe of Israel and he was Louis 'David' Riel, the prophet who would lead his people from bondage. It is true that he formed another provisional government (this one really was treasonous as Canada had purchased Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Co while Riel was exiled), but his aim was always for that government to be a temporary tool to force Sir John A. MacDonald to take their claims seriously and negotiate in good faith. History shows that MacDonald did not. Instead of negotiating, he sent 5,000 volunteer soldiers and a Gatling gun along the still-unfinished Trans Canada Railroad to deal with the "half-breed problem". Dumont was far more prepared to use violence to achieve his aims (which weren't full-blown independence but the legal title to the land that they had cleared as well as religious/linguistic protections), and at the battles of Duck Lake, Fish Creek and Batoche it was Dumont, and not Riel who led the hundred-odd Métis irregulars against the Canadian military.
Needless to say, when a man rides into the middle of a gunfight on horseback with a golden cross held high and takes time out of negotiating with the Canadian government to change the names of the week (because using the old ones is akin to worshipping false idols), we're not dealing with quite the military genius the Orange Order tried to make us believe.
[For those interested, Riel's weekdays were: Christ Aurore, Vierge Aurore, Joseph Aube, Dieu Aurore, Deuil Aurore, Calme Aurore, and Vive Aurore. He also changed the Sabbath from Sunday to Saturday]
Was Riel actually guilty of treason for his actions in 1885? Boydon compellingly argues that he wasn't. Riel, as much as he may not have wished to admit, really was suffering from pretty severe mental illness. Add to this the fact that he was an American citizen (at a time before the concept of dual citizenship), and the fact that his judge, who ignored the jury's recommendation of mercy, was a member of the Orange Order, and Dumont, who actually led all of the fighting, was not allowed to testify, and you have a pretty strong argument that Riel should be posthumously pardoned.
Riel's execution was in a very real sense the culmination of a 15 year propaganda campaign by the Orange Order of Ontario who never forgave Riel for trying to keep them from taking the farmland they saw as their Protestant birthright, and executing one of their own: Thomas Scott. History has scrubbed the image of Thomas Scott - far from being the innocent government bureaucrat he's often portrayed as, Scott was a virulent racist who tried to overthrow Riel's provisional government twice and spent his time in jail hurling racist epithets against his Catholic Métis captors. It's not a coincidence that Scott was the only prisoner held by the Provisional Government that was executed.
Also, one should remember what Scott was doing in Red River - he wasn't simply surveying the land for informational purposes. Those surveyors were dividing land that the Canadian government was about to purchase from the Hudson's Bay Co and would then sell to English Protestant settlers - regardless of who was living on the land previously. The Métis were keenly aware of what land surveyors meant - their life's work would be stolen from them by a foreign government.
When Riel was captured in 1885, he was essentially being retried for his actions 15 years earlier. Those who argue against his posthumous pardon are doing the same thing.
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