Riel, Louis

(born Oct. 23, 1844, St. Boniface, Assiniboia—died Nov. 16, 1885, Regina, District of Assiniboia, Can.) Canadian leader of the Métis (persons of both European, especially French, and Indian descent) in western Canada.

Riel studied law in Montreal and worked at various jobs, including a brief period as a clerk in St. Paul, Minn. In 1869 arrangements to transfer to the Dominion the territorial rights of the Hudson's Bay Company in western Canada and the expected influx of English-speaking settlers alarmed the Métis population. Riel assumed leadership and his followers managed to halt the Canadian surveyors and prevent the governor-designate, William McDougall, from entering Red River. They then seized Ft. Garry (now Winnipeg), the headquarters of the company, and established a provisional government with Riel as president to negotiate acceptable terms of union with Canada.

In May 1870 the Canadian Parliament passed the Manitoba Act, establishing the province of Manitoba and promising amnesty to the insurgents. Riel's government, meanwhile, court-martialled and executed an English-speaking Canadian, thus arousing all English-speaking Canada. The promised amnesty was thereupon refused, and military forces were sent out against Riel and his followers. When Ft. Garry was recaptured in August 1870, the insurrection ended and Riel fled. A year later he urged his followers to join with other Canadians in repulsing a threatened attack by American Fenians (Irish revolutionaries), for which he received public thanks. In 1873 he became a member of the Dominion Parliament for Provencher; he took the oath in Ottawa but did not sit. The following year he was expelled from the House but was quickly reelected for Provencher. In February 1875 Riel was officially outlawed for five years. He spent a year as a mental patient (1877–78), and in 1879–84 he lived in Montana, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1883; there he endeavoured to organize the American Métis on behalf of the Republican Party.

In 1884 the Métis of Saskatchewan appealed to Riel to represent their land claims to the Canadian government. At first proceeding legally, he later established a provisional government (March 1885). A rising followed, but it was crushed by the Canadians, and Riel surrendered. He was found guilty of treason and hanged. His death led to fierce outbreaks of racialism in Quebec and Ontario and marked the beginning of the nationalist movement.

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