Policing the Plains | Page 5

previously understood, the Imperial
Government was to transfer the vast North-West to Canada, which in
turn undertook to respect and conserve the rights of the people in the
area thus added to the Dominion. This arrangement was concluded in
the spring of 1869, and it was then expected that the purchase money
would be paid on the 1st of October following, and that probably on the
1st of December the Queen's Proclamation would issue, setting forth
these facts and fixing the date of the actual transfer to Canada.
So far all was well. The ideas leading up to the acquisition of this great
domain were in every sense statesmanlike, and, if carefully carried out,
were calculated to be of the greatest benefit to the people in the new
territory and the Dominion as well. We should pay unstinted tribute to
the men whose ideals were for an ever-widening horizon, and who felt
that "no pent-up Utica should confine the powers" of the young nation
just beginning to stretch out and exercise its potentially giant limbs.
Once the older Provinces in the East were brought into Confederation it
was wise to look forward to a Canada stretching from ocean to ocean,
and to take the necessary legal steps to secure the broad acres of the
West as part of the Dominion. But just when everything seemed to be
going well a cog in the diplomatic equipment of the Canadian
Government power-house slipped and taking advantage of the occasion,
one Louis Riel, the son of the old hot-headed agitator on the Red River,
threw a wrench into the machinery.
The Canadian authorities who wisely carried through the negotiations
with the Hudson's Bay Company and the Imperial Government seem to
have blundered by overlooking the fact that the new territory had
within its borders some 10,000 people, apart from the Indians, who
ought to have been informed in some official way of the bargain that
was being made, and of the steps that were being taken to conserve the
rights and privileges of these early settlers.

It is true that rumours of the transaction reached the Red River country
through unauthoritative sources, but the main result was to produce a
feeling of uneasiness amongst the people there. And especially was this
the case when the rumours were given point by overt acts. Even before
the transfer of the country had been legally completed men were sent
out from the East to open roads from the Lakes into the settlements.
Surveying parties entered the new territory and went hither and thither,
driving their stakes and erecting their mounds, to the bewilderment of
the people, and to cap all the indiscretions, a Governor, the Hon.
William McDougall, was dispatched from Ottawa to the Red River
before the Hudson's Bay regime was formally superseded and before a
Queen's Proclamation, which would have been instantly recognized by
all classes in the community, was issued.
The Selkirk Settlers and other people of that class, however perplexed
at the procedure, had the utmost confidence that the Canadian
authorities would ultimately do substantial justice to all, and hence they
awaited patiently though somewhat anxiously the developments of time.
But the French half-breeds, more fiery and more easily excited, more
turbulent of spirit and warlike in disposition, accustomed to more or
less fighting on the plains, and withal, as a class, less well informed
than their white brethren, were not content to wait. They felt that the
course being followed by the Canadian authorities might lead to the
loss of their rights, and so they rose in a revolt, that while
accomplishing some of the objects that could have been reached by
constitutional means, left its red stream across that early page of our
history. But in the midst of all our statements let it be remembered, in
mitigation of the attitude of the Canadian authorities, that
communication between Ottawa and the West at that period was very
difficult. There were no railways nor telegraphs and the mails were few
and far apart. Though, on the other hand, that condition of things
should have made all parties more tolerant and cautious.
Strange that the two Louis Riels, father and son, should lead in
agitations that were somewhat contradictory. The elder Riel was a
famous antagonist of the Hudson's Bay Company regime with its
apparent or alleged monopoly in trade, and the younger Riel, while no

lover of the Company, opposed the Canadian Government which was
to replace it. The truth seems that they were both temperamentally
against authority and that they were both afflicted with a megalomania
which led each to imagine that he was some great one.
[Illustration: SIR JOHN A. MACDONALD. Who, while Premier,
founded the Mounted Police. (Photo, Pittaway Studios, Ottawa.)]
[Illustration: HON. ALEXANDER MACKENZIE. Who, while Premier,
organized the