The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief | Page 3

he shrank from, rather
than courted, the popularity and leadership which are the darling aims
of so many lads in their school-days. Yet he had many friends who
were warmly attached to him; and to these he returned an equal
affection. One of his comrades was stricken down with a loathsome and
fatal malady, and all his comrades fled in fear away from his presence.
But Louis Riel, the "half-breed," as the boys knew him, bravely went to
the couch of his stricken friend, nursing, and bestowing all his attention
and affection upon him, and offering consoling words. It is related that
when the last moments came, the sufferer arose, and flinging his arms
around Louis' neck, poured out his thanks and besought heaven to
reward him. Then he fell backwards and died.
Frequently young Riel's school-mates would ask him, "What do you
intend doing when you leave school? Will you stay here, or do you go
out again into the wilderness among the savages?"
His eye would lighten with indignation at hearing the word "savages"
applied to his people. "I will go out to the Red River," he would reply,
to follow in the footsteps of my father. He has been a benefactor of our
people, and I shall seek to be their benefactor too. When I tire of work,
I can take my gun and go out for herds upon the plains with our people,

whom you call "savages." I know not what you mean when you say
"savages." We speak French as you do; our hearts are as kind, as noble,
and as true as yours. When one of our people is in affliction the others
give him sympathy and help. We are bound together by strong ties of
fraternity; there is no jealousy among us, no tyranny of caste, but we all
live in peace and love as the sisters and brothers in one great household.
My eye deceives me if like this live you. You are divided into envious,
brawling factions, each one of which tries to injure, and blight the
reputation of the other. If one of you fall upon evil times he is left
without the sympathy and succour of the others. In politics and in
social grades you are divided, and in every respect you are such that I
should mourn the day when our peaceable, simple, contented people on
the banks of the Red River should in any respect choose your
civilization for their model.
He often spoke of a burning desire which he had to be a political as
well as a social leader in the Colony of Red River. He frequently,
likewise, muttered dark threats against the overbearing policy and dark
injustice of "The Great Monopoly," as he used to characterize the
Hudson Bay Company. Occasionally he would burst out into passionate
words like these:
"They treat us as they would blood thirsty savages upon the plains.
They spurn us with their feet as dogs, and then they spit upon us. They
mock at our customs, they regard with contempt that which to us is
sacred and above price. They are not even deterred by the virtue of our
women. Now witness, you God who made all men, the white man and
the savage, I will, if the propitious day ever come, strike in vengeance,
and my blow will be with an iron hand, whose one smiting shall wipe
out all the injustice and the dishonour."
Filled with these sentiments, when his school days came to an end, he
packed his portmanteaus and took his way by stage and boat for the
region that not many years hence was to ring and shudder with his
name.

CHAPTER II.
Long before the vision of a confederation of the British Provinces
entered into the brain of any man, Lord Selkirk, coming to the wilds of
North America, found a tract of country fertile in soil, and fair to look
upon. He arrived in this unknown wilderness when it was summer, and
all the prairie extending over illimitable stretches till it was lost in the
tranquil horizon, was burning with the blooms of a hundred varieties of
flowers. Here the "tiger rose," like some savage queen of beauty, rose
to his knees and breathed her sultry balm in his face. Aloof stood the
shy wild rose, shedding its scent with delicate reserve; but the wild pea,
and the convolvulus, and the augur flower, and the insipid daisy, ran
riot through all the grass land, and surfeited his nostrils with their
sweets. Here and there upon the mellow level stood a clump of poplars
or white oaks, prim, like virgins without suitors, with their robes drawn
close about them; but when over the unmeasured plain the wind blew,
they bowed their heads: as if saluting