DECEMBER 8:

December 8, 1840:  Mikasuki Seminole Chief Halleck Tustenuggee was vehemently opposed to the removal of his people from Florida.  He and his followers participated in numerous battles against American forces.  Today he will attack a party of officers' wives being escorted from Fort Micanopy by thirteen soldiers.  Four soldiers, including Lieutenant Walter Sherwood, and one woman will be killed in the fighting.

December 8, 1869 - START OF RED RIVER REBELLION  Winnipeg Manitoba - Louis Riel 1844-1885 issues the Declaration of the People of Rupert's Land and the North West; declares that the sale to Canada of Rupert's Land (the HBC territory) without their consent entitles people to set up their own government; many in Canada privately agree, including Militia Minister George-Etienne Cartier.

1882 Battleford Saskatchewan - Cree/Saulteaux leader Mistahimaskwa (Big Bear) 1825-1888 finally signs Treaty #6 six years after the rest of his tribe; ineligible for government rations, and the buffalo gone, his 114 remaining followers were starving and living in cloth and stick tents; later tries to create an Indian territory in the North West through adjacent reserves.

1649 Christian Island, Ontario - Jesuit missionary Noel Chabanal murdered on the way to Ile Saint-Joseph by renegade Huron Indian Louis Honarreennha, who hated the black robes; one of the North American Jesuit martyrs canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1930.
 
 

BACKGROUND:
 

Louis Riel Rebellion 
http://aboriginalcollections.ic.gc.ca/muskeg/histriel.htm

Chief Petequakey was chief when the rebellion began. Members of the Petequakey reserve had been coerced into joining Riel's camp.

"That the Petequakey Cree were not willing participants was confirmed the following year when several Hudson's Bay company employees appeared before the Rebellion Claims Commission in Prince Albert.  George Robertson, a Carlton-area labourer, testified that he saw unarmed members of the band in the company of about forty Metis, led by Albert Monkman, at the Fort in late March, and that they were being 'taken to Duck Lake not of their own accord'" -excerpt from the book "Loyal till Death Indians and the North-West Rebellion", Blair Stonechild, Bill Waiser.

An Interview with Isidore Ledoux
 
 

Isidore Ledoux was a Muskeg Lake Cree Nation Band member.  He was born in 1873.  This is his recollection of the Riel Rebellion

"For the Rebellion of 1885, the first battle fought between the North West Mounted Police and the Metis took place at the road between Fort Carlton and Duck Lake. On the west side of Beardy's Indian Reserve in the month of April, I do not recall the date.  There was still snow on the ground.  The very first Metis killed was Isadore Dumont, a brother to Gabriel Dumont.  Gabriel Dumont was also wounded on the side of the face.  The Police had the worst of it and had to beat a hasty retreat.  In their haste, they left one wounded man who was trying to get in the sleigh.  The Metis picked him up and attended to his wounds and looked after him till he was well and then released him.  That was the battle of Duck Lake.  I was only eleven years old at the time so could not be expected to know much about the rebellion.

"At Batoche all the fighting took place across the river.  I heard a lot of shooting but saw nothing.  There was a steamboat which kept blowing its whistle adding to the noise of the battle going on across the river.   Shells were exploding over our heads but as far as I know, no one was hurt.   Just a lot of noise and nothing else.  This went on for three days or more, then stopped.  We moved from there to a place called the Labocanne settlement.  I don't remember if it was up or down the river.  There were several houses and the place was crowded with women and children.  We were there for about a week when the men began straggling in.  They said the rebellion was over.  My father, whom I had not seen for at least two weeks, also turned up.  He said Gabriel Dumont and many other Metis had fled to the States and that Riel was captured and taken away by the police.  About a week later, after my father's return, a platoon of police came marching into the settlement.  They were met by a crowd of chattering women.  There was not a man in sight to welcome the police. They simply disappeared and they never turned up till about an hour after the police had gone. I guess they were afraid of being taken as prisoners of war.  I heard that the police were looking everywhere for Gabriel Dumont and Maxeme Lepine, Boucheir and several others but they all fled to the United States.  There were also several Indians taken as prisoners. Some were hanged in Battleford.  I knew only of two Indians who were hanged:   Little Bear and The Wandering Spirit. Of course, you all know that Riel was hanged in Regina.  All I know about the Riel Trial was that he was condemned to die on September the eighteenth but I believe he was hung some time in October, 1885.  That is all I know about the rebellion of 1885.  I saw Gabriel Dumont for the first and last time in 1902 in Duck Lake.  I never saw him again. "
 
 

The following is an excerpt of an interview with Isidore Ledoux, found in an Awasis Journal article written by Sandra Lafond and Harry Lafond.

"We left the settlement and returned to Muskeg.  The Indians of Mistawasis also returned.  Soon after their return the Indian Agent came to Muskeg along with several others. He gave a long speech about the crime that the chief had committed by leading his people to fight the Queen.  Someone who spoke English told the agent:  "We were not fighting the Queen.  We were fighting the police." (I am repeating what my father told my mother after the meeting).  The agent said, "Ït's the same thing.  When you fight the police, you are fighting the Queen." The Indian said, "ki-key askin," meaning you're lying.  The agent asked who said this and no one would reply.  Then the Agent stripped our Chief (Petequakey), of his rank as chief in retaliation for the part he played in the rebellion.  The agent then told the Indians that the Indian Department would cut off all help from the agency.  After this the meeting then broke up.  The Agent must of thought that cutting off help for the Indians would make them starve and come begging for help...."

Indian Affairs believed that Muskeg Lake Reserve (at that time known as Petequakey Reserve) hard participated willingly in the Rebellion.  Because of this, Petequakey was stripped of his chieftainship.Indian Affairs believed that Muskeg Lake Reserve(at that time known as Petequakey Reserve) hard participated willingly in the Rebellion.  Because of this, Petequakey was stripped of his chieftainship.

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http://www.pch.gc.ca/csp-pec/english/about/multimedia/riel/subtopics.html#causes

Annotated Bibliography

Stanley, G.F.G.

The Birth of Western Canada: A History of the Riel Rebellions, part two. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1936.

One of the first studies to examine the central role of the Métis in 19th century western Canadian history, The Birth of Western Canada is widely regarded today as the classic work on Louis Riel and the North-West Rebellion. In trying to make sense of the rebellion at Red River in 1869-70 and later in Saskatchewan in 1885, Stanley attributed the troubles to "the problem of the frontier, namely the clash between primitive and civilized peoples." This interpretation not only reduced Riel to a leader of a "people who did not want to be civilized," but suggested that all mixed-blood peoples in fact, all Aboriginal peoples were essentially the same. The Birth of Western Canada contends that the people of the "frontier" were bewildered and frustrated by the events overtaking them and were unable to change or adjust to new circumstances.
 
 

Stonechild, Blair and Bill Waiser.

Loyal till Death: Indians and the North-West Rebellion. Calgary: Fifth House Publishers, 1997.

Loyal till Death is the first comprehensive examination of the Indian role in the 1885 North-West Rebellion. Based on oral history and traditional documentary sources, the book argues that the First Nations of western Canada had their own strategies for dealing with their situation in the 1880s and that these strategies did not include open rebellion. It also explains why some individuals or groups resisted in 1885, and equally important why a majority of the bands chose not to participate in the troubles. In particular, it examines the events of 1885 from the First Nations perspective and demonstrates that Indian involvement was isolated and sporadic, and not part of a grand alliance with the Métis. Finally, Loyal till Death describes how the Canadian government deliberately portrayed the Indians as rebels in order to justify a number of restrictive and repressive measures in the aftermath of the rebellion.
 
 

Trémaudan, Auguste-Henri de

Hold High Your Heads (History of the Métis Nation in Western Canada). Translated by Elizabeth Maguet. Winnipeg, Pemmican, 1982.

A lawyer and journalist, Trémaudan was originally from Quebec although he lived in France, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and finally in the United States. He was retired and living in California when he was asked by the Historical Committee of the Union nationale métisse Saint-Joseph to write a study of the Métis nation. Since 1909, the Union had wanted to clarify the events of 1869-71 and 1885. The book, like George Stanley's The Birth of Western Canada, was published in 1936. Both studies were the first to examine the rebellions from the Métis point of view.
 
 

Wiebe, Rudy and Bob Beal, editors.

War in the West: Voices of the 1885 Rebellion. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1985.

War in the West is an excellent resource book for capturing some of the intensity and passion of the rebellion. Lavishly illustrated with contemporary photographs and sketches, the book tells the story of the rebellion through the words of some of the participants from both sides of the struggle. Organized in diary format for each day of the rebellion, Wiebe and Beal have included a rich sampling of first-hand accounts from soldiers, settlers, merchants, and reporters to Métis, Indians, and hostages. The identity of each person is briefly outlined, while each event or incident is placed in context. This is oral history at its best.
 
 

Woodcock, George.

Gabriel Dumont: The Métis Chief and his Lost World. Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers, 1975.

This biography of Gabriel Dumont portrays the great hunter and his fellow Métis as one of the last self-regulating communities in the emerging industrialized world of the late nineteenth century. They were a kind of utopian society organized around the buffalo hunt. Woodcock also provides an answer for one of the most debated questions about the rebellion namely, why Dumont accepted Riel's decision to wait for the advancing Canadian army at Batoche even though he disagreed with the strategy. Woodcock maintains that Dumont was not only steadfastly loyal, but that he also believed Riel had the power to influence events.