Gabriel Dumont

Gabriel has written a nasty biography of me --- the trouble is --- it is pretty well all true --- and Gabriel does not mince his words.

I'll be kinder to Gabriel then he is to me --- there's no doubt he has his imperfections --- he is a braggart and he exaggerates --- but what leader doesn't --- take Mao Tse Tung for instance --- many of the battles he took credit for were never fought --- a British woman of Chinese origin, Sun Shuyun, has written a book about this, The Long March: The True History of Communist China's Founding Myth --- she traveled the length of the Long March --- and I recommend her book to you. Bill Clinton didn't beat himself to death in his autobiography, My Life, nor did Winston Churchill in his Second World War series which you can obtain abridged through Amazon (Memoirs of the Second World War (An Abridgement of the Six Volumes of the Second World War) Churchill's doctor, Lord Moran wrote a more balanced look at the great man, Churchill at War 1940-45 Jean Chretien didn't lose any in the telling in My Years as Prime Minister .... it's the nature of the beast --- I can't remember one leader who ever laid into himself. Gabriel drank heavily but he isn't alone in that department --- Winston Churchill drank aplenty. And Gabriel gambled --- I suspect a leader has to gamble --- look how Douglas MacArthur beat the North Koreans at Inchon --- his decision alone --- against the strong advice of all his experts --- you can read about it in William Manchester's American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880 - 1964. Gabriel could be ruthless and cruel and had a fiery temper. A white sniper wounded him just before the Battle of Duck Lake. According to one of the prisoners captured in the battle, H.E. Ross, Gabriel went berserk --- he was about to murder Ross and all the prisoners but Riel stopped him. --- who ever said leaders have to be nice guys. But I do ramble and diverge --- among the whites that's a sin --- among my people, on a long winter's night, huddled in a tepee, that adds a dimension to a story.

There's a biography of Gabriel on Wikipedia which is balanced. Roderick C. MacLeod's bio of Dumont in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography tends to pooh/pooh Gabriel but it is worth reading because Gabriel has become a bit of a folk hero. And George Woodcock has written a biography of Gabriel, Gabriel Dumont: The Metis chief and his lost world .

Gabriel was born on the prairie in 1837 in a family of Metis hunters, farmers and entrepreneurs. The Metis descended from French Canadian Coeur de Bois voyageurs and native women. The Metis lived all over the prairie --- they supplied the Hudson's Bay Company with pemmican -- that was their main source of income --- pemmican was buffalo meat pounded together with berries and preserved. Each year the Metis, men, women and children, organized themselves into a huge buffalo hunt and, on horseback and in Red River carts, headed out to the prairie to run the buffalo. The hunters elected a president of the hunt and adopted a constitution. Once they found a large herd of buffalo their hunters rode dangerously into the middle, whooping and cheering all the while --- what a scene it was --- it's surprising no extravaganza movie has been made of the Buffalo Run ---- and slaughtered them with great buffalo muzzle-loaders and powerful bows. Peter Erasmus describes how the hunters loaded their guns on the run:

I have known some experts in the hunt who carried the lead balls in their mouths, poured the powder into the palm of the hand, then tilted the barrel to receive the powder. They simply tapped the gun butt against their leg or saddle for the powder to settle in the nipple, then put the ball down the barrel, and the gun was ready to shoot.

By the age of 12, Gabriel rode a horse, fired a gun, shot a bow, skirmished with enemies as well as any hunter. When he was 14, Gabriel and a contingent of Metis hunters defeated a larger force of Yankton Sioux at the Battle of Grand Couteau. Soon, year-after-year, the Metis elected Gabriel president of the hunt. We Blackfoot looked upon the Metis as another native tribe --- they fought and negotiated with us --- Gabriel was their best shot, their best fighter and their best negotiator. In 1865 he bought his famous .44 caliber Henry lever action repeating rifle (the rifle evolved into the Winchester 66 after the Winchester Repeating Arms Company bought the Henry company). Gabriel named the gun "le Petit".. Gabriel followed a Metis form of guerilla warfare --- his worst critics admitted he was brilliant at it. Along the way, he learned to speak six native languages and was a much respected interpreter.But he never learned to read and write.

After 1869, when Canada bought western Canada from the Hudson's Bay Company and Canadian troops occupied Fort Gary (what is now Winnipeg) many Metis moved from the Red River Colony to the South Saskatchewan River. Under Gabriel's leadership they set up a community at St. Laurent --- St. Laurent had it's own constitution --- based upon the constitution of the buffalo hunt. It worked well but the Catholic Church (the Metis were strong Catholics), who put the interests of Quebec ahead of the Metis, told Gabriel to dissolve the constitution and obey only the laws of Canada. Gabriel, and the community of St. Laurent, obeyed. One thing I'd say about us aboriginals --- particularly the pagans among us ---- we never let the medicine men and shamans run our tribes.

That was Gabriel's weakness. The Church and anyone who was educated intimidated him. When the Canadian government abused the Metis, Gabriel didn't step up and lead the protest --- he rode down to Montana and found the most literate of the Metis, Louis Riel, to lead it -- not realizing that Riel was a madman. And Riel's education prejudiced Riel against guerilla warfare. Nevertheless, Riel appointed Gabriel head of the Metis army, the "adjutant-general of the Metis Nation". When the whites sent a mounted police force to capture Riel in the spring of 1885, the Metis easily defeated the force at Duck Lake. The men on the firing-line could have captured or killed all of the force but Riel appeared on the scene carrying a large white cross, sent, he said, by God to intervene and let the whites escape --- some were captured but most escaped.

Sir John A. Macdonald, the Canadian prime minister rapidly assembled an army and sent them to the South Saskatchewan under the command of a British Colonel Blimp, Sir Frederick Dobson Middleton ---- by train to Regina, by march towards the Metis capital at Batoche. Gabriel wanted to stage guerilla attacks on Middleton's army immediately --- to harass, loot and destroy the Canadians' supply lines; raid the Canadian camps at night; blow up the Canadians' railways and rolling stock; bring the Cree and the Blackfoot into the fray. The educated Riel, who fancied himself a civilized head of state, believed that that kind of guerilla warfare smacked of savagery and he prohibited it. Unfortunately Gabriel obeyed. But he got his licks in when he intercepted the Canadian army at Fish Creek coulee. The road Middleton was taking to Batoche ran next to the coulee. In the last ice age, glaciers had scooped the 200 foot deep coulee or ravine out of the prairie and left the little Fish Creek winding through the coulee's bottom. Gabriel told his men to dig camouflaged fox-holes on the side of the coulee facing the road. When Middleton arrived adjacent the coulee, Gabriel, hoping to entice Middleton closer to the coulee, told his men to fire at the whites. Sure enough the putty-headed Middleton marched his red-coated soldiers right up to lip of the coulee. Gabriel's men enjoyed a regular turkey shoot --- they killed ten men outright --- wounded 45 ---- before the dim-witted Middleton withdrew. Gabriel told me that he planned to raid Middleton's demoralized camp that night - to rout Middleton's army - to seize Middleton's weapons including a primitive Gatling machine gun ---- but Riel, believing that night fighting was uncivilized, stopped him. Middleton regrouped and marched his army to Batoche. The Metis ran out of ammunition --- Riel surrendered and the whites hung him. Gabriel escaped over to Montana and the Americans treated him as a hero. Buffalo Bill Cody, the famous showman, hired Gabriel and his trusty Le Petit to star in Madison Square Garden and all over the world in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Eventually the Canadian government pardoned Gabriel and he retired to his farm on the banks of the South Saskatchewan where his spirit still resides.

I'll say this for Gabriel --- I think he could have beaten the whites --- because he was a genius in guerilla warfare --- he could have done what Võ Nguyên Giáp did when he licked the French at Dienbienphu in 1954 and the Americans in South Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s. He could have been a Fidel Castro. But Gabriel was illiterate --- even though he spoke five languages he never bothered to learn to read --- he thinks that the illiterate must pay homage to the literate. I don't agree. William the Conquerer was probably illiterate and so was, I'm sure, Attila the Hun.