The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief — A Closer Reading

Genealogical Argument and Its Limits

The catalog subject "Revolutionaries -- Canada -- Biography" does not prepare a reader for the extended genealogical discussion that opens the book. Collins devotes several paragraphs to tracing Riel's paternal lineage: his grandfather Jean Baptiste Riel, a French Canadian from Berthier; his father, also Louis, born at Island La Crosse and later a Hudson's Bay Company employee; and his grandmother, a "Franco-Montagnaise Metis." The author uses this evidence to assert that Riel is not a "half breed" but an "Octoroon," a term borrowed from descriptions of mixed African and Caucasian ancestry. This classification appears designed to counter a popular stereotype, yet it also reveals the author's own racial framework. The excerpt does not show how this genealogical point connects to Riel's later actions or to the political events of 1869–70. Readers should note that Collins's argument rests on a single translated source and a family tree that stops at the grandmother; the narrative does not explore how Riel himself understood his identity.

The Court-Martial Scene: Voice and Bias

A lengthy excerpt presents the trial of Thomas Scott before a "court-martial" convened by Riel's Provisional Government. The scene is rendered in dramatic, novelistic prose, with direct speech attributed to the prosecutor and witnesses. The prosecutor tells the assembled men that Riel "could not spare the time to come" and that his sentiments "are exactly the same as those entertained by myself." Witness Luc Lestang testifies that Scott called the government a "band of mongrel rough-scruffs" and struck him, leaving a "dusky purple" black eye. Another witness with "movements of a snake, and eyes as black as sloes" corroborates the testimony. Collins does not present this as a neutral transcript; the descriptive language—"precious half-breed," "snake"—colors the testimony with authorial contempt. The catalog subject "Revolutionaries" implies a focus on Riel, but this passage centers on the prosecution's case against Scott, not on Riel's own words or motives. The reader is left to infer Riel's role from the prosecutor's claim of shared sentiment.

Landscape as Moral Stage

Collins repeatedly uses the Red River setting to frame his narrative. In the opening paragraph, he writes that "along the banks of the Red River... is written the life story of Louis Riel." The river's name is said to derive from blood spilled by "vengeful Chippewas and ferocious Sioux." This rhetorical move turns geography into a moral backdrop: the land itself is dyed with violence, and Riel's ambition is given a field "whereon... battles had been waged for so many centuries." The catalog subject "biology-natural-history" appears unrelated, yet the text does invoke natural imagery—wild flowers, winter storms, buffalo herds, prairie hens—to evoke the region. However, these details serve a literary rather than scientific purpose. Collins uses the prairie as a symbol of freedom that beckoned Riel's father away from the Oblat Fathers, and later as the setting for the rebellion. Readers should note that the landscape is never described neutrally; it is always charged with the author's moral judgment of the events that unfold there.

Readers approaching Collins's biography should be aware that it is a polemical work written in 1885, the year of Riel's execution. The author's stated aim to do Riel "justice" is undercut by the loaded language and selective presentation of evidence. The excerpts reveal a text that is as much about the author's own political and racial assumptions as about its subject. For a fuller understanding, compare this account with primary documents from the Red River Resistance and with later historical scholarship that treats Riel's Indigenous identity and political goals more sympathetically.

That damp afternoon, Collins’s portrait of Riel left me restless—his divided loyalties, the empire’s indifferent machinery grinding a man down. I set the book aside, and my gaze drifted to another worn spine on the shelf, The life of the emperor Francis Joseph — Story, Setting & Ideas. Same quiet feeling: how power outlives the people it breaks.