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

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In Category - Modern Nations

Authors: Collins, J. E. (Joseph Edmund), 1855-1892 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2003 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Riel, Louis, 1844-1885; Revolutionaries -- Canada -- Biography Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

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Words 65,755

Reading time 286 min

Text sections 6

For The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief — A Closer Reading, the stored edition analysis reports 65,755 words, 4 hr 46 min estimated reading time, and 6 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 20.4 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Riel, Louis, 1844-1885,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #10399

J. E. Collins's 1885 biography of Louis Riel, drawing on translated sources and court-martial testimony, presents Riel as one-eighth Indigenous and frames the Red River Rebellion through a partisan, pro-Canadian lens.

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Along the banks of the Red River, over those fruitful plains brightened with wild flowers in summer, and swept with fierce storms in the winter-time, is written the life story of Louis Riel. Chance was not blind when she gave as a field to this man's ambition the plains whereon vengeful Chippewas and ferocious Sioux had waged their battles for so many centuries; a country dyed so often with blood that at last Red River came to be its name. But while our task is to present the career of this apostle of insurrection and unrest; stirred as we may be to feelings of horror for the misery, the tumult, the terror and the blood of which he has been the author, we must not neglect to do him, even him, the justice which is his right.

He is not, as so many suppose, a half-breed, moved by the vengeful, irresponsible, savage blood in his veins. Mr. Edward Jack, [Footnote: I cannot make out what Mr. Jack's views are respecting Riel. When I asked him, he simply turned his face toward the sky and made some remark about the weather, I know that he has strong French proclivities, though the blood of a Scottish bailie is in his veins.] of New Brunswick, who is well informed on all Canadian matters, hands me some passages which he has translated from M. Tasse's book on Canadians in the North West; and from these I learn that Riel's father, whose name also was Louis, was born at the island of La Crosse, in the North-West Territories. This parent was the son of Jean Baptiste Riel, who was a French Canadian and a native of Berthier (_en haut_). His mother, that is the rebel's grandmother, was a Franco-Montagnaise Metis. From this it will be seen that instead of being a "half breed," Louis Riel is only one-eighth Indian, or is, if we might use the phrase employed in describing a mixture of Ethiopian and Caucasian blood, an Octoroon.

Nay, more than this, we have it shown that our rebel can lay claim to no small share of respectability, as that word goes. During the summer of 1822, Riel's father, then in his fifth year, was brought to Canada by his parents, who caused the ceremony of baptism to be performed with much show at Berthier. In 1838 M. Riel _pere_ entered the service of the Hudson Bay Company, and left Lower Canada, where he had been attending school, for the North-West. He was stationed at Rainy Lake, but did not care for his occupation. He returned, therefore, to civilization and entered as a novice in the community of the Oblat Fathers, where he remained for two years. There was a strong yearning for the free, wild life of the boundless prairies in this man, and Red River, with its herds of roaming buffalo, its myriads of duck, and geese and prairie hens, began to beckon him home again. He followed his impulse and departed; joining the Metis hunters in their great biennial campaigns against the herds, over the rolling prairie. Many a buffalo fell upon the plain with Louis Riel's arrow quivering in his flank; many a feast was held around the giant pot at which no hunter received honours so marked as stolid male, and olive-skinned, bright-eyed, supple female, accorded him. Surfeited for the time of the luxury of the limitless plain, Riel took rest; and then a girl with the lustrous eyes of Normandy began to smile upon him, and to besiege his heart with all her mysterious force of coquetry. He was not proof; and the hunter soon lay entangled in the meshes of the brown girl of the plains. In the autumn of 1843 he married her. Her name was Julie de Lagimodiere, a daughter of Jean Baptiste de Lagimodiere.

Louis _pere_ was now engaged as a carder of wool; and having much ability in contrivance he constructed a little model of a carding mill which, with much enthusiasm, he exhibited to some officers of the Hudson Bay Company. But the Company, though having a great body, possessed no soul, and the disappointed inventor returned to his waiting wife with sorrow in his eyes. He next betook himself to the cultivation of a farm upon the banks of the little Seine; and his good, patient wife, when the autumn came, toiled with him all day, with her sickle among the sheaves.

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Collins opens his 1885 account by situating Riel's life story along the Red River, a landscape "brightened with wild flowers in summer, and swept with fierce storms in the winter-time." He immediately confronts the common characterization of Riel as a "half-breed," citing translated passages from M. Tasse's book and genealogical details to argue that Riel is only one-eighth Indigenous—an "Octoroon" in the terminology of the day. The narrative voice is overtly judgmental, calling Riel an "apostle of insurrection and unrest" while insisting on giving him "the justice which is his right." This tension between condemnation and a stated duty to be fair shapes the entire excerpt.

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.