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Storytime Tapestry Newsletter
The newsletter devoted to
spreading love and cultural awareness around the world.
Famous People Column – An
open Column for all writers
November 26, 2007
FAMOUS
PEOPLE
Had he lived in the United States, this Canadian plainsman would be as familiar as
Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett.
Gabriel Dumont is
best known as the man who led the small Metis military forces during the
Northwest Resistance of 1885.
The Dumont clan was a nebulous band of
French-Indian in-laws and relatives that drifted together, or apart, as fancy
prompted. They roved from the banks of
the Red River to the foothills of the Rockies; from the hunting grounds of the Sioux and Blackfoot to the treelands
of the Wood Crees in the north. True
nomads of the plains, they raised their teepees in the wake of the buffalo
herds or built crude shacks in the snow-bound woods around the Hudson’s Bay trading
posts. Their common allies were the Cree
and Assiniboine and their hereditary enemies were the warlike Sioux and Blackfoot.
The patron of the family was said
to have been Jean Baptiste Dumont, who came west in the early 1790’s and who
married a Sarcee-Corbeau woman. They had
three sons: Isidore, Gabriel and Jean.
These three sons each left their mark upon the story of Western Canada.
Isidore, or AC-CAW-Pow (The Stander) as the Crees called him, was chief of the Dumont band and married to
Louise Laframboise had a least 11 children.
The fourth in the family line was Gabriel, who was to write his name
large in the history and folklore of the west, was born at Red River in 1837.
Gabriel spent most of his youth
traveling with his father, trading over most of the Northwest Territories. Isidore also took his son on
buffalo hunts. Gabriel's youth was well
spent learning the life of the Metis. By
the age of ten he could not only ride a pony, but also saddle break them. He learned to speak French and Cree, which
were sufficient for his simple needs.
Before he could handle a rifle, he learned to use the bow of his
grandmother's people, the Sarcee. By age
eleven he was presented with his own rifle which he named "le pitit"
or "little one". This rifle
stayed with him for a long time to come.
At age fourteen, Gabriel was with his father on a buffalo hunt at Grand
Coteau when the Sioux made their last major attack against the Metis. He received his initiation in plains warfare
in what became known as "The Battle of Grand
Coteau" in 1851.
In 1858, Gabriel married Madeleine
Wilkie; her father was a Scotch-Indian trader out of Fort Elice. He loved her very much and always showed her
how much she meant to him. He once spoke of "what is done to my wife is
done to me". They had no children of their own, but did adopt a girl Annie
and a second cousin of his, named Alexis Dumont.
Although unable to read or write, Dumont could speak six languages and was
highly adept at the essential skills of the plains; horseback riding and
marksmanship. These abilities made Dumont a natural leader in the large annual Buffalo hunts that were an
important part of Metis culture.
By the 1860's, Dumont was the leader of a group of
hunters living in the Fort Carlton area. Gabriel's income came from trading, trapping, fishing, selling
whiskey and sometimes working as a guide for the missionaries, he had done this
for about five years, 1869 to about 1874.
During that time he tried farming at a place about ten miles south of
Batoche where the trail from Humboldt crossed the Saskatchewan River. Here he took advantage of the growing traffic
on the Carlton trail and opened a ferry across the South Saskatchewan River and
a small store upstream from Batoche. An
advertisement in the Saskatchewan Herald, dated June 21,188o, for Dumont’s
ferry service across the North Saskatchewan River read ‘ Notice – Gabriel’s Crossing – the public are
informed that GABRIEL’S Crossing is now in readiness for the accommodation of
the public. One SCOW, the Best on the
River will be in constant readiness. The road by this
ferry is the SHORTEST by twenty-five miles to or going east from
Battleford. The public properly attended
to by Gabriel Dumont.’
In 1873, his position as a leader
was formalized when he was elected as president of the short-lived local
government created by the Metis living on the south branch of the Saskatchewan.
His leadership role in the South
Branch community continued. In 1877 and 1878, Dumont chaired meetings which
drew up petitions to the federal government asking for representation on the
Territorial Council, farming assistance, schools, land grants, and title to
already occupied lands, Dumont was also a member of the delegation, which
convinced Louis Riel to return to Canada to plead the Metis case to the federal
government.
When a provisional government was
declared in 1885, Dumont was named "adjutant general of the Metis people." He proved
himself an able commander and his tiny army experienced some success against
government forces at Duck Lake and Fish Creek. The Canadian militia, however, proved too large and
too well equipped for Dumont's army, which collapsed on 12 May 1885 after a four-day
battle near Batoche. After the final
battle, Riel surrendered to General Middleton, but Gabriel, in company with his
close friend Michel Dumas, escaped to Montana in the United States. It was here he learned of his
wife’s death from consumption.
“So! This is the famous Gabriel Dumont,” Col. William F. Cody
boomed, shaking the warrior’s hand as he stepped from the train in Philadelphia on June 7,
1886. “You certainly have had a career,
Mr Dumont. Welcome to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West
Show.” Speaking through an interpreter,
who was to be his constant companion for the next few month, Gabriel returned
the greeting. On Thursday, July 22, 1886 he received word that the Canadian government had proclaimed an
amnesty for him.
After visits to Quebec (where he dictated
his memoirs in 1889), he returned to Montana, but he did not
find among the Metis of the territory the old, soul-satisfying adulation that
had been his in earlier times. He was
learning that the “Man of the Hour” had to grasp his fame at once, before the
searchlight of publicity passed over his exploits.
Finally in 1890, he made his way
northward to Gabriel’s crossing near Batoche, on the South Saskatchewan River. He sold his land at the crossing and built
himself a small cabin on the farm of his grand-nephew, Alexis Dumont.
The years passed. The twentieth century dawned, opening Canada’s greatest era of progress.
New names flashed across the headlines of the nation’s newspapers; new
faces began appearing around the entire old Indian fighter and the old,
familiar ones were suddenly being missed.
New comers were building towns and cities on lands where he had once
chased buffalo and beside rivers where he had camped so often with his band.
Gabriel went his quiet way, secure
in the love of his people. Though Saskatchewan became a province
in 1905, progress seemed to pass Batoche.
The Metis still lived in their log houses, many of them built when Dumont and his band first settled the
area in 1868.
In many of the homes, only
calendars on the walls gave any indication that the inhabitants were living in
the twentieth century. Only the cemetery
on the river bank changed; it grew steadily with each passing year.
On Saturday, May 19th,
1906, Gabriel went for his usual walk
along the roads and trails near Batoche, and although he was nearing
three-score and ten years, he still walked with a stringy stride, placing one
foot in the front of another like an Indian.
He had returned from a hunting trip to Basis Lake, near Domremy, a
few days before and he had complained of stabbing pains in his chest and arm
but he had enjoyed such excellent health that his grand-nephew and wife, with
whom he now lived, had ascribed his complaint to strained muscles.
When he returned to their cabin,
he asked for a bowl of soup, but after only a few mouthfuls, he left the table
and went to his bed. A moment later, he
fell forward dead.
They buried Gabriel Dumont at
Batoche in the cemetery his Sioux warriors had so gallantly defended in May,
1885, during the uprisings. Father
Moulin, who had been one of the first witnesses to the rebellion, conducted the
service with a hundred Metis and Indians crowded into the old church.
From the church, his pallbearers,
all relatives, bore him down across the deep ravine to the graveyard. They carried him past the stone monolith in
the centre, which had been erected five years before to honour the Metis dead
of 1885, to the far side of the plot where his grave had been dug.
And as the sods fell, they covered
a legend – the legend of Gabriel Dumont.
Sources:
Gabriel Dumont Speaks translated by Micheal Barnholden - 1993
Gabriel Dumont by George Woodcock - 1976
Hartson S. Dowd
hsdowd@telus.net
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