if it is a
half-breed, force it down. That is about their creed, and it must be said
they act up to their convictions.

'Now, had the country bordering on Red River been an unpeopled
wilderness, the plan carried out in effecting the transfer of land in the
North-west from the Hudson's Bay Company to the Crown, and from the Crown
to the Dominion of Canada, would have been an eminently wise one; but,
unfortunately for its wisdom, there were some 15,000 persons living in
peaceful possession of the soil thus transferred, and these 15,000
persons very naturally objected to have themselves and possessions signed
away without one word of consent or one note of approval. Nay, more than
that, these straggling pioneers had on many an occasion taunted the vain
half-breed with what would happen when the irresistible march of events
had thrown the country into the arms of Canada: then civilization would
dawn upon the benighted country, the half-breed would seek some western
region, the Company would dis appear, and all the institutions of New
World progress would shed-prosperity over the land; prosperity, not to
the old dwellers and of the old type, but to the new-comers and of the
new order of things. Small wonder, then, if the little community,
resenting all this threatened improvement off the face of the earth, got
their powder-horns ready, took the covers off their trading flint-guns,
and with much gesticulation summarily interfered with several
anticipatory surveys of their farms, doubling up the sextants, bundling
the surveying parties out of their freeholds, and very peremptorily
informing Mr. Governor M'Dougall, just arrived from Canada, that his
presence was by no means of the least desirability to Red River or its
inhabitants. The man who, with remarkable energy and perseverance, had
worked up his fellow-citizens to this pitch of resistance, organizing and
directing the whole movement, was a young French half-breed named Louis
Riel--a man possessing many of the attributes suited to the leadership of
parties, and quite certain to rise to the surface in any time of
political disturbances. It has doubtless occurred to any body who has
followed me through this brief sketch of the causes which led to the
assumption of this attitude on the part of the French half-breeds-it has
occurred to them, I say, to ask who then was to blame for the
mismanagement of the transfer: was it the Hudson Bay Company who
surrendered for 300,000 pou