"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.

Ti