Song of Batoche

by Maia Caron

  “I am not lost,” she said, moved that the leader of the South Branch Métis, the best with a horse and a gun, had come out to find her in the woods. In Red River, Gabriel had been spoken of with reverence as the greatest buffalo hunter and warrior in the North-West Territories. Even his rifle was legendary. Men were known to visit his saloon just to see le Petit. When she and Norbert had moved to the South Branch, Josette had been in awe to discover that the great Dumont was their neighbour. But he had not seemed to notice her beyond a cursory nod when she was in the company of Madeleine.

  “You are afraid of speaking to your grandfather of Riel,” he said. She raised her head with defiance to prove him wrong, but Gabriel fixed her with a look she found bold and assuming, as if he were taking her measure. “Riel said after he left Red River, your father was killed by the English.”

  Startled by this turn in conversation, she took up the edges of her apron in one hand and began to gather the cut birch branches. “I doubt Mosom will agree to put his mark on a half-breed petition.”

  “The police are looking for his band. It’s said they will bribe him with rations to stay away from us.”

  “My grandfather cannot be bribed, either by the English or Riel.”

  “The warriors in your grandfather’s camp are on edge. They’re tired of being hungry.”

  She paused, bent to reach for a branch. Was he suggesting that they were ready to set up a soldier’s lodge? Never. But she could not discount the fear that her uncles and the warriors had grown weary of Big Bear’s strategy of dealing with the government. “They trust in his leadership without question,” she said, then looked up to meet his eye. “As you do Riel’s.”

  A flicker of a smile showed on Gabriel’s face. “Riel is Mistahimaskwa’s only chance to change the treaties. With his name on the petition, Poundmaker and other chiefs in the Saskatchewan will come to our side.”

  “Riel was our only chance in Red River, too.”

  Gabriel’s smile had disappeared. “Riel united the Métis, English half-breeds, and white settlers—forced Macdonald to make a province under their terms. They made him promise title to their lands.”

  She placed a hand in her pocket to feel for Riel’s poem. How could she be so bold as to contradict the great Gabriel Dumont? “Riel had a man executed,” she reminded him. “Macdonald ran him out like a criminal, and we suffered for it.”

  Gabriel’s eyes had grown dark, not so much in anger but blunt inquiry, a force that felt like a bullet had passed right through her. “hâw,” he said, “I will not let him fail.”

  She held his gaze for a long moment, and felt a flush creeping up her neck. He looked at her with a kind of veiled defiance, as if he would like to dismiss her, then his expression changed, a softening, and it seemed that he saw her loneliness, all the secrets she had kept even from herself, the many moments of doubt and depression. The one no longer there.

  Finally, she looked away, and he turned to lead her back to the trail. She faltered, recovering the breath that had gone out of her lungs, the smell of the freshly cut birch sap rising, and air that had become overwhelmingly close. Her hand, still in her pocket, finally released Riel’s poem.

  Rescue me, no longer wait. These words hinted at deficiency, written by a man pleading for recognition from his heedless God. If she were to respect anyone’s authority, it would be Gabriel Dumont’s, who had run the buffalo hunts. A man of reason who succeeded at every cause he had ever committed to in his heart.

  The sun was setting behind the trees when they stopped near a stream to make camp, a place that had been used by freighters, marked by a pit in the middle of a clearing where many fires had burned. Josette had gone out in a grove of cottonwoods, and made her way back with an armload of deadfall kindling. As she approached the clearing, she heard Riel before she saw him.

  “Who are the head men in Big Bear’s camp?”

  She passed quietly through the trees until she could see Gabriel as he bent to start a fire with grass and small sticks.

  “Lone Man is still good with him.” He looked over his shoulder at Riel, who stood with one foot up on a rock. “Thunder Child and Lucky Man are gone. Twin Wolverine left last month, but he had a change of heart and is back. I hear that Big Bear’s other son, Imasees, is making it hard for him. His war chief’s a new one that joined camp from the Chipewyan—name of Wandering Spirit.”

  Riel laughed again. “That’s the one I should speak to.”

  She stepped into the clearing and threw the kindling to the ground, daring him to look at her. “You said you wanted to speak to Mosom.”

  “Of course,” Riel answered, evasively. “And the other head men, whoever they might be.”

  “The head man is Big Bear,” she said, breath loud in her ears.

  Gabriel piled some branches on his small fire then edged away. He picked up his rifle, looking at Riel as if to say, I leave her to you, and melted into the trees.

  Riel eyed her with caution. “It’s no secret that your Mosom’s band has attracted rebellious young warriors. They’re not happy with the broken treaty promises and want to do something about it.”

  “Mosom has reasons not to go to his reserve,” she said stubbornly. “His men will respect that.”

  The fire caught at the dry branches, illuminating Riel’s face. “If Big Bear thinks he will find an honourable soul in a government man, he’s mistaken.”

  “He has dreams of meeting the Queen herself.” A gust of wind blew the flames toward her and she took a step back.

  “He does not understand the white man’s ways in politics—or their laws,” Riel said, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets. “They’ll starve his band to get him on that reserve.”

  She had been sure that her grandfather would not agree to speak to Riel, but both he and Gabriel insisted that his band was on the brink of starvation. If this were true, she did not like to think of her mother and relations suffering when the petition might help them. “What would you have me say to him?”

  “Remind him that the Métis and Indians are still the true owners of the North-West.”

  “He knows that above all others.”

  Riel lifted his eyes to study her. “The Indians and Métis must stand together.”

  She looked away. “Mosom will not give his allegiance to a half-breed. You have Indian blood, but you are also of the whites, and he does not trust them.”

  Riel began to pace on the opposite side of the fire, his colour high. “God said to King David, ‘I will appoint a place for my people Israel and plant them, so that they may dwell in their own place and not be moved again. I will subdue all your enemies.’” He paused and added in a low voice, “Josette, He has asked me to create a sovereign state of Métis and Indians, independent of the Dominion and with my new church at its head.”

  The picture that sprang to her mind was of the prophet Elijah raising the dead and bringing down fire from heaven. Did Riel think he had these powers? Although her Mosom also had visions of a large reserve where each band could roam free and govern itself, he would die before agreeing to it ruled by the white man’s God.

  Riel stopped pacing and put a hand to his forehead, as if reluctant to say what was in his mind. “God told me a woman would assist in my mission here, a woman in the South Branch. I know that woman is you.” He looked at her and she stared back at him in fascination. “God said that you would share the burden of this mission,” he went on. “And keep it secret until the time was right.”

  The sky had turned that rare, surprising blue, which only occurred at dusk. She looked up as a flock of birds flew from the trees and abruptly shifted direction. It was like the wind blowing over a field of grass.

  Her first thought was what the Old Crows would say if they heard that Riel had chosen La Vieille to help him. But her good sense came into play. What kind of God wanted a heathen to assist the great Louis Riel? Not the one who had left her helpless in a war with Norbert over her own body.

&nbs
p; Riel was watching her with obvious regret that she hadn’t been moved by his talk of missions and secrets. “Tell Big Bear it saddens you to see his land stolen,” he added. “Tell him that the government means to steal the half-breed lands too, and you—his own blood—are half-breed. The government will listen to our grievances if we stand with one voice.”

  Josette was surprised to find herself close to tears. Riel was a conundrum. One moment she had dismissed him as a religious fanatic and in the next he had moved her with his compassion and demand for justice. She wanted her lands as much as anyone. And none other than Gabriel Dumont was on his side. But how could she follow a man who believed the Métis were the children of Israel? It was an impossible dream, creating a sovereign nation ruled by Métis and Indians with his church at its head. Macdonald would no sooner agree to a separate state than the Métis would leave their beloved Catholic Church.

  a sovereign state

  That night at the campfire, Gabriel Dumont watched Riel finish a piece of bannock and lick his fingers. The Métis leader dipped his tin cup into the billycan of tea and leaned back against his saddle. He closed his eyes and seemed to pray. When he opened them, Gabriel could see him look directly at Josette, who sat on the other side of the fire, speaking with Maxime Lépine. She held one of the birch branches she had harvested on the trail and traced its length with her knife edge until the limb was stripped to bare wood and curled shavings of bark lay on a blanket before her.

  There was something compelling about Josette that he hadn’t noticed when he had run across her in his kitchen with his wife or saw her moving between her house and barn with the children, doing chores. He was still unsettled by their earlier encounter. He had sensed her reluctance to involve Big Bear and followed her into the woods, thinking to encourage her, but she had quickly turned the conversation to Riel’s misfortunes in Red River. It had been necessary to persuade her of his great successes, yet she had mentioned the messy execution business and suggested that he was mistaken to follow Riel without question. Gabriel did not make promises he could not keep and had been confident in the one he made to her: I will not let him fail.

  But he had not bargained for the look she had given him. A look that had put him in mind of a magnificent grey mare he’d seen years ago at the head of a wild herd on the plains. Mane and tail black as midnight. He had gone out for days after to find the herd, meaning to take the grey mare for his own, but he had not found them. That horse still haunted him like some kind of phantom.

  After they made camp, it had been unfortunate when Josette overheard Riel say that Big Bear was no longer the head man of his own band. Gabriel had not gone far after leaving them. He’d lingered in the bush, curious to hear how the great man would handle himself. Riel had tried to shift Josette’s mood, appeal to her love of country. But one of his proclamations still rang in Gabriel’s ears.

  He has asked me to create a sovereign state of Métis and Indians, independent of the Dominion and with my new church at its head.

  He’d brought Riel here to petition Macdonald for title to Métis lands, not to push for some idea that had come from his time in the crazy house or out of his disappointments in Red River. Gabriel had listened as Riel had made a beautiful speech. When Josette argued with him, he claimed that God had chosen her to assist him in his mission. Yet she had said nothing, as if confounded by it all. The way Riel looked at her now, Gabriel knew that he was not done trying to win her over.

  Josette had gone to work on another branch, wedging it between her skirted lap and the blanket. Her hands, the nails broken, were finely shaped. They’d been too much in water, too much in the hardship of running a farm. Riel was telling of his schooling in Montreal and she listened, head to the side, her eyes molten in the firelight. Gabriel had heard how people were made. Adam. And Eve from his rib. It seemed unlikely that Josette had such a beginning. Her face was carved by a natural force. The bones of her cheek close under the skin, put him in mind of shale cut in the riverbank above Clark’s Crossing, and women who had lived on those lands many years ago, working at the fires.

  Maxime Lépine had wandered away from them, smoking his pipe. “Look,” he said. The night sky was lit with bands of green and red, bright stars shining through the shimmering haze.

  “Kanimihtocik,” Gabriel said in Cree. The spirits dance.

  “God Himself blesses our journey,” Maxime replied.

  “Each time something beautiful occurs in nature,” Josette said amiably, “we must give credit to God.”

  Gabriel smiled before he could stop himself. He was far from pious and considered Métis women too influenced by the Church, his wife included.

  Riel stared into the fire, as if he hadn’t heard her comment. When Maxime went off into the shadows to relieve himself, Riel’s expression lightened, as if an idea was beginning to form in his mind. “A leader must prove his abilities. Louis ‘David’ Riel will show the Métis that he is their prophet. You are my Peter,” he said, speaking directly to Gabriel. “And Christ himself had two Marys, did he not?”

  “Two Marys?” Gabriel said in the voice he used to quiet a horse. “We have the priests, but not our lands.”

  Riel stood up quickly. “Oui, you are right.”

  Gabriel frowned. Riel was unpredictable as a trapped wolverine. “You must write the petition as soon as you can.”

  Riel’s eyes ranged around the fire until they found Josette. “Marguerite is my Mother Mary,” he said, “and Josette will be my Magdalene.”

  Riel would not permit blasphemy, so Gabriel threw some wood onto the fire to hide his oath. “Crisse.” Over the past month, Riel had spoken only of Métis politics. Why suddenly this talk of prophets and Marys?

  Riel gazed at Josette with almost tender regard. “You have suffered—fallen angels surround you.”

  She set aside the branch she’d been working on and returned his look. Gabriel thought of a buffalo cow he’d once chased in the hunts, galloping alongside it on the prairie, getting closer, and her turning that massive head, a dark, liquid eye. How had she suffered? He did not listen to women gossiping about childbirth stories, but now recalled Madeleine coming down from the Lavoie’s three years ago muttering of a collapsed womb and bleeding, that Josette had come close to death.

  “Your husband …” Riel paused, with a strange, sudden look “… has hurt you.”

  Her eyes had slipped back to the fire, and she drew her shawl close around her. Norbert wasn’t right in the head, but it had not occurred to Gabriel that he would hit his wife. He was up in Battleford. When he got back, Gabriel vowed to pay him a visit.

  Riel was not finished. “Josette, God has told me that He means to save you.”

  Josette set about placing each piece of bark she had shaved from the branches into a hide bag that she kept for the purpose. She did not seem to like this talk of God either, and her expression was closed, secretive.

  “God has chosen you,” Riel said, nodding at them both. “To help me fight the tyrant for our lands. God will make the Métis Nation strong again.”

  Her hand that held the shawl to her breast plucked absently at a bit of thickly knitted wool that had come loose from the weave. Gabriel had been unable to look away as she glanced up at Riel. Strange that Big Bear’s granddaughter, long slighted by the women of Batoche, and himself, a buffalo hunter that just wanted his land, had found themselves here, some kind of disciples to a prophet.

  Riel went to his knees by the fire. He clasped his hands tightly together. “Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and Saint John the Baptist,” he prayed. “Forgive the mistakes I made among the Crees—send them to help me.”

  Josette looked at Gabriel. Her face had turned pale, her breathing irregular. He could see the pulse at her throat. Firelight reflected in her eyes, and the warning: do not forget your promise. Again, he thought of the buffalo hunts. How the men had run the herds and the women waited for dust to settle before kneeling to skin the still-warm bodies. The sounds they made at the
first cut, an old song, tongue at the roof of the mouth again and again. She took up the hide bag and rose to her feet. When she went to her tent, Gabriel stood, unnerved and afraid of what Riel might say next. Mumbling something about checking the horses, he walked quickly away from the fire.

  The northern lights pulsed a vivid green on the horizon. As he approached the horses, they shifted to look around at him. His chestnut roan turned her head and he laid his hand on her neck, stroked the length of her muscled shoulder, letting it rest on her withers. He wanted to be out hunting, not listening to Riel speak of fallen angels and God.

  An image from Gabriel’s past continued to haunt him: a scene on the Grand Coteau in the Montana Territory, almost twenty years ago. He’d been scouting out with a small band of Métis when they came upon a group of white hide hunters setting fire around a herd, waiting for the buffalo to panic and stampede. The hide hunters ran down the trapped animals, air full of smoke from their rifles. He and his men had made camp a short distance away and the next morning, all that was left on the plains were mound after mound of bloody, glistening flesh. The white hunters had stripped the buffalo hides, cut out tongues and humps, and left the rest to rot. The Métis had harvested what meat they could, and Gabriel looked back as they rode away, some part of him dead, too. Later they heard this was the government’s doing; keep the herds from moving north, break the Indian spirit. They’d done it well enough. Not one buffalo could be found between here and the Americas. Métis were forced to beg Ottawa for their lands to farm and Big Bear and his band starved free in the bush rather than be held captive on a reserve.

  The northern lights had faded and only the moon remained, a sliver in the night sky. He felt the end of things—this boundless land now parcelled off like something that could be sold. Beneath his moccasins, the ground still threw heat from the day’s sun. The air smelled of goldenrod and sage.

  He thought of the look Josette had just given him as Riel prayed for help from the Cree. Gabriel felt off balance, that Riel was planning something beyond his control. And maybe by Josette herself. He, a man who loved his wife, a man with a job to do, had let down his guard and been mesmerized by her beauty. He shook his head, determined to clear his mind of Josette’s sorrowful face and Riel’s troubling talk of prophets and disciples.