Gabriel Dumont: The Métis Chief and His Lost World by George Woodcock (review)

410 LETTERS IN CANADA and what followed it. Even on the purely narrative levet the book often leaves the reader in limbo; having aroused his interest in the proposed trunk sewer (in itself no mean feat), Morton does not continue its story after Howland's term of office. In 1886 the reformers' slogan was 'the strings hang loose'; this book is full of loose strings. More important, however, is the lack of perspective that results from such a myopic approach to history. This weakness is accentuated by Morton's reliance upon contemporary newspapers. In the newspapers, particularly in the nineteenth century , the detailed narrative of events unfolds day by day, accompanied by rumour and innuendo (why did a Howland supporter call Mayor Manning's wife a Jezebel?), but there is little background of personality, ideas, prevailing conditions, and circumstance. Often a cast of cardboard characters act on a stage without scenery. Broader issues are lost in the pressure of the daily deadline. This immediacy gives Morton's book itsappeal , but at the same time limits its value as interpretative history. (EDITH G. FIRTH) George Woodcock, Gabriel Dumont: The Mitis ChiefandHis Lost World. Edmonton: Hurtig Publishers 1975, 256, $8.95 There are not many firmly established facts about Gabriel Dumont's first -thirty -five years, but George Woodcock has examined the available rec- ords with care and constructed a convincing narrative of Dumont's boyhood , youth, and young manhood in the semi-nomadic Metis 'nation ' of the western prairies in the middle of the nineteenth century. Legends there are - of the Buffalo Bill variety - about Dumont's prowess; ~ Woodcock refers to them but carefully distinguishes between legend and fact. We do know that Dumont had a brief encounter with Louis Riel in 1870 at Fort Garry, and that by 1872 he had established himself at St. Laurent, on the Saskatchewan River south of Prince Albert, and was busy for the next ten years as farmer, storekeeper, road contractor, and ferryman. The climactic period of his life was the few months during which he served as Riel's director of military operations in the shortlived Rebellion of 1885. This period, from the time of Dumont's mission to fetch Riel back from the United States to the day of their final defeat at Batoche, Woodcock traces in accurate detail. Dumont escaped to Montana , starred in a Wild West Show for three months, ventured back into Canada in 1888, returned to Batoche in 1893, and lived quietly there to the end of his life in 1906. Woodcock needs only a dozen or so pages to chronicle the last twenty years of Dumont's life. The biography is sound, but the intention of the book is not mainly biographical; it is, as the subtitle 'The Metis Chief and His Lost World' indicates, to celebrate a folk hero of the Saskatchewan Valley and to HUMANITIES 411 describe the rise and fall of a semi-nomadic society that lasted for little more than two generations. 'For almost seventy years, or roughly a single human life, the Metis people lived in their pride as lords of the western prairies' - and then the coming of white settlers and the disappearance of the buffalo herds spoiled all that. With sympathy and nostalgic regret Woodcock tells of the swift destruction of a distinctive culture that prevailed in an egalitarian community practising a primitive and direct democracy. Perhaps the most fascinating chapter in the first half of the book is the description of 'The Little Republic of St. Laurent/ which Dumont and his friends established in 1873 on the political principles of the Metis buffalo hunt for the governance of a thousand people, and which functioned successfully with Dumont as president until the Mounted Police came in 1875 to take over from the 'Republic' responsibility for law and order in the territory. Dumont emerges from the book as the 'natural man par excellence,' admirably suited by his physical skills and strength, his practical good sense, his generosity and his fairness, to be a leader of his people. (He had been elected leader of the Saskatchewan buffalo hunt when he was only twenty-six.) He knew in 1885 that he could not...