Louis Riel and the Creation of Modern Canada: Mythic Discourse and the Postcolonial State

4: Violence and State Creation

108 Hannah Arendt provided an effective portal for entering into a discussion of the meaning of revolution in the modern period. Arendt differentiated between the act of revolution and that of war (which has been a common political phenomenon throughout human history), defining revolution as a form of political behavior that has been limited, strictly speaking, to modernity : prior to the modern period, she argued, wars were rarely fought under the aegis of freedom. However, Arendt did not suggest that revolution was a form of collective behavior that was entirely distinct unto itself; rather, she viewed it as an articulation of a broader structure of violence or violation that resides at the foundation of all political order. From her perspective, the issue of “beginning,” in its most profound sense, was fundamental with respect to revolution.1 In considering revolution and the elemental meaning of violation in political organization, we might elaborate on Arendt’s work on the subject with that of recent historians of religion who have provided a template for thinking about the relationship between violence as religious-symbolic activity and the origin of political legitimacy. In his City of Sacrifice, for instance, Davíd Carrasco has argued that “religious violence” was a foundational element in the creation of order and authority in Mesoamerican city-states. Within this context, ritual warfare and human sacrifice served as modes of social and symbolic orientation for political bodies.2 Returning to the Canadian situation, while it is true that no revolution (in the sense of the “great revolutions” on which Chapter 4 Violence and State Creation 109 violence and state creation Arendt focused her attention) has transpired within this framework, there have undoubtedly been episodes of violent confrontation in which notable segments of the population have contested the legitimacy of the country’s political order. Among such instances of turmoil, there have been perhaps two moments of civil unrest that are broadly recognized by Canadians as having had an impact on the shape of their state: (1) the Rebellions of 1837 in Upper and Lower Canada; and (2) the uprisings of 1869–70 and, especially , 1885. The Rebellions of 1837 were influenced to some degree by the republican and democratic revolutions of the United States and France, although neither rebellion was revolutionary in spite of the impact they had together on the struggle for responsible government in Canada. What is most significant for our purposes, however, is the fact that neither acquired broad mythic status within the culture, nor had a lasting impact on the Canadian imagination. Neither, for instance, initiated a flurry of creative work that is in any way comparable to that provoked by the western rebellions later in the century; these later uprisings, especially that of 1885, had a much more powerful and enduring effect upon the Canadian psyche.3 At the time of the later unrest, the intensity of emotional response was due initially to the fact that eastern Canadians saw the threat of an “Indian war” in the events transpiring on the South Saskatchewan. It is difficult in the twenty-first century to appreciate the sense of terror that such a prospect evoked among nonnatives at the time, but it was profound and widespread. It was also based on two factors: first, it was fed by preexisting fears stemming from published accounts of confrontations in the United States, rather than on an accurate perception of the conditions in the North-West; and second, it was fueled by the awareness that nearly twenty thousand Native peoples were included in Treaties Four, Six, and Seven. Eastern Canadians were not so much afraid of a purely Métis rising, since the number of Métis involved in the resistance amounted to only about one thousand men; they were, however, terrified by the prospect of tens of thousands of Native warriors rising in a manner that had been reported to have occurred south of the forty-ninth parallel .4 Canadian newspapers of the period regularly carried stories of Indian attacks on colonials in both the United States and Mexico, and headlines like “Apaches Burning and Slaying” created paranoia among nonnatives.5 Initial reports of an imminent Native uprising originated with the NWMP, telegraph company employees, and the lieutenant governor, all of whom who were, understandably, highly concerned about initial threats 110 Chapter 4 and acts of violence on the part of Native peoples in the region. In April of...