Louis Riel: A Review Essay

Reviews Louis Riel: A Review Essay NO FEATHER, NO INK. Saskatoon: Thistledown Press, 1985. 190p. 1885: METIS REBELLION OR GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACY? Don McLean. Winnipeg: Pemmican Publications , 1985. 137p. THE BATTLE OF BATOCHE: BRITISH SMALL WARFARE AND THE ENTRENCHED METIS. Walter Hildebrandt. Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada, 1985. 120p. I FOUGHT RIEL: A MILITARY MEMOIR . Charles A. Boulton. Ed. Heather Robertson. Toronto: James Lorimer, 1985. 225p. BIG BEAR: THE END OF FREEDOM. Hugh A. Dempsey. Vancouver: Douglas & Mcintyre, 1984. 227p. its not enough they take your life away with a gun they have to take it away with their pens in the distance he could hear the writers scratching louder & louder bpNichol, "The Long Weekend of Louis Riel," in No Feather, No Ink, 118. More than a century after Riel's death, the writers are still "scratching louder and louder." Louis, wherever he is now, should appreciate this obsession to write his story. He himself was an inveterate scribbler who always hoped to be recognized as an author. He even received a revelation about it: "Publiez: Dieu choisira celui de VOS ecrits qu'il voudra"; and he hoped that publication might "accomplish a miracle or something wonderfull [sic]."t What au.thor has not felt the same hope? Journal of Canadian Studies Vol. 21 , No. 2 (Ete 1986 Summer) The literature on Riel is immense. The bibliography produced by the Louis Riel Project contains 462 titles relevant to his life, without trying to assemble the broader literature on the Metis people.2 At least three noted historians have recently published review articles covering a broad sweep of scholarly writing about Riel.3 Still, each year sees new publications, and 1985 brought an unusual, if not unexpected number, because of the centennial of the NorthWest Rebellion. Four of the 1985 books on Riel as well as Hugh Dempsey's 1984 biography of Big Bear will be dealt with here. Each work will be evaluated and placed in the wider Riel literature. The reader must be asked to forgive any subjectivity in judgment of books that come from fields as diverse as Canadian poetry, political history, military history, and Indian history. No Feather, No Ink is an odd book. Even though it was subsidized by the Canada Council and other public agencies , no editor's name is given, prompting one to wonder who will collect the royalty cheques. The contents are rather miscellaneous: a few historical prose documents about the events of 1885; a couple of excerpts from poems by Riel; and about fifty poems or parts of poems about Riel, Gabriel Dumont, the Metis, or Canada. Some are actually about Riel, while his name merely appears en passant in others. Illustrious poets are included : Al Purdy, George Woodcock, John Robert Colombo, Don Gutteridge, etc. But many readers may prefer Henry Letendre's colour illustrations to most of the poems. These paintings have an almost mystical quality that captures the mood of Riel the prophet. Modem poetry, paralleling developments in art and music, has largely given up formal constraints such as metre and rhyme, leaving imagery and eccentric orthography to carry the meaning. This may lend itself to the expression of the poet's personal experiences, but it makes it hard to write about formal or historical subjects. 157 Some readers may like certain poems in No Feather, No Ink, and thus think their money well-spent; but the book is not much use from an academic point of view. No information is given about the authors or their works, and no attempt is made to explain why these items rather than others were included. Cuts in original texts are not indicated. The acknowledgments may be enough to avoid violation of copyright law, but they are in many cases inconveniently brief for scouting up the original sources. There is, however, much work to be done in Riel studies by literary critics. One worthwhile endeavour would be the analysis of Riel's own poetry. His Poesies de jeunesse was published in 1977, and now his entire poetic oeuvre is available in The Collected Writings of Louis Riel/Les Ecrits complets de Louis Riel; but only a few critical essays have appeared.4 Riel was...