Louis Riel Quotes

We may be a small community and a Half-breed community at that — but we are men, free and spirited men, and we will not allow even the Dominion of Canada to trample on our rights.

But last year, while I was yet in Montana, while I was passing before the catholic church, the priest, the Revd. Father Frederick Ebeville, curate of the church of the Immaculate Conception at Benton, said to me "I am glad to see you, is your family here?" I said yes ; he said "Go and bring them to the altar, I want to bless you before you go away " and with Gabriel Dumont and my family we all went on our kness at the altar, the priest put on his surplice and he took holy water and was going to bless us. I said will you allow me to pronounce a prayer while you bless me; he said yes, I want to know what it is. I told him the prayer, it is speaking to God "My father bless me, according to the views of thy Providence which are beautiful and without measure." He said to me : "You can say that prayer while I bless you " Well he blessed me. I pronounced that prayer for myself, for my children and for Gabriel Dumont. When the glorious general Middleton fired on us during three days and on our families and when shells went and bullets went as thick as mosquitoes in the hot day of summer, when I saw my children, my wife, myself and Gabriel Dumont were escaping, I said that nothing but the blessing without measure of Father Frederick Ebeville could save me, and that can save me to-day from these charges.

The Court. has done the work for me, and although at first appearance it seems to be against me, I am so confident in the idea which I have had the honor to express yesterday, that I think it is for good and not for my loss. Up to this moment, I have been considered by a certain party as insane, by another party as a criminal, by another party as a man with whom it was doubtful whether to have any intercourse. So there was hostility and there was contempt, and there was avoidance To-day, by the verdict of the Court, one of these three situations has disappeared. I suppose that after having been condemned, I will cease to be called a fool, and for me it is a great advantage. I consider it as a great advantage. If I have a mission, I say "If " for the sake of those who doubt, but for my part it means "Since," since I have a mission, I cannot fulfil my mission as long as I am looked upon as an insane being-human being, at the moment that I begin to ascend that scale, I begin to succeed.

As to religion what is my belief? What is my insanity about that? My insanity, Your Honors, Gentlemen of the Jury, is that I wish to leave Rome aside inasmuch as it is the cause of division between the Catholics and Protestants. I did not wish to force my views because, in Batoche, to the Half-breeds that followed me I used the word Carte blanche. If I have any influence in the New World it is to help in that way and even if it takes two hundred years to become practical, then after my death that will bring out practical results, and then my children will shake hands with the Protestants of the New World in a friendly manner. I do not wish those evils which exist in Europe to be continued as much as I can influence it, among the Half-breeds. I do not wish that to be repeated in America, that work is not the work of some days or some years it is the work of hundreds of years.

We must cherish our inheritance. We must preserve our nationality for the youth of our future. The story should be written down to pass on.

I prefer to be called one of the flock. I am no more than you are, I am simply one of the flock, equal to the rest. If it is any satisfaction to the doctor to know what kind of insanity I have, if they are going to call my pretensions insanity, I say, humbly, through the grace of God I believe I am the prophet of the New World. I wish you to believe that I am not trying to play insanity, there is in the manner, in the standing of a man, the proof that he is sincere, not playing. You will say, what have you got to say? I have to attend to practical results. Is it practical that you be acknowledged as a prophet? Is it practical to say it. I think if the Half-breeds. have acknowledged me, as a community, to be a prophet. I have reason to believe that it is beginning to become practical. I do not wish for my satisfaction the name of prophet. Generally that title is accompanied with such a burden, that if there is satisfaction for your vanity there is a check to it.

I have nothing but my heart and I have given it long ago to my country.

In a little while it will be all over. We may fail. But the rights for which we contend will not die. A day of reckoning will come to our enemies and of jubilee to my people. The hated yoke of English domination and arrogance will be broken in this land, and the long-suffering victims of their injustice will, with God's blessing, re-enter into the peaceful enjoyment of their possessions.

I have not assumed to myself that I had a mission. I was working in Manitoba first and I did all I could to get free institutions for Manitoba. They have those institutions today in Manitoba and they try to improve them, while myself who obtained them, I am forgotten as if I was dead. But after I had obtained with the help of others a constitution for Manitoba, when the government at Ottawa was not willing to inaugurate it at the proper time, I have worked till the inauguration should take place and that is why I have been banished for five years. I had to rest five years. I was unwilling to do it. I protested. I said : Oh my God ! I offer you all my existence for that cause and please to make of my weakness an instrument to help men in my country. And seeing my intentions, the late Archbishop Bourget said "Riel has no narrow views, he is a man to accomplish great things" and he wrote that letter of which I hope that the Crown has at least a copy. And in another letter when I became what Drs. believed to be, insane, Bishop Bourget wrote again and said "Ye be blessed by God and man and take patience in your evil." Am I not taking patience I Will I be blessed by man as I have been by God? I say that, I have been blessed by God and I hope that you will not take that as a presumptuous assertion. It has been a great success for me to come through all the dangers I have in that 15 years. If I have not succeeded in wearing a fine coat myself I have at the same time the great consolation of seeing that God has maintained my views; that he has maintained my health sufficiently to go through the world and that he has kept me from bullets when bullets marked my hat.

The ministers of an insane and irresponsible Government and its little one the North-West Council made up their mind to answer my petitions by surrounding me slyly and by attempting to jump upon me suddenly and upon my people in the Saskatchewan. Happily when they appeared and showed their teeth to devour, I was ready; that is what is called my crime of high treason and for which they hold me to day.

I am glad that the Crown have proved that I am the leader of the Half-breeds in the North-West. I will perhaps be one day acknowledged as more than a leader of the Half-breeds, and if I am, I will have an opportunity of being acknowledged as a leader of good in this great country.

The agitation in the North-West Territories would have been constitutional and would certainly be constitutional to-day, if, in my opinion, we had not been attacked.

I wish to take notice that if there has ever been any contradiction in my life, it is at this moment, and do I appear excited? Am I very irritable? Can I control myself?

I am blessed by God. It is this trial that is going to show that I am going to be blessed by man during my existence, the benedictions are a guarantee that I was not wronged when by circumstance I was taken away from my adopted land to my native land.

Deeds are not accomplished in a few days, or in a few hours. A century is only a spoke in the wheel of everlasting time.