Louis Riel Quotes

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.

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 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?

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.

I think the verdict that has been given against me is a proof that I am more than ordinary myself, but that the circumstances and the help that is given is more than ordinary, are more than ordinary, and although I consider myself only as others, yet by the will of God, by his Providence, by the circumstances which have surrounded me for fifteen years, I think that I have been called to do something which at least in the North-West nobody has done yet, and in some way I think that to a certain number of people the verdict against me to day is a proof that maybe I am a prophet, maybe Riel is a prophet. He suffers for it.

It is true, gentlemen, I believed for years I had a mission, and when I speak of a mission you will understand me not as trying to play the role of insane before the grand jury so as to have a verdict of acquittal upon that ground. I believe that I have a mission, I believe I had a mission at this very time. What encourages me to speak to you with more confidence in all the imperfections of my English way of speaking, it is that I have yet and still that mission, and with the help of God, who is in this box with me, and He is on the side of my lawyers, even with the honorable court, the Crown and the jury, to help me, and to prove by the extraordinary help that there is a Providence to-day in my trial, as there was a Providence in the battles of the Saskatchewan.

When I see British people sitting in the court to try me, remembering that the English people are proud of that word "Fair play," I am confident that I will be blessed by God and by man also. Not only Bishop Bourget spoke to me in that way, but Father Jean-Baptiste Bruno, the priest of Worcester, who was my director of conscience, said to me: "Riel, God has put an object into your hands the cause of the triumph of religion in the world, take care, you will succeed when most believe you have lost." I have got those words in my head, those words of J. B. Bruno and the late Archbishop Bourget.

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.

I know that through the grace of God I am the founder of Manitoba; I know that though I have no open road for my influence, I have big influence concentrated, as a big amount of vapour in an engine. I believe by what I suffered for 15 years, by what I have done for Manitoba and the people of the North-West that my words are worth something, if I give offence I do not speak to insult. Yes, you are the pioneers of civilization, the Whites are the pioneers of civilization, but they bring among the Indians demoralization. Do not be offended ladies, do not be offended. Here are the men that can cure that evil, and if at times I have been strong against my true friends and Fathers, the Reverend Priests of the Saskatchewan, it is because my convictions are strong. There have been witnesses to show that immediately after great patience, I could come back to the respect I have for them.

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.

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.

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.

If you take the plea of the defence, that I am not responsible for my acts, acquit me completely, since I have been quarrelling with an insane and irresponsible Government. If you pronounce in favour of the Crown, which contends that I am responsible, acquit me all the same. You are perfectly justified in declaring that having my reason and sound mind I have acted reasonably and in self-defence, while the Government, my accuser, being irresponsible and consequently insane, cannot but have acted wrong, and if high treason there is, it must be on its side and not on my part.

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