An Appeal for Justice – Louis Riel (1885)

Letter published in ‘The Irish World’, New York City, 1885, with excerpts republished in ‘The Montreal Herald and Daily Commercial Gazette’, November 20, 1885

To the Citizens of the United States of America:

FELLOW-MEN: The outside world has heard but little of my people since the beginning of this war in the North-west Territory, and that little has been related by agents and apologists of the bloodthirsty British Empire. As of old, England’s infernal machination of FALSEHOOD has been employed to defame our character, to misrepresent our motives, and to brand our soldiers and allies as cruel savages. These things I learn from American papers which come to me through the same channel that I send this to you. The end which our enemies have in view is plain. Their object is to prevent good people from extending to us their sympathy while they themselves may rob us in the dark and murder us without pity.

Of one hundred or more papers that now lie in my tent, The Irish World, I find, is the only true friend we have. In the columns of this far-famed journal the truth is fully told, England’s organs in the United States and Canada falsely aver that my people have no grievances. To contradict their false statements I now write to the defender of the oppressed, Mr. Patrick Ford, whose Irish World will publish a true statement of the facts in all corners of the globe.

Our lands in the North-west Territory, the possession of which were solemnly confirmed by the Government fifteen years ago, have since been torn from us and given to land-grabbers who never saw the country — and this after we had cut down forests, plucked up stumps, removed rocks, plowed and seeded the soil, and built substantial homes for ourselves and our children.

Nearly all the good available lands in this territory (as is the case with the lands east of the Rocky Mountains) are already in the clutches of English lords, who have large herds of cattle grazing thereon; and the riches which these lands produce are drained out of the country and sent over to England to be consumed by a people that fatten on a system that pauperizes us.

This wholesale robbery and burglary has been carried on, and is still carried on, with the connivance of accursed England. The result is extermination or slavery. Against this monstrous tyranny we have been forced to rebel. It is not in human nature to quietly acquiesce in it.

In their treatment of us, however, the behavior of the English is not singular. Follow those pirates the world over, and you will find that everywhere and at all times they adopt the same tactics and operate on the same thievish lines.

Ireland, India, the Highlands of Scotland, Australia, and the isles of the Indian Ocean — all these countries are the sad evidences and their native populations are the witnesses of England’s land robberies.

Even in the United States — and it is a burning shame for the Government and people of that great and free nation to have it to be said — English lords have, within a few short years, grabbed territory enough to form several large States. Alas! for the people of your country. Alas! for the Government for whose independence and glory the soldiers of George Washington fought bare-foot against the cut-throats and hell-hounds of England, — alas! that this same evil power should be allowed to return and reconquer so much of your nation without a shot being fired or even a word of protest being uttered in the name of the American people!

Your Government, which has allowed her citizens to be robbed of their heritage by English capitalists, has also given aid and comfort to the English in permitting her General Howard to come to Manitoba and the North-west Territory to school the assassins that were sent from Toronto to murder me and my people, and to give the Queen’s Own lessons in handling the American Gatling gun, as well as in granting licence to British soldiers and British ammunition intended for our destruction to pass over American soil. By its conduct in this entire business the Administration at Washington has made the United States the ally of England in fighting a people who were only protecting their homes and firesides. Does it require two powerful nations such as the United States and England to put down the Saskatchewan rebellion? Grover Cleveland and Secretary Bayard have much to answer for.

It is now evident, as The Irish World has charged, that these two high officials of the United States are more English than American. The animus they have shown towards my people and me for the past two months, as well as the friendship and aid they have extended to our enemies, is but an additional confirmation of what has been charged against them.

Can it possible that the American people, or any considerable portion of them, have any real sympathy with England ? Have they not read, has it not come down to them from bleeding sire to son, of the crimes and atrocities and fiendish cruelties which that wicked power inflicted upon their patriotic fathers during the Revolution? Of the American towns wantonly given to the flames by order of English commanders, of the horrors of the English prison ships, and the barbarities imposed by the English upon American prisoners of war? Does not American history record the outrages perpetrated by England upon American commerce and American citizenship which led to the war of 1812? And is it not still fresh in the memory of men of middle age, how, when the Republic was engaged in a life-and-death struggle, with the slaveholders rebellion, England gloated over your troubles and sent her sympathy and her money and her armed ships to your enemies to destroy your Union and to bring the American name into disgrace before the world? Generous minds forgive injuries, but spaniels lick the hand that smites them. The Americans are not spaniels; but, there are sycophants and lickspittles in America, nevertheless, and those base natures are to the honest people of to-day what the Tories were to the honest and patriotic people of a century ago. They are not Americans.

A word here to the French and Irish of Canada, and I am done: I beg and pray that they will not allow themselves to be induced by any threats or by any blandishments to come out against us. Our cause is just, and therefore no just man of any race or nationality ought to stand opposed to us. The enemies who seek our destruction are strangers to justice. They are cruel, treacherous, and bloody. And yet, like the tiger, they are only obeying the instincts of their nature. But for the Irish people, who for centuries have been robbed and massacred and hunted from their island home by the English, and whose good name is reviled by the English in all lands, or for the Canadian French, who are subjected to the grossest and most ruffianly abuse from the same, to aid in any way these enemies would be not only wrong but stupid and unnatural.

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.

LOUIS RIEL

BATOCHE, N.-W.T., May 6, 1885

Excerpt from ‘Memorandum on the causes of the North-West troubles, and on the negotiations which led to their peaceful settlement‘ – Louis Riel (1874)

Translated and republished in the ‘Manitoba Free Press’, Feb.28, 1874, from the ‘Montreal Gazette’ and ‘Le Nouveau Monde’

“This period of time having elapsed, Colonel Wolseley arrived at Fort Garry [in 1870]. Instead of presenting himself in a friendly manner, as the law of nations made it his duty to do, his arrival was that of an enemy.

[…]

Some days later the Canadian Lieutenant Governor arrived. But he assumed the reins of Government of our country only to consummate the conspicuous act of perfidy of which Canada had made us the victims. He installed himself without fulfilling the condition sine qua non of amnesty.

Thus the Canadian Government broke from the beginning the solemn treaty it had made with the Provisional Government.

[…]

The Canadian Confederation is, therefore, as regards Manitoba and the North-West, a deceit.”

Louis Riel

Also

LAND BACK ALSO MEANS FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA.

Guided by the wisdom of our ancestors who took up arms in resistance to colonial occupation, Red River Echoes unequivocally stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people fighting for their lives and homeland.

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