It is said that Louis Riel prevented Gabriel Dumont, his miiltary commander, from leading the Metis rebels in a campaign of guerilla war against the advancing government columns, and that that weakened the rebellion.
Here I will collect a few notes on the subject to shed light on the matter:
If the Metis fighters had engaged in guerilla war against poorly-armed or totally un-armed teamsters working on hire to transport supplies for the government troops, it would have been a crisis of consicencle foeh fighters to whom these local teamsters were their neighbours and friends, or at least freinds of friends or relatives of their relatives.
if in the lust of the battle, such feelings might have been suppressed, certainly afterwards when life got back to normal, which it would've done eventually, no matter who won, feeling still would have run hot if stragglers, isolated stopping houses, drivers of a solitary freight-wagon here and there had been slaughtered.
There is an account of a victim of the first Riel Rebellion encountering a former tormentor on the Calrton Trail and getting his own back years later in that lonely spot on the road.
Such acts of revenge would have been more common if the fighting in the Rebellion had been un-controlled.
Furthermore, such barbarity on the side of the rebels might have produced harsh represntioon after the rebel. For instance, after the Indian Mutiny had been put down in 1857, captured rebels were actually killed by bing put in front of cannon. In Canada, althought there is no doubt the rebellion was put down and its leaders arrested, when they coudl befound, Reil himself hanged but no punishment was meted out to those ordinary soldiers who participated in the rebellion.
There was a mass hanging - the largest in Canadian history - of eight, but these were not rebels, under the command of Riel or Dumont. They also were not chiefs as is sometimes said. They were in all cases people who murdered outside the fighting. They killed white civilians, at Frog Lake or during the looting of Battleford.
Thirty-eight soldiers were killed in the fighting (compared to approx. 47 dead among the Natives and Metis), but those who killed during the fighting were not brought up on charges. Although that might not be totally true -- Kostash (Frog Lake Incident, p. 197) reported that about 50 were found guilty of treason and sentenced to 3 to 7 years in prison. The health of many deteriorated during their prison stays; some died in prison.
But those who killed during the fighting were never charged with murder.
Tempers did not fly - at a mass scale anyway - and even Little Bear, son of Big Bear, who. is it was said, had been a major instigator of the Frog Lake Incident. was not put in jail for a set term when he returned to Canada years later. (He was either charged and found not guilty -- or not charged at all -- for his Frog Lake behaviour.) He helped found the Montana First Nation reserve at Maskwacis (Bear's Hill) (Wetaskiwin) before once more returning to the U.S.
(see https://atssc-rwut.sct-trp.ca/apption/cms/UploadedDocuments/20226001/001-SCT-6001-22-Doc1.pdf for more information)
Would guerilla warfare have made any difference?
government troops formed camps into laagers (square or oblong enclosures made of wagons with horses, etc inside the circle) each night to prevent successful attacks. (Caldwell, p. 281)
The Canadian military might have been inexperienced but it was commanded (led) by old-time regular-army British militiary officers who knew their stuff after fighting against insurgents in many other places.
The Canadian government war effort really was not going to be defeated - the might and power of the British Empire was behind it if it really encountered problems.
The course of the Riel Rebellion was the Metis fighters achieved initial successes dispensing with local government officials, Mounted police detachments and whatever military or para-military forces were encountered from March 26 to April 15, then did not advance further. With their fighters numbering no more than a thousand or so at the most, it was insufficient to take any large centre such as Regina or Edmonton, and so the fighters more or less waited for the government response.
Cree fighters attacked Lac La Biche and Green Lake (150 kms NE of Battleford) on April 26. (Beal and Macleod, Prairie Fire, p. 234-235)
In early April, three columns offloaded at points along the CPR rail-line and pressed more or less rapidly northwardly toward the centre of the rebellion, Batoche.
Brisk firefights along the way saw troops suffer temporary setbacks but the rebels never stopped long the army's onward progress.
Each encounter and battle was closer to Batoche.
By May 9th, troops led by Middleton were at Batoche with wagons, a Gatling gun, cannons, a riverboat and other machines of war. The result was a foregone conclusion, but it took two or three days (two days if you don't count the break for Sunday Sabbath in the middle of the battle) for the soldiers to wear the small band of defenders down and eventually in a headlong dash, overrun the riflepits in which the defenders were fighting.
An officer was thought to be a valid recipient of a Victoria Cross for his leadership. dash and valour, but he shortly after the rebellion's ended with the fall of Batoche he fell sick and died of a fever.
The Victoria Cross was not given out for nothing so that shows the fighting was "tight."
Middleton claimed that his clever ploy of attacking at one end of the line to draw fighters there then attacking at the real target won out, but Beal and Macleod say that if that was the plan, it was bungled by lack of telling anyone else. By all accounts (excepting Middleton's), the final victory was won by Canadian militia disregarding Middleton's orders and charging the riflepits on their own. (Beal and Middleton, Prairie Fire, p. 271-272)
The rebels put up a good fight but in the end availed nothing militarily against the might of the young Dominion - and the British Empire that stood behind it.
Guerilla warfare might have caused more casualties among the soldiers and among the assisting civilian teamsters - all local settlers and small businessmen.
But the death of even another 300 or 1000 would not have prevented their eventual defeat - the Canadian government sent into the field 5500 militia, temporary volunteer soldiers and NWMP officers. (one account says Government troops numbered 8000.)
The book Prairie Fire by Beal and Macleod seems to make no mention of the two strategies except on page 260 where it says that the Metis prepared to make a last stand at Batoche. it says historians have unimously condemned this strategy, instead apparently proposing the Metis might have engaged in guerrilla warfare, attacking the troops in transit and catching them in small units on the road, repeatedly hitting its vanguard and bothering them while they slept.
But Beal and Macleod say the Metis fighters were unable to do that as they were not mobile enough - they had too few horses; many horses had been killed while held in an exposed site during the Fish Creek battle, and they had too few fighters - they had less than 300 fighters -- the expected Native reinforcements not arriving. (Meanwhile the attacking government troops numbered almost a thousand.)
Did Riel think this out the same way?
I have not looked into the four-volume collected works of Louis Riel so cannot answer this question - not quite yet anyway.
Guerrilla attack that succeeded
Three days after the fall of Batoche, Native fighters based in the Battlefords caught a "wagon train" (probably actually a convoy of Red River carts) at Eagle Hills and captured it. This came late but showed what guerrilla warfare could do, under the conditions of the large distances of western Canada and the primitive, slow-moving supply columns of the time. The capture did not change the outcome of he rebellion but did give the fighters trophhies and goods to take home. Pillage was the goal of some attacks in such wars.
Colonel C.E. Callwell in his book Small Wars says "soldiers engged in pillage are very liable to become somewhat unmanageable and for the purely military pont of view this is one of the strongest objections to raids. A discipined detacment that from any cause degenerates even if it is only for the moment, into a gang of marauders is exposed to all manner of dangers and finds itself in a sorry plight if the enemy suddenly turns upon it." (p. 247)
Apparently the wagon train was totally exposed and no troops were near enough to offer protections or to interrupt the capture.
Distances in the campaign
Middleton's column travelled from the CPR line at Qu'Appelle to Batoche 390 kms.
with a battle at Fish Creek and a two-week pause afterward while his force awaited the arrival of a riverboat to transport wounded, it took the column from April 6 to May 9 to arrive at Batoche and then three days to capture it.
The 390 kms was a good stretch in those days -- the Zulu War of the 1870s saw British troops wend their way only 130 kms from the border to the Zulu capital at Ulundi.
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Guerrilla war was used for several purposes in history.
During WWII, Soviet guerrilla forces operated behind German front lines.
They sought to:
-attack the railway lines
-infict materiel and human losses on occupying troops.
-tie down German forces to keep them from aiding the advance into the Soviet Union.
-attack quizlings (German puppet officials)
-aid in propaganda campaign, such as by showing that the USSR was still fighting on despite setbacks.
The Canadain sitution did not allow much of this:
the railway line was 380 kms from Batoche
in 1885 there were very few population centres and little local government. Those that wdid have town councils wer not upprets of governemtn gtroops. they werepresntenedt the local (Euro-Canadian) populace. The government troops might have been the "enemy," but many inhabitants of the Prairies were loyal to the government.
Ther were gradients of anti-rebvel feeling even among government troops.
When Houris, a local resident working as a scout for the troops. encountered Riel after the Battle of Batoche and accepted his surrender, he did not take personal revenge on him and worried that other front-line soldiers might. So he snuck Riel into the troop camp. getting him right to Middleton's tent before announcing whom he had captured. Middleton immediately put tight control of how Riel would be treated and ther is no report of him being roughly handled after exposure. (A descendant of Houris lives in north-central Alberta today.)
In the battle of the Grassy Narrows, when Big Bear's band fled across shallow water, government soldiers took pot-shots at the running figures who were reportedly easily lidentifiable as women with children and shot even at hostages intermixed with the band members - the two Theresa's, two newly-widowed women who had been taken captive at Frog Lake.
Perhaps the gun-hapy soldiers were Easterners with no local ties and no need to reckon with hard feelings after the excitement died down. They likely knew tht they cold have thier fun and then ehwn the fighting was over return East, far away from any backlash or later punishment.
The Metis were not like this, it seems. If they won or if they lost, they would still be in the area and they would have to get along with their neighbours.
The preachers and missionaries on scene sought solution through diplomacy and negotation. War, in their view, was not seen as in the Way of Christ. And the rebellion was seen as a way to push diplomacy through other means. The Metis could hope to bring attention to thier troubles and problems through the rebellion but had no hope of capturing Ottawa and little hope of militarily defeating the forces arrayed against them.
The rebellion was like how some describe general strikes - strong weapon but in its power lies its weakness. a long-lasting effective general strike becomes a threat to the economy and to the government itself. It becomes little short of revolution and is seen that evoking a strong political reaction
That I think is why the 1976 Day of Action against Pierre Trudeau's wage and price controls was just one day. it was strong but limited cal lfor aredress. It did not last long enough to be seen as a threat to the govenrment itself, which a longer general strike, such as the one in 1919 in Winnipeg, ran the risk of being seen as.
The Metis uprising of 1885 did not sever local relatons, at least not permanently; it did not waste local resources and hard-won local improvements and infrastructure.
And the government did respond - lae and partially but it did address some of the Metis concerns - Metis scrip commission allwoed some (many?) Metis to get ownership on the land they had squatted on prior. and so on.
The se changes showed both that the government wsa wrong not to do it before and prevent the rebellion in the first place (George F.G. Stanley's statement in his book Birth of Western Canada) and also that the Metis leadership had acquired respect due to the rebellion, and to the honourable way that the war was fought.
The Theresa's had more to fear from the soldiers pursuing Big Bear's band than the Natives who were holding them captive. At least that is what they said immediately after "liberation" - later as they learned what they were expected to say, they changed their stories. (This change of messaging is delinated in Myrna Kostach's book The Frog Lake Incident.)
Poundmaker stopping fighters from picking off soldiers fleeing the Cut Knife Hill battleground is another example. His chivalric bahaviour might not have been actually noticed, but a pile of bodies being found later with bullet wounds in their backs would have been noticed indeed if he had not stopped the slaughter.
Humane treatment worked both ways - no common footsoldier Metis fighters were hanged or sentenced to death for treason. Killing done in the line of the fighting was written off on both sides.
Not great chapter for anyone but it could have been worse.
sort of like many things in Canada.
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Alhambra Books in Old Strathcona, Edmonton and online at ABEBooks.com has many books on Riel and the uprisings that he led.
Buy used - it is cheaper ...
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