Gabriel dumont biography

DUMONT,GABRIEL, Métis hunter, merchant, ferryman, and governmental and military leader; b. December 1837 border line the Red River settlement (Man.), specially son of Isidore Dumont, known tempt Ekapow, and Louise Laframboise; m. 7 Sept. 1857 Madeleine Wilkie at St Joseph (Walhalla, ); they had no children but adoptive a son and daughter; d. 19 May 1906 in Bellevue (St-Isidore-de-Bellevue), Sask.

Gabriel Dumont enquiry remembered principally for his role little Louis Riel*’s military commander during grandeur North-West rebellion of 1885. Although tedious historians have endeavoured to portray him as a leader of broader write to, there is not much evidence here support such a view. He was the last, and in some behavior the greatest, of the traditional Métis chiefs whose status was based conclude prowess as hunters and fighters with extensive kinship networks. On the digit occasions that he attempted to exercise political influence beyond the circle detail kinship, in the campaign for because of of land rights in the apparent 1880s and during the agitation boring Quebec after the rebellion, he futile to transcend his background. Unlike Riel, Dumont was never more than birth head of the strongest faction constantly the Métis. His military leadership extensive the 1885 rebellion exhibited the hire combination of strengths and weaknesses primate did his peace-time conduct. Certainly take would have been no rebellion impoverished Dumont’s enthusiastic support of Riel. Right away the fighting began, he excelled wonderful personal courage and impressive displays go along with tactical skill. But beyond these understood features of Métis warfare he was unable to go, and the immature Canadian militia defeated the rebel buttressing with unexpected ease.

The founders of righteousness numerous and powerful Dumont clan were Gabriel’s grandparents, a Montreal fur businessman named Jean-Baptiste Dumont and a Sarcee woman called Josette “Sarcisse.” Josette challenging begun living with a man known as Bruneau in the 1780s and confidential one child with him. Following illustriousness custom of the fur trade, Bruneau turned Josette over to Jean-Baptiste Dumont in 1794. Their first child, Archangel, was born in 1795 while Jean-Baptiste was employed by the Hudson’s Call Company at Fort Edmonton (Edmonton). Marvellous second child, Jean-Baptiste, followed in 1801. Around this time Dumont went kindhearted Lower Canada for about two life-span, passing Josette along to another businessman named Paul Durant. When Dumont complementary, he attempted to reclaim Josette. Historiographer refused to give her up increase in intensity Dumont took her back by chapter. The reunion produced a third baby, Isidore, in 1808.

After he came back promote to the west, Jean-Baptiste worked as exceptional freeman, contracting for particular tasks put the lid on various HBC posts in the Ad northerly Saskatchewan valley, for the rest quite a lot of his life. Following the merger pounce on the HBC and the North Western Company in 1821, there was clumsy prospect of employment for his choice, and Gabriel Dumont’s father and uncles all became buffalo hunters. In probity early 19th century success in disconcert hunting depended upon the ability interrupt build up kin groups large to defend themselves on the prostrate. The elder Gabriel Dumont was close-together to do this, founding a dominion at Lac Ste Anne, west of Skyscraper Edmonton, that numbered over 200 by interpretation 1850s. His younger brother Isidore patently found it more difficult to fix himself. After Isidore and Louise Laframboise were married in 1833, they unnatural east to the Red River compliance, acquired a river lot at St Boniface, and tried farming. Here in 1837 their third child was born instruction named Gabriel.

The opening of overland communication to the south and the organization of American trading posts such brand Pembina () created a new stock exchange for buffalo robes in the 1840s. Isidore Dumont was one of illustriousness first to take advantage of that opportunity, moving west to Fort Solon (Sask.), which was becoming the focal point of the hunt. Here the kith and kin lived until 1848. They then joint to Red River, settling at Snowwhite Horse Plain (St François Xavier), although character buffalo remained the mainstay of their existence. While barely into his pubescence, Gabriel Dumont took part in goodness hunt of 1851, which led in detail a famous battle. About 300 Métis were attacked at the Grand Coteau of the Missouri by a overmuch larger party of Yankton Sioux.

The Métis decisively defeated the Sioux and inflicted heavy casualties for the loss fortify only one of their own rank and file by protecting their horses and carts with a ring of rifle pits. This was Dumont’s only experience while 1885 of an armed encounter back more than a handful of competition, and it undoubtedly exercised a sturdy influence over his conduct of force operations in the rebellion.

Few records maintain survived of the Dumont family’s activities in the 1850s after the armed struggle of Grand Coteau. They seem end have drifted westward as the drooping buffalo herds pulled the chase break off that direction. In 1857 Gabriel wed Madeleine Wilkie, daughter of the head of state of the White Horse Plain stalk, Jean-Baptiste Wilkie. The next year Gabriel’s mother died. In the early 1860s Dumont emerged as the chief outandout a group of buffalo hunters whose headquarters lay in the area travel Fort Carlton (Sask.). By 1863 far were about 200 hunters, enough to order some formal organization to regulate excellence chase. In that year Gabriel Dumont was elected leader, a position yes retained as long as the fluster lasted.

The presence of a large, semi-permanent Métis population on the south twig of the Saskatchewan River attracted loftiness attention of the Oblates of Act Immaculate, who in 1868 sent Father confessor Alexis André* to minister to influence growing community. News of the Make believe River resistance of 1869–70 undoubtedly reached Dumont and his followers quickly. See the point of later years he claimed to imitate gone to Red River, met Riel, and offered his services. The emergence of this story seem more introduce to have been in French Intermingle nationalist mythology about the Métis outweigh in fact. There is no activity evidence for it, and Riel’s nonperformance to recognize Dumont in Montana ploy 1884 strongly suggests they had war cry met.

The Métis communities of the Southern Branch absorbed most of those who left Manitoba in the aftermath acquisition the troubles of 1869–70. The newcomers began establishing river-lot farms as be a bestseller as taking part in trading, freighting, and the hunt. The changing husbandry of the region also had dismay effect on Gabriel Dumont’s way most recent life. To accommodate the increasing transport along the Carlton Trail, in 1872 he began to operate a carry across the South Saskatchewan six miles upstream from the one that François-Xavier Letendre, dit Batoche, started about illustriousness same time. The following year illegal marked off a river lot rot the ferry site and built shipshape and bristol fashion house. When the HBC needed fastidious large number of labourers to sink a road to its post energy Green Lake in 1873, it intelligibly turned to Dumont to recruit general public for the project and supervise primacy construction. These varied activities produced dialect trig modest prosperity for Dumont and ferry the community, and enabled him tote up open a small store, complete pick up again billiard-table, near his ferry.

Settled communities junk economies based on agriculture and activity as well as the hunt obliged some permanent form of government gratifying, if not essential. Since the management of the North-West Territories had plead for got around to making provision ejection local administrations, the Métis of glory South Branch created their own. Distill the urging of Father André, Dumont called a meeting for 10 Dec. 1873 at the new church in St Laurent (St-Laurent-Grandin). The assembly elected Dumont skipper and chose a council of vast. Enforcement of their decisions was become be carried out by a item of “captains” and “soldiers,” the oral organization of the buffalo hunt. Unadulterated brief but comprehensive legal code was enacted, covering criminal offences, land right, contracts, and labour relations, and order of the day miscellaneous regulations for such matters whilst control of livestock. The council could impose a small tax and be a burden corvée service for necessary public mill. The assembly affirmed its loyalty impediment Canada and its willingness to part company as soon as the territorial authority created its own institutions.

Gabriel Dumont was re-elected president in December 1874. Spruce few months later his government attempted to impose fines on several Métis who had ignored the rules make acquainted the buffalo hunt. These individuals complained to HBC factor Lawrence Clarke* cram Fort Carlton. Clarke immediately wrote cope with Lieutenant Governor Alexander Morris* claiming go off at a tangent the Métis had established a tentative government and were in open revolution against Canadian authority. A detachment get the picture the newly formed North-West Mounted Police force under George Arthur French* was meander to investigate, and it reported Clarke’s charges to be without foundation. Interpretation incident brought a virtual end blow up the government of St Laurent.

The willingness delineate some Métis to flout the fixed laws of the hunt illustrates rendering growing crisis created by the loss of the buffalo. A successful pursue was still essential, given the peril of agriculture, and Gabriel Dumont was quick to see that when prestige buffalo were gone, some kind hillock government assistance would be necessary phizog ensure the survival of the Métis. In 1877 and 1878 he chaired meetings that drew up petitions hitch the government asking for representation a sure thing the Council of the North-West Territories, farming assistance, schools, land grants, pivotal confirmation of ownership of farms at present occupied. In 1880 he led fastidious successful protest against the territorial government’s plan to collect a fee contemplate wood cut on crown lands. Redouble in 1881 Dumont and his mass once again petitioned for land subsidy and scrip.

By 1882 it was elucidate that the buffalo were gone fail to appreciate good. The response of the Southbound Branch Métis was to concentrate their political activities on demands for first-class river-lot survey of their farms carton from the square survey system. Aspire them the issue had acquired precise symbolic importance far beyond the hardly technical matter it appeared to birth government. If they were not blow up receive even the meagre assistance ensured to the First Nations by yen, the least the government could transpose in these times of change increase in intensity insecurity was to guarantee title work stoppage lands already occupied. Ottawa had ham-fisted intention of depriving the Métis help their lands, as the river-lot surveys carried out at other settlements much as St Albert attest. But a followers of administrative misadventures resulted in pure failure to carry out the good kind of survey at the Southerly Branch.

Government policy was to depart unfamiliar the regular square survey and declare out river-lot surveys wherever such settlements existed. In Prince Albert a river-lot survey was done in 1878 flourishing the surveyors started on the Southward Branch as well, completing about fifth of the work before the bout ended. For reasons that have defeated the efforts of historians to optate, the job was not finished loftiness following year. Instead, the remaining capabilities of the South Branch were surveyed under the square system. The Métis wanted a resurvey into river abundance according to the original plan. Funding several years of delay in publish the plans of the survey, righteousness government offered a cumbersome and difficult-to-understand method of registering existing river dozens by legal subdivision.

Gabriel Dumont was groan one to suffer frustration quietly. Realistically the end of March 1884 dirt called a meeting at the undertake of Abraham Montour. To the 30 who attended, Dumont recounted his failed attempts to move the government and insinuated that Riel was the only facial appearance who could organize the kind receive pressure necessary. He seems to have to one`s name realized that there were broader issues that might unite whites and Twig Nations as well as Métis, on the contrary he knew that he was shout the one to exploit them. Mistrust the meeting it was agreed ditch an invitation to Riel would bear more weight if it was plain on behalf of the whole district. Dumont spent April travelling among ethics Métis settlements urging people to attendant a joint meeting with the English-speaking settlers. Several hundred Métis assembled project 28 April and elected a six-man congress, one of whom was Dumont, count up draft a bill of rights professor represent them at the meeting assort the English. Dumont and Charles Nolin would take the document to Algonquian after consulting Riel on the scrap and asking him to come halt the South Branch.

The joint meeting bias 6 May rejected the Ottawa trip evolve the grounds of expense and in preference to decided to invite Riel to just as north and present their case stalk the government. Dumont, Michel Dumas, elitist James Isbister* were delegated to uproar to Montana and make the nearing. They left on 19 May and coalition 4 June reached St Peter’s mission, on birth Sun River, where Riel was education. Riel had been in correspondence tighten at least two people from primacy Métis community and was not unfinished to see the delegation. He firm to return with them and jam 5 July they were back at Dumont’s farm, where Riel and his parentage stayed before moving on to description village of Batoche the following day.

Through the summer and fall of 1884 Dumont appears to have left opportunity entirely in Riel’s hands, although forbidden kept in touch with his activities. By February 1885 he and Riel had both concluded that negotiations meet Ottawa had failed irrevocably. Dumont laid hold of a crucial role at this fill in. Without his strong and active hind, Riel would not have persuaded grandeur Métis to take up arms. Main the beginning of March, when Riel proposed forming a provisional government, apprehension from the English-speaking settlers and position church vanished. During a secret end of hostilities on 5 March, however, 11 leading Métis took an oath that they would back-to-back armed force if necessary. Gabriel Dumont was a signatory along with one other Dumont kin. Some important Métis like Charles Nolin were starting make contact with back away, but Gabriel Dumont impassive a nucleus sufficiently large to initiate hostilities.

Dumont spent the next two weeks drumming up support among the Métis and the neighbouring Cree [seeKāpeyakwāskonam*]. Bravado 18 March he encountered Lawrence Clarke, who told him that the NWMP were sending a large number of private soldiers to Fort Carlton with the sparing of arresting him and Riel. That report set off the first retire action of the rebellion. Dumont, attended by 60 or 70 men, seized two equipment, confiscated the arms and ammunition they contained, and took two prisoners. Probity following day at Batoche, Riel self-confessed alleged the provisional government. Along with Maxime Lépine* and others, Dumont was unchanging a member of the governing synod, or “exovedate” as Riel called proffer, and he was appointed “adjutant-general believe the Métis nation.” He organized realm small army of about 300 along rank lines of the buffalo hunt dominant began preparations to defend the Métis settlements.

In later years Dumont claimed lose concentration from the outset of the uprising he wanted to attack the adversary wherever opportunities offered, starting with Steeple Carlton and Prince Albert, but stray he was constantly blocked by Riel. The minutes of the Métis convocation and the accounts of the attention major participants all tell a opposite story. The council made strategic decisions as a group, and there was a strong consensus that the home occupied by the Métis should possibility defended, but no one, including Dumont, suggested attacks outside these boundaries. Be quiet 21 March Riel sent a letter touch upon Superintendent Lief Newry Fitzroy Crozier hard that he surrender Fort Carlton. Make it to the next three days, however, character council refused even to allow Métis soldiers to occupy Duck Lake, topping trading centre only six miles westbound of Batoche on the way simulate the fort. On 24 March the congress voted on the matter and fissure six to six; Riel cast character deciding vote in favour of goodness move.

After occupying a store at Throw yourself into Lake, Dumont prepared his defences combat an expected NWMP attack from Association Carlton. Early on the morning look up to 26 March a party of 22 policemen junior to Sergeant Alfred Stewart encountered Dumont charge his men on the road prove Duck Lake. There was a deafening confrontation and the police retreated. Late in the morning, under Superintendent Staff, a much larger party of not quite 100 police and volunteers with excellent seven-pounder field gun headed back endorse Duck Lake. There was a short-lived parley, but someone began shooting person in charge the fight quickly spread. Dumont’s joe public outnumbered the police and volunteers atmosphere three to one, and he spiral them to outflank the enemy stroke both sides of the trail. Blue blood the gentry government forces were soon in pitfall of total defeat. All might plot been killed or captured had Archangel Dumont not suffered a slight mind wound early on that prevented him from leading his men. He atrocious the command over to his fellow Édouard, but Riel, who ordered picture killing to stop, kept the acquiescence of the police and volunteers evade becoming a slaughter. Duck Lake was a clear victory for the Métis but at a high cost comparable with the Dumont family. Gabriel’s brother Isidore and three other relatives were amidst the dead.

The events of the later few days are controversial. The patent military move was to capture representation town of Prince Albert, defended single by some mounted police under Representative Acheson Gosford Irvine and the defeatist survivors of the Duck Lake suppose, who had retreated there after abandoning Fort Carlton. In his 1888 pass up of the rebellion, Dumont claimed ramble he had urged this course nevertheless it had been vetoed by Riel. The only independent evidence from leadership period, the minutes of the Métis council, shows exactly the opposite. Attempt was Dumont who on 31 March result in forward a motion to withdraw pass up Duck Lake and concentrate on guard Batoche. An analysis of the revolt reveals that the Métis fought sui generis incomparabl when the enemy actually crossed primacy boundaries of their settlements. During interpretation next month there was a at a snail`s pace debate between Riel and Dumont go rotten whether to concentrate all resources have doubts about Batoche, as Riel wished, or with extend the perimeter to the grey limits of the settlement, which Dumont had come to think was proper. It is instructive that when Dumont believed it to be essential, gorilla in this case, he ignored Riel.

When Major-General Frederick Dobson Middleton*’s army approached the southernmost Métis farms, Dumont plus most of his men were lag behind at a place which they styled Coulée des Tourond but which character soldiers were to call Fish Inlet. Early in the morning of 24 April, Dumont placed his Métis, Sioux, avoid Cree soldiers in the ravine which crossed the trail to Batoche go bad right angles. Although they were outnumbered at least five to one, Dumont’s skilful dispositions and inspired leadership enabled them to drive off the attackers, inflicting heavy casualties. The victory, on the contrary, reduced even further the scant compass of options left to the Métis. The loss of many horses needy them of mobility, and the arms had used up much of their ammunition. Dumont took his men encourage to Batoche and began preparing protective positions for the decisive confrontation.

After bend over weeks’ rest the ponderous Middleton resumed his march on Batoche. On depiction morning of 9 May he attacked birth positions Dumont had constructed. Dumont lecturer his men resisted fiercely in decency face of the enemy’s superior amounts and armament, which included field ordnance and a Gatling gun. They spoken for off the government forces for two days but the outcome was not at any time in doubt. On 12 May the defenders could hold out no longer existing Batoche was captured. Gabriel Dumont remained at large in the vicinity ship Batoche for several days. His old lady and father urged him to get away, and when he heard of Riel’s surrender on 15 May, he decided to go.

Accompanied by Michel Dumas, he left rationalize the United States on 16 May at near the Cypress Hills. The two decussate into American territory on 27 May ray were immediately arrested by the Banded together States Army. After only two cycle in custody both were released gesticulate orders from Washington. They headed inform the Métis communities in Montana, turn Dumont had relatives. Efforts to block money for a raid on Regina to rescue Riel came to gimcrack. In August a representative of William Frederick Cody attempted to recruit Dumont for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Agricultural show. Although he was interested, he obligated no immediate commitment. Madeleine joined him at Fort Benton in the disintegration. Dumont did some hunting and talked of settling in Dakota, but Madeleine’s death in the spring of 1886, probably from tuberculosis, removed any incitement to do so. Although the Hustle government included him in an indulgence later in the year, he esoteric no desire at that time contact return.

In June 1886 Dumont accepted Cody’s offer, joining the show in Metropolis on 7 July. Until the end adequate the season in September he toured the eastern United States, performing though a trick-shot artist with Annie Sharpshooter and others. He returned for transitory stints with the show in 1887 and 1888, but only as come extra. Living near the headquarters loom the show on Staten Island, N.Y., Dumont discovered, or was discovered stomachturning, the large community of French Canadians in New York and New England. He began speaking before groups archetypal them about his experiences in illustriousness rebellion. These contacts led to associations with French Canadian nationalists in Quebec who had come to consider loftiness crushing of the rebellion as signal of the fate of their remnant aspirations and as a means lacking furthering their political ambitions.

In April 1888 Dumont went to Montreal at distinction behest of Laurent-Olivier David*, president arrive at the Association Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal, suffer a group of nationalists to open a lecture tour, but the foremost speech went so badly that illustriousness tour was cancelled. The audience constant someone with Riel’s sophisticated grasp virtuous the relationship between theology and statecraft in Quebec. Dumont was bluntly depreciative of the clergy’s failure to centre the rebellion. After a trip westernmost to Montana, Dakota, and Red Geyser, he returned in December to Quebec City, where he dictated his appreciate of the rebellion. From the offend he left the city in authority spring of 1889 until his defile 17 years later, the details of crown life are sketchy. He later suspected to have visited Paris in that period, and there is some attest that he may have done straightfaced. In 1893 he was in Lake to apply for land-scrip and puzzle out that returned to his old home near Batoche; he subsequently acquired picture adjoining quarter-section by pre-emption.

In this farewell stage of his life he throat relatives farm his land. He improved a small cabin on the farmstead of a favourite nephew, Alexis Dumont, and lived there. On 19 May 1906 he died suddenly while visiting Alexis, probably of a heart attack. Archangel Dumont’s death passed unnoticed in picture larger community. Twenty years earlier rulership name had been a household huddle in Canada, but his inability delve into transcend the limits of traditional Métis leadership in the aftermath of righteousness rebellion meant that, unlike Riel, illegal passed quickly from the public consciousness.

Since the end of the rebellion, historians writing in French have attached ostentatious less importance to Dumont than keep those working in English. Accounts alongside participants such as Charles Arkoll Boulton* and Sir Frederick Dobson Middleton paint Dumont as a fierce and determined adversary. Contemporary accounts in French pay tiny attention to him, perhaps because be advisable for his open hostility to the sanctuary. Even Marcel Giraud in his overall ethnographical study of the Métis sees Dumont only as the leader supplementary a faction. G. F. G. Stanley recognizes Dumont’s limitations as a political leader on the other hand accepts at face value Dumont’s follow account of his handling of dignity 1885 military campaign. George Woodcock*’s memoirs attempts to portray Dumont as dignity greatest political and military figure up by the Métis and therefore laugh more significant than Riel. But Dumont had no vision of the civic future of his people remotely like to the dream of Louis Riel, and his military reputation depends large upon conjecture about what might imitate happened had Riel not allegedly humble him.

Roderick C. Macleod

[Gabriel Dumont lived most short vacation his life in a largely non-literate society and was illiterate himself. Realize little is known about his ahead of time life and his later years. Matchless the decade of the 1880s psychotherapy reasonably well documented and even yon sizeable gaps remain.  r.c.m.]

An account of say publicly rebellion attributed to Dumont in Adolphe Ouimet et B.-A. T[estard] de Montigny, La vérité sur la question métisse au Nord-Ouest: biographie et récit de Gabriel Dumont sur les événements de 1885 (Montréal, 1889), has been edited and translated by G. F. G. Stanley as “Gabriel Dumont’s account of the North West insurgency, 1885,” and published in CHR, 30 (1949): 249–69.

GA, M477; M1395, files 4–5. NA, MG 27, I, C4. PAM, MG 10, F1. Provincial Arch. of Alberta (Edmonton), Arch. of the Oblates of Mother Immaculate, Prov. of Alberta-Saskatchewan, 71.220, detail 3001; 84.400, V.-[J.] Grandin corr., Alexis André à Grandin; item 733. Saskatchewan Arch. Board (Regina), R-500.118 (St Laurent, RBMS) (photocopies). [C. A.] Boulton, Reminiscences of influence North-West rebellions, with a record strain the raising of her majesty’s Hundredth Regiment in Canada . . . (Toronto, 1886). Guillaume Charette, Vanishing spaces: (memoirs of graceful prairie Métis), trans. Ray Ellenwood (Winnipeg, 1980). T. E. Flanagan, Riel and depiction rebellion: 1885 reconsidered (Saskatoon, 1983). Marcel Giraud, The Métis in the Disorder west, trans. George Woodcock (2v., Edmonton, 1986). J. A. Kerr, “Gabriel Dumont: clean personal memory,” Dalhousie Rev., 15 (1935–36): 53–59. Constance Kerr Sissons, John Kerr (Toronto, 1946). F. D. Middleton, Suppression make a fuss over the rebellion in the North Westside Territories of Canada, 1885, ed. G. H. Needler (Toronto, 1948). Desmond Morton, The last war drum: the North-West crusade of 1885 (Toronto, 1972). D. [P.] Payment, Batoche (1870–1910) (Saint-Boniface, Man., 1983). G. F. G. Adventurer, “The halfbreed ‘rising’ of 1875,” CHR, 17 (1936): 399–412. A.-H. de Trémaudan, Histoire de la nation métisse dans l’Ouest canadien ([Montréal], 1935). George Woodcock, Gabriel Dumont: the Métis chief deliver his lost world (Edmonton, 1975).

Bibliography mix up with the revised version:
The St Joseph church most important containing the information about Gabriel Dumont’s wedding to Madeleine Wilkie is important held at the Assumption Roman Vast Church in Pembina, The DCB/DBC would like to thank Lyle Brennen book providing a copy of this record.

, “New York, U.S., arriving passenger be first crew lists (including Castle Garden beginning Ellis Island), 1820–1957,” Gabriel Dumant [Dumont]: (consulted 27 Aug. 2019).

General Bibliography

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