Louis Riel Sr. (1817-1864)

Métis leader.

Born at Île-à-la-Crosse in what is now Saskatchewan, he went east to Lower Canada with his family in 1822 and was educated there as a wool carder. At age 21 he joined the Hudson's Bay Company at Rainy River, where he served from 1838 to 1840. In 1842he returned East to study for thepriesthood as a novitiate with the Oblate Order, but left after a few months to settle at Red River. When he came west in 1843, he married Julie, the daughter of Jean-Baptiste Lagimodière and Marie-Anne Gaboury. There were eleven children of whom the eldest was Louis David Riel, the Métis leader. He became known as the miller of the Seine after he established a mill on the Seine River, near St. Boniface, to grind grain and card wool for the Grey Nuns of St. Boniface. Tradition has it that almost single-handed he dug a nine mile channel to divert water to turn the mill wheel. However, the mill business failed in the late 1850s.

He supported the free traders within the Métis, and also insisted that the Council of Assiniboia have Métis representation and that the courts of Red River employ French. With James Sinclair and Georges Belcourt he led the struggle at Red River to break the fur trade monopoly of the Hudson’s Bay Company. In 1849 when Guillaume Sayer was found guilty of trafficking in furs, Riel headed the three hundred armed men who surrounded the court hearing and demanded their right to free trade. Sayer was released without penalty. Later that year Riel was one of the petitioners demanding the removal of Adam Thom, the Recorder of Rupert’s Land. Thom was replaced with a bilingual judge, as requested in the petition.

Riel died in St. Boniface in 1864.

More information:

Louis Riel Sr., Dictionary of Canadian Biography IX, 663.

Sources:

Profile revised: 6 December 2008

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