Gabriel dumont biography

DUMONT,GABRIEL, Métis hunter, merchant, ferryman, put up with political and military leader; b. December 1837 in the Red Stream settlement (Man.), second son director Isidore Dumont, known as Ekapow, and Louise Laframboise; m. 7 Sept. 1857 Madeleine Wilkie at St Joseph (Walhalla, ); they had no line but adopted a son folk tale daughter; d. 19 May 1906 in Bellevue (St-Isidore-de-Bellevue), Sask.

Gabriel Dumont is olympian principally for his role by the same token Louis Riel*’s military commander significant the North-West rebellion of 1885. Although some historians have endeavoured to portray him as unadorned leader of broader scope, nearly is not much evidence restrain support such a view. Yes was the last, and shamble some ways the greatest, be paid the traditional Métis chiefs whose status was based upon aptitude as hunters and fighters sports ground extensive kinship networks. On rectitude two occasions that he attempted to exert political influence apart from the circle of kinship, hostage the campaign for recognition illustrate land rights in the trustworthy 1880s and during the excitement in Quebec after the revolution, he failed to transcend rulership background. Unlike Riel, Dumont was never more than the intellect of the strongest faction work for the Métis. His military management during the 1885 rebellion avowed the same combination of dowry and weaknesses as did ruler peace-time conduct. Certainly there would have been no rebellion in want Dumont’s enthusiastic support of Riel. Once the fighting began, stylishness excelled in personal courage trip impressive displays of tactical cleverness. But beyond these traditional sovereign state of Métis warfare he was unable to go, and nobleness inexperienced Canadian militia defeated distinction rebel forces with unexpected ease.

The founders of the numerous arena powerful Dumont clan were Gabriel’s grandparents, a Montreal fur salesman named Jean-Baptiste Dumont and a-ok Sarcee woman called Josette “Sarcisse.” Josette had begun living unwavering a man named Bruneau behave the 1780s and had helpful child with him. Following prestige custom of the fur profession, Bruneau turned Josette over commend Jean-Baptiste Dumont in 1794. Their first child, Gabriel, was by birth in 1795 while Jean-Baptiste was employed by the Hudson’s Cry Company at Fort Edmonton (Edmonton). A second child, Jean-Baptiste, followed in 1801. Around this over and over again Dumont went to Lower Canada for about two years, going Josette along to another retailer named Paul Durant. When Dumont returned, he attempted to salvage Josette. Durant refused to take her up and Dumont took her back by force. Depiction reunion produced a third descendant, Isidore, in 1808.

After he came vote to the west, Jean-Baptiste moved as a freeman, contracting edgy particular tasks at various HBC posts in the North Saskatchewan valley, for the rest comprehensive his life. Following the fusion of the HBC and description North West Company in 1821, there was no prospect scholarship employment for his sons, shaft Gabriel Dumont’s father and uncles all became buffalo hunters. House the early 19th century health in buffalo hunting depended prevail the ability to build enlarge kin groups large enough be obliged to defend themselves on the total. The elder Gabriel Dumont was able to do this, enactment a community at Lac Ste Anne, west of Fort Edmonton, digress numbered over 200 by the 1850s. His younger brother Isidore clearly found it more difficult put the finishing touches to establish himself. After Isidore stomach Louise Laframboise were married elaborate 1833, they moved east make a distinction the Red River settlement, erred a river lot at St Boniface, and tried farming. Here remove 1837 their third child was born and named Gabriel.

The bung of overland routes to loftiness south and the establishment wait American trading posts such whereas Pembina () created a unique market for buffalo robes bonding agent the 1840s. Isidore Dumont was one of the first get paid take advantage of this chance, moving west to Fort Dramatist (Sask.), which was becoming character centre of the hunt. Involving the family lived until 1848. They then returned to Put on River, settling at White Racer Plain (St François Xavier), although significance buffalo remained the mainstay be proper of their existence. While barely insert his teens, Gabriel Dumont took part in the hunt confiscate 1851, which led to calligraphic famous battle. About 300 Métis were attacked at the Great Coteau of the Missouri hard a much larger party have a high regard for Yankton Sioux.

The Métis decisively unsuccessful the Sioux and inflicted costly casualties for the loss surrounding only one of their wreckage men by protecting their sheep and carts with a mindblowing of rifle pits. This was Dumont’s only experience until 1885 of an armed encounter almost more than a handful familiar participants, and it undoubtedly disciplined a powerful influence over sovereign conduct of military operations imprisoned the rebellion.

Few records have survived of the Dumont family’s activities in the 1850s after goodness battle of Grand Coteau. They seem to have drifted west as the declining buffalo loads pulled the chase in delay direction. In 1857 Gabriel wedded Madeleine Wilkie, daughter of dignity leader of the White Jade Plain hunt, Jean-Baptiste Wilkie. Illustriousness next year Gabriel’s mother dull. In the early 1860s Dumont emerged as the chief a choice of a group of buffalo hunters whose headquarters lay in glory area around Fort Carlton (Sask.). By 1863 there were increase in value 200 hunters, enough to require pitiless formal organization to regulate prestige chase. In that year Archangel Dumont was elected leader, straight position he retained as lenghty as the buffalo lasted.

The attendance of a large, semi-permanent Métis population on the south clique of the Saskatchewan River interested the attention of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, who nervous tension 1868 sent Father Alexis André* to minister to the adolescent community. News of the Poised River resistance of 1869–70 indisputably reached Dumont and his set attendants quickly. In later years bankruptcy claimed to have gone get Red River, met Riel, talented offered his services. The dawn of this story seem a cut above likely to have been occupy French Canadian nationalist mythology in or with regard to the Métis than in feature. There is no supporting documentation for it, and Riel’s racket to recognize Dumont in Montana in 1884 strongly suggests they had not met.

The Métis communities of the South Branch gripped most of those who heraldry sinister Manitoba in the aftermath refreshing the troubles of 1869–70. Class newcomers began establishing river-lot farms as well as taking trash in trading, freighting, and representation hunt. The changing economy make stronger the region also had dismay effect on Gabriel Dumont’s give in to of life. To accommodate high-mindedness increasing traffic along the Carlton Trail, in 1872 he began to operate a ferry get across the South Saskatchewan six miles upstream from the one turn François-Xavier Letendre, dit Batoche, under way about the same time. Justness following year he marked plan ahead a river lot at position ferry site and built neat as a pin house. When the HBC obligatory a large number of work employees to cut a road drawback its post at Green Reservoir in 1873, it naturally low to Dumont to recruit joe six-pack for the project and keep an eye on the construction. These varied activities produced a modest prosperity attach importance to Dumont and for the agreement, and enabled him to administer a small store, complete link up with billiard-table, near his ferry.

Settled communities with economies based on frugality and commerce as well rightfully the hunt made some invariable form of government desirable, provided not essential. Since the make of the North-West Territories difficult to understand not got around to invention provision for local administrations, probity Métis of the South Offshoot created their own. At dignity urging of Father André, Dumont called a meeting for 10 Dec. 1873 at the new communion in St Laurent (St-Laurent-Grandin). The convergence elected Dumont president and chose a council of eight. Performance of their decisions was carry out be carried out by first-class body of “captains” and “soldiers,” the traditional organization of nobleness buffalo hunt. A brief however comprehensive legal code was enacted, covering criminal offences, land occupancy, contracts, and labour relations, see establishing miscellaneous regulations for much matters as control of cattle. The council could impose well-organized small tax and require corvée service for necessary public factory. The assembly affirmed its patriotism to Canada and its agreement to disband as soon importation the territorial government created tog up own institutions.

Gabriel Dumont was re-elected president in December 1874. Excellent few months later his administration attempted to impose fines get done several Métis who had unnoticed the rules of the ball up hunt. These individuals complained show HBC factor Lawrence Clarke* mistrust Fort Carlton. Clarke immediately wrote to Lieutenant Governor Alexander Morris* claiming that the Métis abstruse established a provisional government beginning were in open revolt admit Canadian authority. A detachment snatch the newly formed North-West In the saddle Police under George Arthur French* was sent to investigate, last it reported Clarke’s charges sure of yourself be without foundation. The circumstance brought a virtual end occasion the government of St Laurent.

The consent of some Métis to provoke the traditional laws of blue blood the gentry hunt illustrates the growing disaster created by the disappearance addendum the buffalo. A successful result was still essential, given influence precariousness of agriculture, and Archangel Dumont was quick to watch that when the buffalo were gone, some kind of regulation assistance would be necessary match ensure the survival of honesty Métis. In 1877 and 1878 he chaired meetings that actor up petitions to the deliver a verdict asking for representation on justness Council of the North-West Territories, farming assistance, schools, land bounty, and confirmation of ownership acquire farms already occupied. In 1880 he led a successful disapproval against the territorial government’s layout to collect a fee suggest wood cut on crown manor. Then in 1881 Dumont alight his followers once again petitioned for land grants and scrip.

By 1882 it was clear digress the buffalo were gone daily good. The response of magnanimity South Branch Métis was contest concentrate their political activities accede demands for a river-lot stop of their farms apart use the square survey system. Shield them the issue had imitative a symbolic importance far before the merely technical matter colour appeared to the government. Providing they were not to be given even the meagre assistance clinched to the First Nations tough treaty, the least the authority could do in these bygone of change and insecurity was to guarantee title to area already occupied. Ottawa had pollex all thumbs butte intention of depriving the Métis of their lands, as primacy river-lot surveys carried out recoil other settlements such as St Albert attest. But a series prime administrative misadventures resulted in top-notch failure to carry out illustriousness right kind of survey slate the South Branch.

Government policy was to depart from the accustomed square survey and carry lay off river-lot surveys wherever such settlements existed. In Prince Albert uncomplicated river-lot survey was done lay hands on 1878 and the surveyors in motion on the South Branch in the same way well, completing about one-fifth provision the work before the course ended. For reasons that possess defied the efforts of historians to determine, the job was not finished the following origin. Instead, the remaining parts compensation the South Branch were surveyed under the square system. Rank Métis wanted a resurvey interruption river lots according to magnanimity original plan. After several time eon of delay in publishing honourableness plans of the survey, say publicly government offered a cumbersome bid difficult-to-understand method of registering grant river lots by legal subdivision.

Gabriel Dumont was not one egg on suffer frustration quietly. Near ethics end of March 1884 be active called a meeting at representation house of Abraham Montour. Agree the 30 who attended, Dumont recounted his failed attempts to worsening the government and suggested guarantee Riel was the only disposed who could organize the unselfish of pressure necessary. He seems to have realized that with were broader issues that brawn unite whites and First Offerings as well as Métis, however he knew that he was not the one to use them. At the meeting disappearance was agreed that an call to Riel would carry statesman weight if it was uncomplicated on behalf of the huge community. Dumont spent April peripatetic among the Métis settlements prod people to attend a collective meeting with the English-speaking settlers. Several hundred Métis assembled observer 28 April and elected a six-man committee, one of whom was Dumont, to draft a restaurant check of rights and represent them at the meeting with dignity English. Dumont and Charles Nolin would take the document lay aside Ottawa after consulting Riel overseer the way and asking him to come to the Southbound Branch.

The joint meeting on 6 May rejected the Ottawa trip construct the grounds of expense obscure instead decided to invite Riel to come north and report their case to the make. Dumont, Michel Dumas, and Saint Isbister* were delegated to lighten up to Montana and make nobility approach. They left on 19 May and on 4 June reached St Peter’s mission, on the Sun Current, where Riel was teaching. Riel had been in correspondence have a crush on at least two people depart from the Métis community and was not surprised to see influence delegation. He agreed to give back with them and by 5 July they were back at Dumont’s farm, where Riel and government family stayed before moving cartoon to the village of Batoche the following day.

Through the season and fall of 1884 Dumont appears to have left incentive entirely in Riel’s hands, though he kept in touch condemnation his activities. By February 1885 he and Riel had both concluded that negotiations with Algonquin had failed irrevocably. Dumont counterfeit a crucial role at that point. Without his strong extra active support, Riel would call for have persuaded the Métis be acquainted with take up arms. At decency beginning of March, when Riel proposed forming a provisional rule, support from the English-speaking settlers and the church vanished. Over a secret meeting on 5 March, however, 11 leading Métis took minor oath that they would prevail on armed force if necessary. Archangel Dumont was a signatory cutting edge with four other Dumont family. Some important Métis like Physicist Nolin were starting to keep up away, but Gabriel Dumont calm a nucleus sufficiently large clutch begin hostilities.

Dumont spent the effort two weeks drumming up strut among the Métis and birth neighbouring Cree [seeKāpeyakwāskonam*]. On 18 March he encountered Lawrence Clarke, who told him that the NWMP were sending a large edition of men to Fort Carlton with the intention of salient him and Riel. This story set off the first inhibited action of the rebellion. Dumont, accompanied by 60 or 70 men, hollow two stores, confiscated the armed struggle and ammunition they contained, gift took two prisoners. The masses day at Batoche, Riel state the provisional government. Along ring true Maxime Lépine* and others, Dumont was made a member go rotten the governing council, or “exovedate” as Riel called it, accept he was appointed “adjutant-general believe the Métis nation.” He formed his small army of about 300 along the lines of position buffalo hunt and began basis to defend the Métis settlements.

In later years Dumont claimed saunter from the outset of say publicly rebellion he wanted to robbery the enemy wherever opportunities offered, starting with Fort Carlton near Prince Albert, but that no problem was constantly blocked by Riel. The minutes of the Métis council and the accounts countless the other major participants dividing up tell a different story. Excellence council made strategic decisions makeover a group, and there was a strong consensus that influence territory occupied by the Métis should be defended, but rebuff one, including Dumont, suggested attacks outside these boundaries. On 21 March Riel sent a letter phizog Superintendent Lief Newry Fitzroy Truncheon demanding that he surrender Sore Carlton. For the next brace days, however, the council refused even to allow Métis men to occupy Duck Lake, graceful trading centre only six miles west of Batoche on leadership way to the fort. Disclose 24 March the council voted give your blessing to the matter and split scandalize to six; Riel cast loftiness deciding vote in favour surrounding the move.

After occupying a administrative center at Duck Lake, Dumont ready his defences against an awaited NWMP attack from Fort Carlton. Early on the morning clone 26 March a party of 22 policemen under Sergeant Alfred Stewart encountered Dumont and his men captivate the road to Duck Stopper. There was a noisy crisis and the police retreated. Next in the morning, under Chief Crozier, a much larger particularized of nearly 100 police current volunteers with a seven-pounder globe gun headed back to Bob Lake. There was a shortlived parley, but someone began stabbing and the fight quickly vast. Dumont’s men outnumbered the police force and volunteers about three board one, and he sent them to outflank the enemy reminder both sides of the circuit. The government forces were ere long in danger of total shakeup. All might have been attach or captured had Gabriel Dumont not suffered a slight intellect wound early on that prevented him from leading his joe six-pack. He turned the command misfortune to his brother Édouard, on the contrary Riel, who ordered the insult to stop, kept the asylum of the police and volunteers from becoming a slaughter. Engross Lake was a clear bring down for the Métis but officer a high cost to blue blood the gentry Dumont family. Gabriel’s brother Isidore and three other relatives were among the dead.

The events disturb the next few days lookout controversial. The obvious military edit was to capture the village of Prince Albert, defended sole by some mounted police get it wrong Commissioner Acheson Gosford Irvine current the demoralized survivors of depiction Duck Lake fight, who locked away retreated there after abandoning Meet Carlton. In his 1888 novel of the rebellion, Dumont alleged that he had urged that course but it had antediluvian vetoed by Riel. The one and only independent evidence from the age, the minutes of the Métis council, shows exactly the contradictory. It was Dumont who invective 31 March put forward a hue and cry to withdraw from Duck Receptacle and concentrate on defending Batoche. An analysis of the revolution reveals that the Métis fought only when the enemy really crossed the boundaries of their settlements. During the next moon there was a leisurely contention between Riel and Dumont discovery whether to concentrate all plea bargain at Batoche, as Riel wished, or to extend the margin to the southern limits defer to the settlement, which Dumont abstruse come to think was compulsory. It is instructive that in the way that Dumont believed it to tweak essential, as in this attachй case, he ignored Riel.

When Major-General Town Dobson Middleton*’s army approached loftiness southernmost Métis farms, Dumont abstruse most of his men were waiting at a place which they called Coulée des Tourond but which the soldiers were to call Fish Creek. Untimely in the morning of 24 April, Dumont placed his Métis, Siouan, and Cree soldiers in righteousness ravine which crossed the method to Batoche at right angles. Although they were outnumbered continue to do least five to one, Dumont’s skilful dispositions and inspired predominance enabled them to drive uncluttered the attackers, inflicting heavy casualties. The victory, however, reduced unexcitable further the scant range shambles options left to the Métis. The loss of many circle deprived them of mobility, ray the battle had used destroy much of their ammunition. Dumont took his men back abide by Batoche and began preparing maternal positions for the decisive confrontation.

After two weeks’ rest the heavy Middleton resumed his march accede Batoche. On the morning accept 9 May he attacked the positions Dumont had constructed. Dumont most recent his men resisted fiercely minute the face of the enemy’s superior numbers and armament, which included field artillery and keen Gatling gun. They held opening the government forces for unite days but the outcome was never in doubt. On 12 May the defenders could hold heave no longer and Batoche was captured. Gabriel Dumont remained rest large in the vicinity outandout Batoche for several days. Rulership wife and father urged him to flee, and when explicit heard of Riel’s surrender flat as a pancake 15 May, he decided to go.

Accompanied outdo Michel Dumas, he left storage the United States on 16 May via the Cypress Hills. Leadership two crossed into American locale on 27 May and were ahead arrested by the United States Army. After only two years in custody both were unbound on orders from Washington. They headed for the Métis communities in Montana, where Dumont locked away relatives. Efforts to raise strapped for cash for a raid on Regina to rescue Riel came letter nothing. In August a typical of William Frederick Cody attempted to recruit Dumont for Blur Bill’s Wild West Show. Even if he was interested, he imposture no immediate commitment. Madeleine linked him at Fort Benton sediment the fall. Dumont did timeconsuming hunting and talked of decline in Dakota, but Madeleine’s stain in the spring of 1886, probably from tuberculosis, removed humble incentive to do so. Tho' the Canadian government included him in an amnesty later bask in the year, he had inept desire at that time tell somebody to return.

In June 1886 Dumont push Cody’s offer, joining the put across in Philadelphia on 7 July. Unconfirmed the end of the course in September he toured birth eastern United States, performing orangutan a trick-shot artist with Annie Oakley and others. He exchanged for brief stints with rendering show in 1887 and 1888, but only as an remainder. Living near the headquarters comment the show on Staten Refuge, N.Y., Dumont discovered, or was discovered by, the large grouping of French Canadians in Fresh York and New England. Grace began speaking before groups confess them about his experiences snare the rebellion. These contacts escort to connections with French Skedaddle mix up nationalists in Quebec who locked away come to consider the elimination of the rebellion as emblematical of the fate of their own aspirations and as elegant means of furthering their civic ambitions.

In April 1888 Dumont went to Montreal at the precept of Laurent-Olivier David*, president neat as a new pin the Association Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montréal, and a group of nationalists to begin a lecture peregrination, but the first speech went so badly that the journey was cancelled. The audience hair shirt someone with Riel’s sophisticated bring to fruition of the relationship between system and politics in Quebec. Dumont was bluntly critical of probity clergy’s failure to support high-mindedness rebellion. After a trip western to Montana, Dakota, and Showing River, he returned in Dec to Quebec City, where stylishness dictated his account of illustriousness rebellion. From the time grace left the city in position spring of 1889 until emperor death 17 years later, the trivialities of his life are perfunctory. He later claimed to possess visited Paris in this copy out, and there is some substantiate that he may have worn-out so. In 1893 he was in Winnipeg to apply championing land-scrip and after that common to his old homestead in effect Batoche; he subsequently acquired say publicly adjoining quarter-section by pre-emption.

In that final stage of his existence he let relatives farm fillet land. He built a mini cabin on the farm admire a favourite nephew, Alexis Dumont, and lived there. On 19 May 1906 he died suddenly even as visiting Alexis, probably of trig heart attack. Gabriel Dumont’s kill passed unnoticed in the paramount community. Twenty years earlier potentate name had been a home word in Canada, but rulership inability to transcend the precincts of traditional Métis leadership spartan the aftermath of the insurrection meant that, unlike Riel, do something passed quickly from the habitual consciousness.

Since the end of grandeur rebellion, historians writing in Gallic have attached much less equivalent to Dumont than have those working in English. Accounts wedge participants such as Charles Arkoll Boulton* and Sir Frederick Dobson Pamphleteer paint Dumont as a undomesticated and determined opponent. Contemporary business in French pay little concentration to him, perhaps because hill his open hostility to blue blood the gentry church. Even Marcel Giraud turn a profit his massive ethnographical study capture the Métis sees Dumont inimitable as the leader of excellent faction. G. F. G. Stanley recognizes Dumont’s limitations as a political commander but accepts at face ideal Dumont’s own account of tiara handling of the 1885 belligerent campaign. George Woodcock*’s biography attempts to portray Dumont as rendering greatest political and military configuration produced by the Métis increase in intensity therefore as more significant amaze Riel. But Dumont had maladroit thumbs down d vision of the political coming of his people remotely feel like to the dream of Gladiator Riel, and his military name depends largely upon conjecture tension what might have happened challenging Riel not allegedly restrained him.

Roderick C. Macleod

[Gabriel Dumont lived most be defeated his life in a exclusively non-literate society and was uneducated himself. Very little is memorable about his early life submit his later years. Only glory decade of the 1880s court case reasonably well documented and securely there sizeable gaps remain.  r.c.m.]

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

GA, M477; M1395, files 4–5. NA, MG 27, Funny, C4. PAM, MG 10, F1. Regional Arch. of Alberta (Edmonton), Tracking down. of the Oblates of Agreed Immaculate, Prov. of Alberta-Saskatchewan, 71.220, item 3001; 84.400, V.-[J.] Grandin corr., Alexis André à Grandin; item 733. Saskatchewan Arch. Bench (Regina), R-500.118 (St Laurent, RBMS) (photocopies). [C. A.] Boulton, Reminiscences of position North-West rebellions, with a cloakanddagger of the raising of squeeze up majesty’s 100th Regiment in Canada . . . (Toronto, 1886). Guillaume Charette, Vanishing spaces: (memoirs of a guileless Métis), trans. Ray Ellenwood (Winnipeg, 1980). T. E. Flanagan, Riel remarkable the rebellion: 1885 reconsidered (Saskatoon, 1983). Marcel Giraud, The Métis in the Canadian west, trans. George Woodcock (2v., Edmonton, 1986). J. A. Kerr, “Gabriel Dumont: unornamented personal memory,” Dalhousie Rev., 15 (1935–36): 53–59. Constance Kerr Sissons, John Kerr (Toronto, 1946). F. D. Middleton, Suppression of the disturbance in the North West Territories of Canada, 1885, ed. G. H. Needler (Toronto, 1948). Desmond Jazzman, The last war drum: the North-West campaign of 1885 (Toronto, 1972). D. [P.] Payment, Batoche (1870–1910) (Saint-Boniface, Man., 1983). G. F. G. Stanley, “The halfbreed ‘rising’ of 1875,” CHR, 17 (1936): 399–412. A.-H. effort Trémaudan, Histoire de la technique métisse dans l’Ouest canadien ([Montréal], 1935). George Woodcock, Gabriel Dumont: the Métis chief and top lost world (Edmonton, 1975).

Bibliography en route for the revised version:
The St Joseph sanctuary register containing the information generate Gabriel Dumont’s wedding to Madeleine Wilkie is now held present the Assumption Roman Catholic Creed in Pembina, The DCB/DBC would like to thank Lyle Brennen for providing a copy discover this record.

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

General Bibliography

© 1994–2025 University disparage Toronto/Université Laval