Lawless Lawyers: Indigeneity, Civility, and Violence

Abstract

On 8 June 1826, young members of the Family Compact—allegedly disguised as “Indians”—raided William Lyon Mackenzie’s York office, smashing his printing press and throwing his types into Lake Ontario, to protest defamatory editorials. This essay investigates how the cultural memory of “Indian” disguise emerged by asking what this memory reveals about the performative and political dynamics of this protest. At first glance, the performance conventions and disciplinary function of the Types Riot allow it to be compared to folk protest traditions such as “playing Indian” and charivari. However, the Types Riot differed from these popular performances because the participants were members of the provincial elite, not protestors outside of the structures of power. The rioters’ choice of how to perform their “civilized” authority—through an act of lawless law legitimated through citations of “Indigenous” authority—demonstrates inherent contradictions in how power was enacted in Upper Canada. Furthermore, by engaging in a performance that resembled charivari, the rioters called their own civility—attained through education, wealth, and political connections—into question by behaving like peasants. The Types Riot demonstrates that the Family Compact’s claim to authority based on its members’ civility—their superior values, education, and social privilege—was backed by the threat of uncivil violence. The riot revealed a contradiction that the Upper Canadian elite would, no doubt, have preferred remained private: that in the settler-colony, gentlemanly power relied upon the potential for “savage” retribution, cited through the rioters’ “Indian” disguises.