Riel’s Petition to The President of The United States 1870

Abstract

One of the difficulties experienced by the student of the Metis and Indian problem in western Canada is the lack of materials relating to and expressing the native point of view. The document here presented should, therefore, be of some value to those interested in the events which accompanied the transfer of the north-west to the Dominion of Canada in 1869–70. Of the three contemporary accounts of the Manitoba insurrection, attributed to Louis Riel, the Memorial and Petition of the People of Rupert’s Land and the North-west Territory, British America, to his excellency, U.S. Grant, President of the United States, is the earliest in matter of date. It is scarcely a dispassionate statement of the Metis case. The language used is strong and the central theme of the document is the “perfidious treachery” of the Canadian government. The fact of strong feeling and bias does not, however, destroy the historical value of the Memorial and Petition, for it does give the reader some idea of the grounds upon which Riel and his associates sought to justify their opposition to the dominion.