Gabriel Dumont - George Woodcock (1975)

A book with some points of interest, but for a view of the Métis rebellion the biographies of Louis Riel give a better overview.  If you have already read a Riel biography, most of the historical information in the Dumont book is very much a repeat.  In the early part of the book there is a bit of a picture of the life of Dumont and the Métis before the railroad, but it is a limited picture.  I'm not sure if it is because of a lack of historical sources (this was an illiterate culture) or simply it is not Woodcock's focus.  It would be interesting to have more of a picture or a flavour of that life.
Gabriel was obviously a forceful and very intelligent man - naturally so - both in politics and in his world of hunting and living in the land.  It would also be interesting to see more of this side of him, but again he and most of his circle were illiterate, so I suppose there are  no sources.

Yet again, the church and organized religion look bad in this story, siding with the authorities in a situation where the Métis were so obviously being unjustly treated.  The same is true of politics and politicians, both during the rebellion and when Gabriel was travelling later in the States and in Quebec - no interest in the man, his people and his cause beyond the short term political usefulness he might have to them.
The end of the book is, for me, the most compelling part.  I would love to know what Dumont thought of his time with Buffalo Bill, his time in New York and the other big cities of the east coast - such a different world and not only physically, but socially and emotionally as well.  Dumont also mentions the Sioux that worked with Buffalo Bill - I can picture them there is New York with Dumont, who they would have known or at least heard of, talking of the vanished world they knew together, and maybe laughing incredulously and the world of New York and theatre.  There is also a beautiful image of his last years living in a small cabin on his nephew's farm, spending his days fishing, hunting, wandering in the prairies and hills, visiting friends and companions from his past.  He still owned his land, but he made no attempt to live the life of farming.  A stranger in this new world, it is as if he rejected it utterly and kept alive the last elements of the life, now lost, that he had loved so much.  "The years passed, and now they were uneventful, for Gabriel was no longer a man to whom his fellows called for leadership, though sometimes they asked his advice, nor did he wish to lead them.  He withdrew into the rhythms of the hunting years, doing a little trading, catching his own meat and fish, and always pleased when he had a few skins to sell at one of the stores in Batoche or Duck Lake... He thought of that past without guilt and without rancour, glorying in his own deeds as Homer's heroes must have done, yet sad always for that vanished primitive world to which he had been so superbly adapted. (p. 250 -251)
As an aside, I wonder if that is not the fate of all older people in our modern world.  Things change so much, the world you loved and knew so well disappears, leaving you marooned with your memories and your past...  Ties in with immigrants too, and with developing countries where people crowd into the big cities, leaving their life and culture behind for a completely unfamiliar universe.