Old Joseph Ouellette – who had ridden with the legendary buffalo hunter Cuthbert Grant at the Battle of Seven Oaks – began a song about the hunts, acting out the parts with tossing horns and pawing hoofs. He finished the last verse with arms raised and the crowd clapping him on.
“Now old men and wives come out with the carts
There's meat against hunger and fur against cold
Gather full store for the pemmican bags
Garner the booty of warriors bold!”
As with the passage quoted above, author Maia Caron has preserved a slice of history in Song of Batoche – bringing to life legendary characters, adding the quotidian detail that breathes humanity into stodgy documentary – and not only has she fleshed out a significant event that most of us Canadians remember studying in school, but as per her stated purpose, Caron has imagined the women's stories to add to those of the men that history books tend to solely recount. I admire the intention and the effort that this book represents – I might even call it an essential addition to the canon of Canadian historical fiction – but purely as a reading experience, it's a mixed bag.
In my memory, I better recall Louis Riel as the young rebel hero of the Red River Uprising than the deluded Messiah who shows up in Batoche fifteen years later, at the request of the local Métis, to lead a second rebellion:
Riel was a conundrum. One moment she had dismissed him as a religious fanatic and in the next he had moved her with his compassion and demand for justice. She wanted her lands as much as anyone. And none other than Gabriel Dumont was on his side. But how could she follow a man who believed the Métis were the children of Israel? It was an impossible dream. Creating a sovereign nation ruled by Métis and Indians with his church at its head. Macdonald would no sooner agree to a separate state than the Métis would leave their beloved Catholic Church.I don't know this Riel; had never heard that he spent two years in an asylum during his exile. When he arrives in Batoche (what he refers to as his “City of God”), he believes himself the new “David”, there to lead his “Israelites” in the “Promised Land”. Riel delivers on his promise to draft a compelling petition to the government of Canada – insisting that Parliament, led by John A. Macdonald, recognise and confirm treaty rights in (what was then known as) the Northwest Territories – and while Riel is able to assemble a large coalition of Native peoples to sign his petition, he never reveals to them his true plan: to create a sovereign nation on the Prairies, run by his own Métis people, and to establish a new church with himself as its leader. After proving himself to be an indecisive and double-dealing strategist – it is Riel's own decisions that draw an armed response from the government – when the Battle of Batoche brings war to the dooryards of his most devoted followers, Riel is seen swooning from fasting, hoisting the large crucifix (which he liberated from the local church) through the skirmishes, believing that his own prayers will break the cannons of his enemies and deliver victory to his side.
But while Riel is an important historical figure, he's not really the main character in Song of Batoche. The true story revolves around Gabriel Dumont – the “best man with a horse and with a gun”, legendary Métis captain of the long gone buffalo hunts, and Riel's war chief – and a character that Caron invented, Josette Lavoie: a young Métis wife and mother, a woman of “impossible” and “tragic” beauty, whom Riel christens his own Mary Magdelene, and whom Dumont (who lives on the neighbouring farm) doesn't really notice until the events of this book, at which time he finds her both intelligent and bewitching:
He could see that she was crying and he reached to her, his hand careful, detached, brushing the coarse wool of the shawl over her thin shoulder. He had not bargained for the feel of her, and his heart beat wildly in his chest. Lifting his hand, he let it drop, fingers hesitating at the fringes of her shawl. It was quiet among the trees, only the sound of digging out on the meadow, the men talking among themselves. He should have pulled his hand away, but let it slip beneath the fringe, a quiver at the tips of his fingers as they traced the line of her back, followed the curve of her waist. The top of her head was only inches away. She had become very still, almost not breathing, a slight resistance then turning into him, the smell of her, like woodsmoke and the river when the ice broke up in spring. She looked up at him, a strand of her black hair caught in a sudden lift of wind. The moon had come out and rained light through the bare branches, onto those eyes, dark and unfathomable. He touched her cheek, still wet with tears.In her Acknowledgments, Caron cites the sources she found through the Gabriel Dumont Institute, so I am happy to accept that Dumont's story is represented more or less accurately; his is a remarkable tale that deserves to be more widely known. Also in the Acknowledgments, Caron states that Josette and her family are products of her imagination – included to give the women's perspective and to flesh out some of the writings from Riel's diaries – and while this is certainly a novelist's prerogative, it was the character of Josette that I found most frustrating. The “impossible beauty” – understandably sparking jealousy from both Riel's and Dumont's wives – who reads Spinoza and quotes the classics to confound the local priest (at a time when the Catholic Church controlled every aspect of the devout Métis peoples' lives and Riel's illiterate wife is forced to explain that “women don't read”); the granddaughter (but not by blood, for whatever reason) of the chief Big Bear and who is sent to him as Riel's emissary; a woman who guards the healing knowledge of her people as shown to her by her mother and grandmother, but who resents not being made a voting member of Riel's council and provisional government – everything from Josette's romantic urges to her domestic melodramas, her perfect beauty and intellect and clear thinking, make her not the “everywoman” whose story demands to be included in the historical narrative, but a “superwoman” that the reader doesn't quite believe in. And that's what I found frustrating and why this is a mixed bag: Caron does a wonderful job of reintroducing us to the Riel we might not know; she presents Gabriel Dumont as the true hero of Batoche (and the final battle is as well written as any such scene); but Josette's story really didn't work for me. And yet, I do appreciate what Song of Batoche adds to the story of the Métis people and think people ought to read it.
