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jostle them for dominance. And so it isn’t a surprise that a summer of rather polite demands promises to turn into a winter of outright agitation and defiance of those who don’t even have the politeness to respond to repeated letter-writing. All the Métis know that when the railway finally crosses this country, a flood of new settlers will follow. If the government won’t accept Métis land claims now, they certainly won’t when the new arrivals come to stake their claims.
    And the land that Batoche and Saint-Laurent lie upon is well worth fighting for. The South Saskatchewan River winds through it, fertilizing already good soil and thick grasses that undulate as far as the eye can see. By the rivers the trees are thick, Manitoba maple and white birch, ash and poplar. In winter the travelling and the hunting are good near the river, and in summer, fishing and some relaxation are mandatory. The Métis have carved a happy existence here, one that spokes out from mass on Sunday and has developed to include farming the land in a serious way now that the buffalo are all but gone. Oh, the buffalo. If not for its slaughter at the hands of the Hudson’s Bay Company and railroad developers to feed employees and its absolute destruction down south by the American government in order to bring the Plains Indians to their knees, the Métis could still live the life they were born for, wintering in small settlements and dreaming of the hunt that leads them through the summer prairies.
    Gabriel remains the captain of the buffalo hunt, and this role, even though it has been so diminished the last years, commands great respect for a reason. Gabriel is the one who calls the men together in the weeks before the hunt to plot and strategize and try to divine where the buffalo will travel. It’s Gabriel who decides the day that the dozens upon dozens of Red River carts creak out onto the plains in a long dusty line, a line that was miles long not so long ago, and it is Gabriel who appoints the scouts who will look for tracks. When the herds are located, it’s he who holds council the night before and appoints each man his duty. And what makes Gabriel a great hunt leader is that it is he who rides so skillfully into the stampeding herd and kills the buffalo that he will then give to the sick and the old, the Métis who can’t fend for themselves. Gabriel is, in essence, both the military and the political leader of his people. And no one doubts that he is the master of the prairies.
    Now though, in 1884, the mixed-bloods find their lot that of small farmers in tight-knit communities, speaking the Michif language, a mixture of French and Cree. The buffalo are so recently departed that the people can still smell their musky hides, the heady scent of blood and entrails from the gutting, the smoky taste of tenderloin cooked over an open fire. But the Métis have accepted that farming the land has now become their mainstay. As much as this realization hurts, it will never stop them from dreaming of the return of the buffalo one day.
    The Métis’ trials and small victories at Red River, followed by even more government deceit after Riel’s banishment, still sting. The Manitoba Act of 1870 that Riel helped create promised the Métis 1,400,000 acres of land, land they’d settled and lived upon for generations. The Métis assumed that they’d choose their lots, most of which nestled along the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. Finally, the people could live in strong communities together with no fear of that land being taken away by outsiders. But John A. hemmed and hawed and eventually decided upon a lottery distribution system, so instead of the choice river lots, those Métis who were lucky enough to win the lottery found that their parcels weren’t linked to the rivers at all.
    And as Manitoba settled into the fold of Canada, more and more new immigrants came, people from Ontario mixed with Europeans whose own countries no longer wanted them