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Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 by Sir John George Bourinot
page 270 of 398 (67%)
forced to fly into the swampy fastnesses of the prairie wilderness, but
was eventually captured near Fort Carleton by a force of Mounted Police.

This second rebellion of the half-breeds lasted about three months, and
cost the country upwards of five million dollars. Including the persons
murdered at Frog Lake, the loyal population of Canada lost thirty-six
valuable lives, among whom was Lieutenant-Colonel Williams, a gallant
officer, and a member of the house of commons, who succumbed to a
serious illness brought on by his exposure on the prairie. The
casualties among the half-breeds were at least as large, if not greater.
Five Indian chiefs suffered the extreme penalty of the law, while
Poundmaker, Big Bear, and a number of others were imprisoned in the
territories for life or for a term of years, according to the gravity of
their complicity in the rebellion. Any hopes that Riel might have placed
in the active sympathy of the French Canadian people of Quebec were soon
dispelled. He was tried at Regina in July and sentenced to death,
although the able counsel allotted to him by the government exhausted
every available argument in his defence, even to the extent of setting
up a plea of insanity, which the prisoner himself deeply resented. The
most strenuous efforts were made by the French Canadians to force the
government to reprieve him, but Sir John Macdonald was satisfied that
the loyal sentiment of the great majority of the people of Canada
demanded imperatively that the law should be vindicated. The French
Canadian representatives in the cabinet, Langevin, Chapleau, and Caron,
resisted courageously the storm of obloquy which their determination to
support the prime minister raised against them; and Riel was duly
executed on the 16th November. For some time after his death attempts
were made to keep up the excitement which had so long existed in the
province of Quebec on the question. The Dominion government was
certainly weakened for a time in Quebec by its action in this matter,
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