Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont: A Short Play
By Lenny Everson
rev 1
Copyright Lenny Everson 2011
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Cover design by Lenny Everson
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Performance of the Play:
There is no charge for the performance of this play, but you must get the permission of the author (email lennypoet@hotmail.ca.
This is a play about two men, Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont. Traditionally, Louis Riel is the taller of the two, and dressed in a suit of the late 19th century style. Gabriel (Gabe) is dressed in buckskins.
Approximate playing time 15 to 20 minutes.
On the stage are:
a bag with a large clock, a Métis flag, and a fur cap
a buffalo skull
an antique rifle
a surveyor’s tripod and chain
A sign that says, "GET LOUIS RIEL!" to be held by an audience member
A sign that says, "HANG THE BASTARD!" to be held by an audience member
The play is based on the poems in Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont are Dead.
Background to the Play
Supplying the fur trade with food and buffalo hides provided the Métis (mixed Aboriginal and White) with an income on the lands they settled in the Canadian prairies.
Although they had settled the lands there, they had no official title to the lands and they worried that the Canadian government would give the lands to new settlers. In 1868 Louis Riel led a movement that resulted in a provisional government in Winnipeg, with the Métis flag flying over For Garry.
The rebellion eventually led to the Manitoba act, and that to Manitoba becoming a province. But by 1870 the Canadian government again controlled the area, and Riel was driven into exile in the States.
The question of land titles to the Métis farms was still not settled, however, and when the Métis found surveyors in their fields, they started another rebellion. Gabriel Dumont was their first choice. Dumont’s family had led the great buffalo hunts. But Dumont refused: he felt couldn’t deal with Prime Minister John A. MacDonald because he spoke no English.
So the Métis got Riel back from Montana and in 1885 they were again fighting. But Riel had changed in those years, becoming tormented by his religious beliefs and once even founding his own religion.
Dumont felt he could defeat the Mounties that the Canadian government sent, but Riel wanted less bloodshed and more negotiation, and held back. Neither John A. nor the Mounties were interested, and the Métis were finally defeated.
Riel was caught and hanged. Dumont escaped to the States to live his life in exile.
The play takes place in current time, as the ghosts of the two meet again to tell us of their lives.
Start
The stage is dark. A low spotlight illuminates two men near the back of the stage, sitting on chairs by a campfire. Music heard. A child's voice sings, to the tune of “Wayfaring Stranger”:
We are the sound of distant hoofbeats
On the first cold autumn night;
Half-seen shadow of a rider
On Regina’s cold back streets
How much farther, father Louis?
How much longer, cousin Gabe?
The way is further than I can tell you:
The trail is longer than I dare say.
We are the coyotes at the dawning
We are the wind in a prairie slough.
Every Métis who walks past strangers
Sheds a tear for me and you
How much farther, father Louis?
How much longer, cousin Gabe?
The way is further than I can tell you:
The trail is longer than I dare say.
Gabe gets up, walks to stage front, facing the audience. The spotlight stays on Riel.
Gabe: Over here.
A secondary spotlight, less bright, illuminates Gabe. Throughout the play, the light on Gabe will be noticeably less than that on Louis.
Gabe: Shadows and legends. [pause].
I am Gabriel Dumont, dead guy. Let me tell you
about the day I died.
On my last day I went
Walking the coulees
Gun under my arm.
Touching the face of
Silence
Where the Sioux had hidden.
It’s always silent in the coulees
Now.
Knees stiffening, I followed jackrabbit trails
Till I came out on a high bluff.
The wind picked up
Threshing at my old jacket.
Far below, the river had stopped moving
Frozen curl and swirl and riffle. [pauses, puzzled]
I thought it strange, until I saw
The shadow of flames on a distant hill.
I took the bullet from my rifle
Pushed it into the dry soil
And went home to meet
Whatever God there was.
I died at the old homestead near Batoche, in the heart of a landscape empty of buffalo, full of white farmers.
We have fifteen minutes in this play. Let’s begin. [He takes the clock out of the bag, hangs it on a nail, and plugs it into the wall. It has no hour hand. He sets the minute hand at 12.]
Now let me introduce my crazy friend, Louis Riel.
Louis gets up, comes to front of stage.
Gabe: Good Evening, Louis. I was just talking about my last hours of life. What do you remember of the time just before you died?
Louis ponders thoughtfully for a moment. Then he puts his hands together behind his back, his feet together, tilts his head, sticks out his tongue, imitating a hanged man.
Gabe: I had a happier death, I think! So why didn’t your friend God rescue you? [To audience] He was always talking to God. I think he was expecting a miracle or something.
Louis: My theory is this.
That God had it all planned
To tumble the walls of the jail
To cut the rope
But, due to a bureaucratic mix-up
A Toronto lawyer had got into heaven
And not all the golden crew there could
Move an inch until he’d
Added a few clauses
And by the time the angels
Figured out what he meant
It was too late
By a couple of years
And a neck.
I guess you’re going to do the historical background now, so I’ll just go to sleep with the rest of the audience. [to audience] Silly fart thinks he can make a play out of Canadian history. [gets a chair
and settles into it]
Gabe : Slowly, as if teaching
Last part of the 1800’s. Out on the Canadian prairies, we were kings and queens, we Métis. Half-breeds, part Aboriginal, part White. Hunting buffalo and trading.
But it had to end, of course. Ran out of buffalo, so we settled down in farms along the rivers.
In the background, Louis sneaks over, advances the clock a few minutes.
Then the surveyors showed up. Driving survey stakes across the prairie, across our farms. We were kings of the prairies, but we had no deeds to our lands,
Hey, Louis - show them how you handled the surveyors.
Gabe puts on the fur hat, lays out the chain, and crouches behind the tripod.
Louis : Stepping onto the chain, staring at the surveyor.
The sun was the bronze and burning disk of God
Out on the pasture seven dust
devils settled
Some minor argument.
Far away, on the river, a canoe trailed a line for pike.
Aside from the wind, nothing moved.
In the oven afternoon, silence
It was dry; there was a fear of prairie fires.
Their horses were like statues in the heat.
He stood there motionless, six men behind him
Like a painting on a cloudless canvas.
I stood like a rock, my right foot on
The survey chain. Our eyes met,
Mine dark as a northern lake, his
Blue as a Scottish tarn.
The wind picked up, dusty and hot.
Our shadows moved, too slow to see.
I picked up my foot, they gathered the chain
They were young, strong, but not foolish enough
To challenge a prairie fire.
Louis bows to the audience, while Gabe turns the clock hands back a bit. Louis sits down on the chair, nods off.
Gabe : Louis Riel took charge, and the next thing you know, he’s running a Métis government in Winnipeg and the whole thing seems like it’s blown over. He even gets elected to the house of commons in Ottawa, and the rest of us Métis go back to settling down. [Long pause]
Problem solved, eh?
Louis: Wrong.
Gabe : Wrong. A few years later, Louis is in exile, European settlers are eyeballing the prairies, and them damn surveyors are back at it again, driving stakes all across our farms.
So the Métis come to me to lead them. Gabriel Dumont, last of the Dumonts that led the greatest buffalo hunts the continent has ever seen. [pause]
Hell, I didn’t even speak English! Try negotiating with them bloody Scots in Ottawa in French or Cree or Sarcee!
What to do? [He points at an audience member, who steps forward to display a sign that reads, “GET LOUIS RIEL”. After a moment the audience member sits down.]
Louis : Right on! [he sneaks back