Shooting Scott was Riel's major mistake and downfall, even though Scott was a bugger and wanted shooting, the short-sighted satisfaction the métis got out of doing it themselves lost them the political struggle in part, and lost Riel his life .... aj's web page there is inadequate, unidimensional, it presents only two parties, the métis and the guvmint du jour, as monolithic entities - they were not, there were factions within each of them ... a lot is written on this someplace, i forget where, but it has the most interesting links to the métis language, which they called michíf .... in very few years they had developed this beautiful patois out of french and cree, and were known for their music, great fiddlers from that part of the country, the most excellent people to party with, and the women lovely every one
I would sign off on your characterisation of my views of you, if you change it slightly -
'you-are-too-often-and-in-the-wrong-places-the-rapacious-bad-guys'
.. like that ... meaning, Nicaragua, Indochina, Grenada [snicker, they gave out medals for the glorious conquerors of this little island you can spit across, lol], Panamá [why shoot all those people in the barrio so far from the declared target Noriega?], etc ... nice to see you backing us up there in '18 and '43, though ... cheers |
