dent Crozier, who
was in command at Fort Carleton, on the North Saskatchewan, has reported
in July, 1884, some eight months before the outbreak, that Riel had been
brought from Montana to champion the "rights" of the half-breeds.
Superintendent Gagnon, who understood their language well, reported as
to Riel's presence and the discontent of the half-breeds more than once.
The causes of the discontent were not far to seek. Many of the
half-breeds on the South Saskatchewan were the same who had taken part
in Riel's first rebellion on the Red River fifteen years before. They
were not people of a settled temperament. They did not take naturally to
the farm. There was enough of the Indian blood in them to make them
nomadic hunters rather than settlers, and enough of the fiery volatility
of French blood to make them susceptible to the appeals of aggressive
agitation. And Riel, though not specially anxious to fight himself, was
a past master in stirring others up to get into conflicts. And when
Superintendent Crozier notified the Government that this hot-headed,
vain but magnetic agitator had come amongst his old compatriots, steps
should have been taken to deport him, or otherwise put him where he
could do no harm.

Gagnon was quite right when he stated later that the main cause of the
discontent amongst the half-breeds was the introduction by the
Government of the rectangular survey of land on the prairie. Under this
system settlers had to hold their farms in square blocks of 160 acres or
more, and in consequence such settlers would be necessarily some
distance apart. This was not to the mind of the half-breeds, who were
more given to social gatherings than to agriculture, and who preferred
the old survey that they knew on the Red River and the Assiniboine,
where their holdings were in narrow strips fronting on the river and
running two miles back. To introduce this on the prairie, the Government
contended, would lead to confusion, and so it was easy for the agitator
to stir up discontent amongst these inflammable people who had always
been accustomed to the freedom of the plains. It was easy for the orator
to say that the Government was trying to break up their old social
customs, and when such a statement was followed up by saying that their
patents giving them title to land were being long delayed, and that
possibly they would never be granted at all, a live coal had fallen on
material as combustible as the dry grass on th