Gabriel Dumont

Gabriel Dumont (born December 1837 at the Red River settlement, died 19 May 1906 at Bellevue, Saskatchewan) was a Metis hunter, merchant, ferryman, and political and military leader. He rose as chief of a group of buffalo hunters around Fort Carlton, elected leader of the hunt in 1863, and he was remembered as the last, and in some ways the greatest, of the traditional Metis chiefs whose standing rested on skill as a hunter and fighter and on wide kinship networks. He is best known as Louis Riel's military commander during the North-West rebellion of 1885, where his personal courage and tactical skill did not prevent the inexperienced Canadian militia from defeating the rebel forces with unexpected ease. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography judges that he never became more than the head of the strongest Metis faction, and that his campaigns for land rights and after the rebellion did not carry beyond his own circle.