One of the mysteries of Louis Riel's meteoric career is the influence he exerted over Gabriel Dumont and his hard-headed Métis warriors. Poet/novelist/natural historian David Day has found the key to this mystery in the journals which Riel kept during the Batoche campaign and in prison, under sentence of death. A charismatic visionary is revealed, continuing the tradition of Native American prophets and shamans. In this bilingual edition, Riel's original notebook entries are paired with the poems which David Day has crafted from Thomas Flanagan's definitive translations.