E.O. RANDALL
With the fall of Quebec and De Vaudreuil's capitulation of Montreal, Canada passed from the dominion of France to Britain, and for a time came under military rule. In the West, around the shores of the Great Lakes and the country watered by the Ohio, though small English garrisons occupied the forts of the region, the French still held posts on the Wabash and the Mississippi, and had a considerable settlement at New Orleans. About the Lakes and in the Ohio Valley discontent smouldered among the Indians, many of whom bewailed the fate of their old allies, the French, while they feared the English, whom they dreaded as likely to drive them from their hunting-grounds and treat them with injustice or neglect.
Their fears in this respect were worked upon and disaffection among them was fomented by French traders from Montreal and St. Louis; the results of which were presently seen in the rising of all the Western tribes under the wily leadership of Pontiac, chief of the Ottawa warriors, who sought to exterminate the English and restore the supremacy of the French and Indian races. The incidents of this conspiracy of Pontiac are related in an edifying paper by the Hon. E.O. Randall, of Columbus, Ohio, contributed to the Transactions of the Ohio Archæological and Historical Society, and here, by kind permission, reproduced.
The conquest of Canada left the Indians of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys subject to British domination. The red men were repulsed but not conquered. They were scattered over a vast territory; their total number between the Mississippi on the west, the ocean on the east, between the Ohio on the south, and the Great Lakes on the north was probably not in excess of two hundred thousand, and their fighting warriors not more than ten thousand.[45] Fort Duquesne was in November, 1758, captured from the French by the British forces under General John Forbes. The military posts of the French in the East, on the waters of Lake Erie and the Allegheny, viz., Presqu'île, Le Bœuf, and Venango, passed into the hands of the British soon after the taking of Fort Duquesne. Most of the Western forts were transferred to the English during the autumn of 1760; but the extreme Western settlements on the Illinois, viz., Forts Ouatanon, Vincennes, Kaskaskia, Chartres, and Cahokia, remained several years longer under French control. In the fall of 1760 Major Robert Rogers was directed by the then British commander, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, to traverse the Great Lakes with a detachment of provincial troops and, in the name of England, take possession of Detroit, Michilimackinac, and the other Western forts included in the surrender of the French.
Major Rogers, with two hundred rangers, left Montreal, ascended the St. Lawrence, crossed Lakes Ontario and Erie, and reached the mouth of the Cuyahoga[46] on November 7th. No body of troops under the British flag had ever before penetrated so far west on the Lakes. Rogers and his men encamped in the neighboring forest. Shortly after their arrival a party of Indian chiefs and warriors appeared at the camp and declared they were envoys from Pontiac, "ruler of all that country," and demanded, in his name, that the British soldiers "should advance no farther" until they had conferred with the great chief, who was rapidly approaching. That same day Pontiac himself appeared; and "it is here," says Parkman, "for the first time, that this remarkable man stands forth distinctly on the page of history."
The place and date of birth of Pontiac are both matters of dispute. There seems to be no doubt that he was the son of an Ottawa chief; his mother is variously stated to have been an Ojibwa, a Miami, and a Sac. Preponderance of evidence, as the lawyers say, seems to favor the Ojibwas. Authorities also vary as to the date of his nativity from 1712 to 1720.[47] Historical writers usually content themselves with the vague statement that he was born "on the Ottawa River," without designating which Ottawa River, for many were so called; indeed, the Ottawas were in the habit of calling every stream upon which they sojourned any length of time "Ottawa," after their own tribe. The Miami chief Richardville is on record as often asserting that Pontiac was born by the Maumee at the mouth of the Auglaize.[48] In any event, Pontiac, like his great successor, the incomparable Shawano chief, Tecumseh, was a native of Ohio.
The Ottawas, Ojibwas, and the Pottawottomis had formed a sort of alliance of which Pontiac was the virtual head. He was of a despotic and commanding temperament, and he wielded practical authority among all the tribes of the Illinois country, and was known to all the Indian nations of America. Pontiac, conscious of his power and position, haughtily asked Major Rogers, "What his business was in that country?" and how he dared enter it without Pontiac's permission? Rogers informed the chief that the war was over, the French defeated, the country surrendered to the British, and he was on his way to receive the posts from the French occupiers. Pontiac was wily and diplomatic. He received the news stolidly, reserved his answer till next morning, when his reply was that as he desired to live in peace with the British, he would let them remain in his country as long as "they treated him with due respect and deference." Both parties smoked the calumet and protested friendship. Rogers proceeded on his errand. On November 29, 1760, the French garrison at Detroit transferred that historic and most important Western station to British possession.[49]
The stormy season prevented Rogers from advancing farther. Michilimackinac and the three remoter posts of Ste. Marie, La Baye (Green Bay), and St. Joseph remained in the hands of the French until the next year. The interior posts of the Illinois country were also retained by the French, but the British conquest of America was completed. The victory of England and the transfer of the French strongholds to British commanders were a terrible and portentous blow to the Indian. He could not fail to foresee therein dire results to his race. His prophetic vision read the handwriting on the wall! Expressions and signs of discontent and apprehension began to be audible among the Indian tribes; "from the Potomac to Lake Superior, and from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, in every wigwam and hamlet of the forest, a deep-rooted hatred of the English increased with rapid growth." When the French occupied the military posts of the lakes and the rivers they freely supplied the neighboring Indians with weapons, clothing, provisions, and fire-water. The sudden cessation of these bounties was a grievous and significant calamity.
The English fur-trader and incomer was rude and coarse and domineering as compared with the agreeable and docile Frenchman. Worse and more alarming than all was the intrusion into the forest solitude and hunting-ground of the Indian by the English settler, who regarded the red man as having no rights he was bound to respect. While the rivalry between the two white nations was in progress, the red man was courted by each as holding in large degree the balance of power. But the war over, the ascendant Briton no longer regarded the Indians as necessary allies, and they were in large measure treated with indifference and injustice. The hostility of the Indian against the British was, of course, assiduously promoted by the French, who saw in it trouble for the British, possibly a regaining of their lost ground. The warlike and revengeful spirit of the Indian began to give itself vent. The smouldering fires were bound to burst forth. During the years 1761 and 1762 plots were hatched in various tribes to stealthily approach, and, by attack or treacherous entrance, destroy the posts of Detroit, Fort Pitt, and others. These plots were severally discovered in time to forestall their attempt. Indian indignation reached its height when in 1763 it was announced to the tribes that the King of France had ceded all their (Indian) country to the King of England, without consulting them in the matter. At once a plot was contrived, "such as was never before or since conceived or executed by North American Indians."
It was determined and planned to make an assault upon all the British posts on the same day; "then, having destroyed the garrisons, to turn upon the defenceless frontier and ravage and lay waste the white settlements." It was fondly believed by thousands of braves that then the British might be exterminated, or at least driven to the seaboard and confined to their coast settlements. It was the great chief, Pontiac, who if he did not originally instigate, fostered, directed, and personally commanded this secretly arranged universal movement. His mastermind comprehended the importance and necessity of combined and harmonious effort. He proposed to unite all the tribes into one confederacy for offensive operations. At the close of 1762 he despatched ambassadors to the different nations—to the tribes of the North on the Lakes; to the northwest, the head-waters of the Mississippi and south to its mouth; to the east and the southeast. The Indians thus enlisted and banded together against the British comprised, "with few unimportant exceptions, the whole Algonquin stock." Especially were the Ohio tribes solicited and secured; the Shawanoes, the Miamis, the Wyandots, and the Delawares. The Senecas were the only members of the Iroquois confederacy that joined the league. The onslaught was to be made in the month of May, 1763, the tribes to rise simultaneously at the various points and each tribe destroy the British garrison in its neighborhood.
It was a vast scheme, worthy the brain and courage of the greatest general and shrewdest statesman. The plan was divulged by individual Indians to officers at two or three of the posts, but was either disbelieved or its importance ignored. While this gigantic and almost chimerical plot was being developed by Pontiac and his associate chiefs, the treaty of peace between France and England was signed at Paris, February 10, 1763. By this compact France yielded to England all her territory north of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence and east of the Mississippi. The Spanish possessions on the Gulf of Mexico were ceded to England, the territory west of the Mississippi going to Spain. France was left no foothold in North America. While the powers of England, France, and Spain were in the French capital arranging this result, as Parkman remarks, "countless Indian warriors in the American forests were singing the war-song and whetting their scalping-knives."
The chief centre of Indian activity and the main point of attack was the post of Detroit, the Western head-quarters of the British government. Pontiac was personally to strike the first blow. The rendezvous of his painted and armed warriors was to be the banks of the little river Ecorces, which empties into the Detroit River a few miles below the Fort, now the city of Detroit. It was April 27th when the assembled warriors listened to the final war-speech of the great chief.
Pontiac was an orator of a high order, fierce and impassioned in style. He presented at length the injustice of the British as compared with that of the French; he set forth the danger to his race from the threatened supremacy of the British power; he predicted the awakening of "their great father the King of France," during whose sleep the English had robbed the Indian of his American possessions. In passionate appeals he aroused the vengeance and superstition of his people and warned them that the white man's civilization was poisoning and annihilating the red race. In his dramatic way he related to the superstitious Indians a dream wherein the Great Spirit sent his message that they were to cast aside the weapons, the utensils of civilization, and the "deadly rum" of the white men, and, with aid from the Great Spirit, drive the dogs in red from every post in their (Indian) country. He revealed his plans of destruction of the whites and the details of the plot to secure Detroit. He and a few of his chosen chiefs were to visit the Fort, under pretence of a peaceful visit, gain admittance, seek audience with Major Henry Gladwyn, the commandant, and his officers, and then at an agreed signal the chiefs were to draw their weapons, previously concealed beneath their blankets, raise the war-whoop, rush upon the officers and strike them down.
The Indian forces waiting meanwhile at the gate were then to assail the surprised and half-armed soldiers. Thus through this perfidious murder Detroit would fall an easy prey to the savages and Pontiac's conspiracy have a successful inauguration. His plan was approved. Just below Detroit, on the same side of the river, was a Pottawottomi village; across the river some three miles up the current was an Ottawa village; on the same eastern side about a mile below Detroit was the Wyandot village. Along each side of the river for two or three miles were houses of the French settlers. "The king and lord of all this country," as Major Rogers called Pontiac, had located one of his homes, where he spent the early summer, on a little island (Île à Pêche) at the opening of Lake St. Clair. Here he had a small oven-shaped cabin of bark and rushes. Here he dwelt with his squaws and children, and here doubtless he might often have been seen, lounging, Indian style, half naked, on a rush mat or bear-skin.
The number of warriors under the command of Pontiac is variously estimated from six hundred to two thousand. The garrison consisted of one hundred twenty soldiers, eight officers, and about forty others capable of bearing arms. Two armed schooners, The Beaver and The Gladwyn, were anchored in the river near the Fort. Pontiac's plot was revealed to Gladwyn the night before its proposed execution by an Ojibwa girl from the Pottawottomi village.[50] Gladwyn, thus warned, was forearmed. Pontiac and his six chiefs were admitted to the council-chamber. Pontiac began the harangue of peace and friendly palaver and was about to give the preconcerted signal when Gladwyn raised his hand and the sound of clashing arms and drum-beating was heard without. Pontiac feared he was foiled, and announcing that he would "call again," next time with his squaws and children, he and his party withdrew.
The next morning, Pontiac, in hopes of regaining Gladwyn's confidence, repaired to the Fort with but three of his chiefs, and bearing in his hand the pipe of peace. Offering it to Gladwyn he again protested his friendship for the British, whom he declared "we love as our brothers." A few days later, the Indians thronged the open field behind the Fort gate. It was closed and barred. Pontiac, advancing, demanded admittance. Gladwyn replied that he might enter, but only alone. The great chief, baffled and enraged, then "threw off the mask he had so long worn" and boldly declared his intention to make war. A day or two later the four tribes, Ottawas, Ojibwas, Pottawottomis, and Wyandots, clamored about the Fort, and the attack was begun by volleys of bullets fired at the palisade walls. Thus opened the famous siege of Detroit, which lasted six months, from May 1 to November 1 (1763), one of the longest and most bitterly contested sieges in the history of Western Indian warfare.
The incomparable treachery of Pontiac in endeavoring to secure the Fort by dissemblance of friendship was further evidenced by his pretence at a truce. Pontiac declaring his earnest desire for "firm and lasting peace," requested Gladwyn to send to the camp of the chief, Captain Campbell, Gladwyn's second in command, a veteran officer and most upright and manly in character. Campbell went, was made prisoner, and subsequently was foully and hideously murdered. Pontiac neglected no expedient known to Indian perfidy, cruelty, or deviltry. He surpassed his race in all the detestable elements of their nature. His conduct from first to last was only calculated to create distrust, contempt, and loathing. His warriors murdered the British settlers in the vicinity of the Fort, burned their huts, robbed the Canadians, and committed every variety of depredation.
Pontiac, realizing the seriousness of the situation and the obstinate courage of the British garrison, prepared for a lengthy campaign. He ordered the Ottawa village moved across the river to the Detroit side, where it was located about a mile and a half northeast of the Fort, at the mouth of Parent's Creek, afterward known as Bloody Run.
The garrison bravely and patiently withstood all assaults and bided the time of rescue. By midnight sallies and other expedients they removed all exterior buildings, fences, trees, and other obstacles that lay within the range of their guns or that might afford protection to sneaking and stealthy Indians who would crawl snakelike close to the palisade and fire at the sentinels and loop-holes, or shoot their arrows tipped with burning tow upon the roofs of the structures within the Fort. Fortunately the supply of water was inexhaustible; the provisions were wisely husbanded; friendly Canadians across the river, under cover of night, brought supplies.
These Canadian farmers were also subject to tribute to the Indians, who seized their supplies by theft or open violence. They appealed to Pontiac, and about the only creditable act recorded of that perfidious chief was his agreement to make restitution to the robbed settlers. Pontiac gave them in payment for their purloined property promissory notes drawn on birch-bark and signed with the figure of an otter—the totem to which he belonged—all of which promises to pay, it is said, were redeemed.
Day after day passed with varying incidents of attack and repulse. The keen-eyed watchfulness of the Indians never for an instant abated; their vigils were tireless and ceaseless; woe to the soldier who ventured without the Fort or even lifted his head above the palisade. Pontiac's patience was strengthened with the delusive idea that the French were only temporarily defeated and would rally to his assistance. He even despatched messengers across the interior to the French commandant, Neyon, at Fort Chartres on the Mississippi, requesting that French troops be sent without delay to his aid. Meanwhile Gladwyn had sent one of his schooners to Fort Niagara to hasten promised reënforcements from the British.
Lieutenant Cuyler had already (May 13th) left Niagara with convoy of seven boats, ninety-six men, and quantities of supplies and ammunition. This little fleet coasted along the northern shore of Lake Erie until near the mouth of the Detroit River. The force attempted to land, when a band of Wyandot Indians suddenly burst from the woods, seized five of the boats, and killed or captured sixty of the soldiers. Cuyler with the remaining men (thirty-six), many of whom were wounded, escaped in the other boats and crossed to Fort Sandusky, which they found had been taken and burned by the Wyandots; the garrison had been slaughtered and Ensign Paully sent prisoner to Pontiac's camp. Cuyler with his escaping companions slowly wended his way back, where he reported the result of his expedition to the commanding officer, Major Wilkins.
At the same time the Wyandots, with the captured boats and prisoners, proceeded up the Detroit to Pontiac's quarters, arriving in full sight of the Fort's garrison, when Gladwyn, of course, learned of the destruction of the Cuyler flotilla. The disappointment to the inmates of the Fort was almost unbearable. Gladwyn's schooner, however, reached Fort Niagara and returned about July 1st, laden with food, ammunition, and reënforcements, and the most welcome news of the Treaty of Paris. Pontiac, undismayed, continued his efforts. His forces now numbered, it is recorded, about eight hundred twenty warriors: two hundred fifty Ottawas, his own tribe and under his immediate command; one hundred fifty Pottawottomis, under Ninivay; fifty Wyandots, under Takee; two hundred Ojibwas, under Wasson; and one hundred seventy of the same tribe, under Sekahos.
The two schooners were a serious menace to the movements of the Indians, and many desperate attempts were made to burn them by midnight attacks, and the floating of fire-rafts down upon them; but all to no avail. Pontiac had the stubborn persistency of a later American general who said he would fight it out on that line if it took all summer. He exerted himself with fresh zeal to gain possession of the Fort. He demanded the surrender of Gladwyn, saying a still greater force of Indians was on the march to swell the army of besiegers. Gladwyn was equally tenacious and unyielding; he proposed to "hold the fort" till the enemy were worn out or reënforcements arrived. Pontiac sought to arouse the active aid of the neighboring Canadians, but the Treaty of Paris had made them British subjects, and they dared not war on their conquerors. History scarcely furnishes a like instance of so large an Indian force struggling so long in an attack on a fortified place.
The Wyandots and Pottawottomis, however, never as enthusiastic in this war as the other tribes, late in July decided to withdraw from the besieging confederacy and make peace with the British. They did so, and exchanged prisoners with Gladwyn. The Ottawas and Ojibwas, however, still held on, watching the Fort and keeping up a desultory fusillade. The end was drawing nigh. On July 29th, Captain James Dalzell arrived from Niagara with artillery supplies and two hundred eighty men in twenty-two barges. Their approach to the Fort was bravely contested by the combined Indian forces, even the Wyandots and Pottawottomis breaking their treaty and treacherously joining in the assault. Dalzell's troops entered the Fort, and he proposed an immediate sortie. Dalzell was bravery personified, and he had fought with Israel Putnam.
On the morning after his arrival (July 31st) at two o'clock, he led a force of two hundred fifty men out of the Fort. They silently in the darkness marched along the river toward the Ottawa village just across Parent's Creek. The Indians were prepared and had ambuscaded both sides of the road. They were, Indian fashion, secreted behind trees and fences and Canadian houses. Their presence was not discovered till the van of Dalzell's column reached the bridge over the creek, when a terrible fire was opened upon the soldiers from all sides. It was still dark; the Indians could not be seen.
A panic ensued. The troops in disorder retreated amid an awful slaughter. Dalzell himself was killed, and Major Robert Rogers assumed command, and the fleeing soldiers were only spared from total destruction by two of the British boats coming to the rescue. About sixty men were killed or wounded. It was known as the Battle of Bloody bridge. Upon the retreating into the Fort of Major Rogers' survivors the siege was renewed. Pontiac was greatly encouraged over this victory, and his Indians showed renewed zeal. The schooner Gladwyn was sent to Niagara for help. On its return, it was attacked and its crew and supplies practically destroyed. Another relief expedition under Major Wilkins in September was overwhelmed in a lake storm and seventy soldiers were drowned.
But even Indian persistency began to tire. The realization that the French were beaten and time only would bring victory to the British led all the tribes, except the Ottawas, to sue for peace. This was on October 12th. Pontiac could only hold his own tribe in line. The Ottawas sustained their hostility until October 30th, when a French messenger arrived from Neyon, who reported to Pontiac that he must expect no help from the French, as they were now completely and permanently at peace with the British.[51] Pontiac was advised to quit the war at once. His cause was doomed. The great chief who had so valiantly and unremittently fought for six months suddenly raised the siege and retired into the country of the Maumee, where he vainly endeavored to arouse the Miamis and neighboring tribes to another war upon the invading British.
Though the memorable siege of Detroit, personally conducted by Pontiac, ended in failure to the great chief, his conspiracy elsewhere met with unparalleled success. The British posts planned to be simultaneously attacked and destroyed by the savages were some dozen in number, including besides Detroit, St. Joseph, Michilimackinac, Ouiatenon, Sandusky, Miami, Presqu'île, Niagara, Le Bœuf, Venango, Fort Pitt, and one or two others of lesser importance. Of all the posts from Niagara and Pitt westward, Detroit alone was able to survive the conspiracy. For the rest "there was but one unvaried tale of calamity and ruin." It was a continued series of disasters to the white men. The victories of the savages marked a course of blood from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi.
On May 16, 1763, the Wyandots surrounded Fort Sandusky, and under pretence of a friendly visit several of them well known to Ensign Paully, the commander, were admitted. While smoking the pipe of peace the treacherous and trusted Indians suddenly arose, seized Paully, and held him prisoner while their tribesmen killed the sentry, entered the fort, and in cold blood murdered and scalped the little band of soldiers. The traders in the post were likewise killed and their stores plundered. The stockade was fired and burned to the ground. Paully was taken to Detroit where he was "adopted" as the husband of an old widowed squaw, from whose affectionate toils he finally escaped to his friends in the Detroit Fort.
St. Joseph was located at the mouth of the river St. Joseph, near the southern end of Lake Michigan.[52] Ensign Schlosser was in command with a mere handful of soldiers, fourteen in number. On the morning of May 25th the commander was informed that a large "party" of Pottawottomis had arrived from Detroit "to visit their relations," and the chief (Washashe) and three or four of his followers wished to hold a "friendly talk" with the commander. Disarmed of suspicion, the commander-ensign admitted the callers; the result is the oft-repeated story. The entering Indians rushed to the gate, tomahawked the sentinel, let in their associates, who instantly pounced upon the garrison, killed eleven of the soldiers, plundered the fort, and later carried Schlosser and his three surviving companions captives to Detroit.
Fort Michilimackinac was the most important point on the Upper Lakes, commanding as it did the Straits of Mackinac, the passage from Lake Huron into Lake Michigan. Great numbers of the Chippewas (Ojibwas), in the last of May, began to assemble in the vicinity of the fort, but with every indication of friendliness. June 4th was King George's birthday. It must be celebrated with pastimes. The discipline of the garrison, some thirty-five in number, was relaxed. Many squaws were admitted as visitors into the fort, while their "braves" engaged in their favorite game of ball just outside the garrison entrance. It was a spirited contest between the Ojibwas and Sacs.
Captain George Etherington, commander of the fort, and his lieutenant, Leslie, stood without the palisades to watch the sport. Suddenly the ball was thrown near the open gate and behind the two officers. The Indians pretending to rush for the ball instantly encircled and seized Etherington and Leslie, and crowded their way into the fort, where the squaws supplied them with tomahawks and hatchets, which they had carried in, hidden under their blankets. Quick as a flash, the instruments of death were gleaming in the sunlight, and Lieutenant Jamet and fifteen soldiers and a trader were struck down, never to rise. The rest of the garrison were made prisoners and five of them afterward tomahawked. All of the peaceful traders were plundered and carried off. The prisoners were conveyed to Montreal. The French population of the post was undisturbed. Captain Etherington succeeded in sending timely warning to the little garrison at La Baye; Lieutenant Gorrell, the commandant, and his men were brought as prisoners to the Michilimackinac fort and thence sent with Etherington and Leslie to the Canadian capital. The little post of Ste. Marie (the Sault) had been partially destroyed and abandoned. The garrison inmates had withdrawn to Michilimackinac and shared its fate.
The garrison at Ouiatenon situated on the Wabash (Indian Ouabache), near the present location of Lafayette (Indiana), then in the very heart of the Western forest, as planned, was to have been massacred on June 1st. Through the information given by the French at the post, the soldiers were apprised of their intended fate, and, through the intervention of the same French friends, the Indians were dissuaded from executing their sanguinary purpose. Lieutenant Jenkins and several of his men were made prisoners by stratagem; the remainder of the garrison readily surrendered.
On the present site of Fort Wayne (Indiana) was Fort Miami,[53] at the confluence of the Rivers St. Joseph and St. Mary, which unite to form the Maumee. The fort at this time was in charge of Ensign Holmes. On May 27th the commander was decoyed from the Fort by the story of an Indian girl, that a squaw lay dangerously ill in a wigwam near the stockade, and needed medical assistance. The humane Holmes, forgetting his caution on an errand of mercy, walked without the gate and was instantly shot dead. The soldiers in the palisades, seeing the corpse of their leader and hearing the yells and whoopings of the exultant Indians, offered no resistance, admitted the red men and gladly surrendered on promise of having their lives spared.
Fort Presqu'île stood on the southern shore of Lake Erie at the site of the present town of Erie. The block-house, an unusually strong and commodious one, was in command of Ensign Christie, with a courageous and skilful garrison of twenty-seven men. Christie, learning of the attack on the other posts, "braced up" for his "visit from the hell-hounds" as he appropriately called the enemy. He had not long to wait. On June 15th about two hundred of them put in an appearance from Detroit. They sprang into the ditch around the fort, and with reckless audacity approached to the very walls and threw fire-balls of pitch upon the roof and sides of the fortress. Again and again the wooden retreat was on fire, but amid showers of bullets and arrows the flames were extinguished by the fearless soldiers.
The savages rolled logs before the fort and erected strong breastworks, from behind which they could discharge their shots and throw their fire-balls. For nearly three days a terrific contest ensued. The savages finally undermined the palisades to the house of Christie, which was at once set on fire, nearly stifling the garrison with the smoke and heat, for Christie's quarters were close to the block-house. Longer resistance was vain, "the soldiers, pale and haggard, like men who had passed through a fiery furnace, now issued from their scorched and bullet-pierced stronghold." The surrendering soldiers were taken to Pontiac's quarters on the Detroit River.
Three days after the attack on Presqu'île, Fort le Bœuf, twelve miles south on Le Bœuf Creek, one of the head sources of the Allegheny River, was surrounded and burned. Ensign Price and a garrison of thirteen men miraculously escaped the flames and the encircling savages and endeavored to reach Fort Pitt. About half of them succeeded; the remainder died of hunger and privation by the way.
Fort Venango, still farther south, on the Allegheny River, was captured by a band of Senecas, who gained entrance by resorting to the oft-employed treachery of pretending friendliness. The entire garrison was butchered, Lieutenant Gordon, the commander, being slowly tortured to death, and the fort was burned to the ground. Not a soul escaped to tell the horrible tale.
Fort Ligonier, another small post, commanded by Lieutenant Archibald Blane, forty miles southeast of Fort Pitt, was attacked but successfully held out till relieved by Bouquet's expedition.
Thus within a period of about a month from the time the first blow was struck at Detroit, Pontiac was in full possession of nine out of the twelve posts, so recently belonging to and, it was thought, securely occupied by the British. The fearful threat of the great Ottawa conspirator that he would exterminate the whites west of the Alleghanies was wellnigh fulfilled. Over two hundred traders with their servants fell victims to his remorseless march of slaughter and rapine, and goods estimated at over half a million dollars became the spoils of the confederated tribes.
The result of Pontiac's widespread and successful uprising struck untold terror to the settlers along the Western frontier of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. The savages, roused to the highest pitch of fury and weltering in the blood of their victims, were burning the cabins and crops of the defenceless whites and massacring the men, women, and children. Many hundreds of the forest-dwellers with their families flocked to the stockades and protected posts. Particularly in the Pennsylvania country did dread and consternation prevail. The frontiersmen west of the Alleghanies fled east over the mountains to Carlisle, Lancaster, and numbers even continued their flight to Philadelphia. Pontiac was making good his threat that he would drive the pale-faces back to the sea.
But Forts Niagara and Pitt were still in the possession of the "red-coats," as the British soldiers were often called by the forest "redskins." Following the total destruction of Le Bœuf and Venango, the Senecas made an attack on Fort Niagara, an extensive work on the east side of Niagara River, near its mouth as it empties into Lake Ontario. This fort guarded the access to the whole interior country by way of Canada and the St. Lawrence. The fort was strongly built and fortified and was far from the centre of the country of the warpath Indians, for, with the exception of the Senecas, the Iroquois tribes inhabiting Eastern Canada and New York did not participate in Pontiac's conspiracy. The attack on Fort Niagara, therefore, was half-hearted, and after a feeble effort the besiegers despaired of success or assistance and abandoned the blockade, which only lasted a few days.
Fort Pitt was the British military head-quarters of the Western frontier. It was the Gibraltar of defence, protecting the Eastern colonies from invasion by the Western Indians. The consummation of Pontiac's gigantic scheme depended upon the capture of Fort Pitt. It was a strong fortification at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. Its northern ramparts were faced with brick on the side looking down the Ohio. Fort Pitt stood "far aloof in the forest, and one might journey eastward full two hundred miles before the English settlements began to thicken." The garrison consisted of three hundred thirty soldiers, traders, and backwoodsmen, besides about one hundred women and a greater number of children. Captain Simeon Ecuyer, a brave Swiss officer, was in command. Every preparation was made for the expected attack. All houses and cabins outside the palisade were levelled to the ground. A rude fire-engine was constructed to extinguish any flames that might be kindled by the burning arrows of the Indians.
In the latter part of May the hostile savages began to approach the vicinity of the fort. On June 22d they opened fire "upon every side at once." The garrison replied by a discharge of howitzers, the shells of which, bursting in the midst of the Indians, greatly amazed and disconcerted them. The Indians then boldly demanded a surrender of the fort, saying vast numbers of braves were on the way to destroy it. Ecuyer displayed equal bravado and replied that several thousand British soldiers were on the way to punish the tribes for their uprising. The fort was now in a state of siege. For about a month "nothing occurred except a series of petty and futile attacks," in which the Indians, mostly Ottawas, Ojibwas, and Delawares, did small damage. On July 26th, under a flag of truce, the besiegers again demanded surrender. It was refused and Ecuyer told the savages that if they again showed themselves near the Fort he would throw "bombshells" among them and "blow them to atoms." The assault was continued with renewed fury.
Meanwhile Sir Jeffrey Amherst, the commander-in-chief of the British forces, awakening to the gravity of the situation, ordered Colonel Bouquet, a brave and able officer in his majesty's service, to take command of certain specified forces and proceed as rapidly as possible to the relief of Fort Pitt, and then make aggressive warfare on the Western tribes. Bouquet, leaving his head-quarters at Philadelphia, reached Carlisle late in June, where he heard for the first time of the calamities at Presqu'île, Le Bœuf, and Venango. He left Carlisle with a force of five hundred men, some of them the pick of the British regulars, but many of them aged veterans enfeebled by disease and long, severe exposure. Bouquet had seen considerable service in Indian warfare. He was not likely to be caught napping. He marched slowly along the Cumberland Valley and crept cautiously over the mountains, passing Forts Loudon and Bedford, the latter surrounded with Indians, to Fort Ligonier, which, as noted above, had been blockaded for weeks by the savages who, as at Bedford, fled at Bouquet's approach.
On August 5th the little army, footsore and tired and half-famished, reached a small stream within twenty-five miles of Fort Pitt, known as Bushy Run. Here in the afternoon they were suddenly and fiercely fired upon by a superior number of Indians. A terrific contest ensued, only ended by the darkness of night. The encounter was resumed next day; the odds were against the British, who were surrounded and were being cut down in great numbers by the Indians who skulked behind trees and logs and in the grass and declivities. Bouquet resorted to a ruse which was signally successful. He formed his men in a wide semicircle, and from the centre advanced a company toward the enemy; the advancing company then made a feint of retreat, the deceived Indians followed close after and fell into the ambuscade. The outwitted savages were completely routed and fled in hopeless confusion. Bouquet had won one of the greatest victories in Western Indian warfare. His loss was about one hundred fifty men, nearly a third of his army. The loss of the Indians was not so great.
As rapidly as possible Bouquet pushed on to Fort Pitt, which he entered without molestation on August 25th. The extent and the end of Pontiac's conspiracy had at last been reached. The Pennsylvania Assembly, and King George, even, formally thanked Bouquet.
Forts Detroit and Pitt, as has been seen, proved impregnable; neither the evil cunning nor the persistent bravery of the savage could dislodge the occupants of those important posts. The siege of Detroit had been abandoned by the combined forces of Pontiac, but the country round about continued to be infested with the hostile Indians, who kept up a sort of petty bushwhacking campaign that compelled the soldiers and traders of the fort, for safety, to remain "in doors" during the winter of 1763-1764. Bouquet, on gaining Fort Pitt, desired to pursue the marauding and murderous savages to their forest retreats and drive them hence, but he was unable to accomplish anything until the following year.
In the spring of 1764 Sir Jeffrey Amherst resigned his office, and General Thomas Gage succeeded him as commander-in-chief of the British forces in America, with head-quarters in Boston. Shortly after assuming office, General Gage determined to send two armies from different points into the heart of the Indian country. The first, under Bouquet, was to advance from Fort Pitt into the midst of the Delaware and Shawano settlements of the Ohio Valley; and the other, under Bradstreet, was to pass from Fort Niagara up the Lakes and force the tribes of Detroit and the region round about to unconditional submission.
Colonel John Bradstreet left Fort Niagara in July, 1764, with the formidable force of over a thousand soldiers. In canoes and bateaux this imposing army of British regulars coasted along the shore of Lake Erie, stopping at various points to meet and treat with the Indians, who, realizing their inability to cope with so powerful an antagonist, made terms of peace or went through the pretence of so doing. At Sandusky (Fort), particularly, Bradstreet accepted the false promises of the Wyandots, Ottawas, Miamis, Delawares, and Shawanoes. On August 26th he arrived at Detroit, to the great joy and relief of the garrison, which now, for more than a year, had been "cut off from all communication with their race" and had been virtually prisoners confined within the walls of their stockade. Bradstreet forwarded small detachments to restore or retake, as the case might be, the farther western British posts, which had fallen into the hands of Pontiac's wily and exultant warriors.
In October (1764) Bouquet, with an army of fifteen hundred troops, defiled out of Fort Pitt, and, taking the Indian trail westward, boldly entered the wilderness, "which no army had ever before sought to penetrate." It was a novel sight, this regiment of regulars, picking its way through the woods and over the streams to the centre of the Ohio country. Striking the Tuscarawas River he followed down its banks, halting at short intervals to confer with delegations of Indians until October 25th, when he encamped on the Muskingum, near the forks of that river formed by the confluence of the Tuscarawas and Walhonding rivers. Here with much display of the pomp and circumstance of war on the part of Bouquet, to impress and over-awe the savages, he held conferences with the chiefs of the various tribes. They agreed to lay down their arms and live for the future in friendship with the white invaders. All prisoners heretofore taken and then held by the Indians were to be surrendered to Bouquet. Over two hundred of these, captives, including women and children, were delivered up, and with these Bouquet, with his successful soldiery, retraced his course to Fort Pitt, arriving there on November 28th. It was one of the most memorable expeditions in the pre-State history of Ohio.
The sudden and surprising victories of Pontiac were being rapidly undone. The great Ottawa chief saw his partially accomplished scheme withering into ignominious failure. Sullen, disappointed, consumed with humiliation and revenge, he withdrew from active prominence to his forest wigwam. He sought the banks of the Maumee, the scene of his birth and the location of the villages of many tribes who were his sympathetic adherents. He did not participate in any of the councils held by Bradstreet and the chiefs. "His vengeance was unslaked and his purpose unshaken." But his glory was growing dim and his power was withering into dust. From the scenes of his promising but short-lived triumphs, he retired into the country of the Illinois and the Mississippi. He tried to arouse the aid of the French. He gathered a band of four hundred warriors on the Maumee, and with these faithful followers revisited the Western tribes, in hopes of creating another confederation.[54] Not even would the southern tribes, however, respond to his appeals. All was lost. His allies were falling off; his followers, discouraged, were deserting him. Again and again he went back to his chosen haunts and former faithful followers on the Maumee. But his day had passed.
In the spring of 1766 Pontiac met Sir William Johnson[55] at Oswego. In his peace speech at that time he said: "I speak in the name of all the nations westward, of whom I am the master. It is the will of the Great Spirit that we should meet here to-day; and before him I now take you by the hand. I call him to witness that I speak from my heart; for since I took Colonel Croghan[56] by the hand last year, I have never let go my hold, for I see that the Great Spirit will have us friends.
"Moreover, when our great father, of France, was in this country, I held him fast by the hand. Now that he is gone, I take you, my English father, by the hand, in the name of all the nations, and promise to keep this covenant as long as I shall live."
But he did not speak from the heart; on the contrary, only from the head. Leaving the Oswego conference, "his canoe laden with the gifts of his enemy," Pontiac steered homeward for the Maumee; and in that vicinity he spent the following winter. From now on for some two years the great Ottawa chief disappeared as if lost in the forest depths.
In April, 1769, he is found at Fort St. Louis, on the west side of the Mississippi, where he gave himself mainly to the temporary oblivion of "fire-water," the dread destroyer of his race. He was wont to cross the "Father of Waters" to the fort on the British side at Cahokia, where he would revel with the friendly creoles. In one of these visits, in the early morning, after drinking deeply, he strode with uncertain step into the adjacent forest. He was arrayed in the uniform of a French officer, which apparel had been given him many years before by the Marquis of Montcalm. His footsteps were stealthily dogged by a Kaskaskia Indian, who in the silence and seclusion of the forest, at an opportune moment, buried the blade of a tomahawk in the brain of the Ottawa conqueror, the champion of his race.
The murderer had been bribed to the heinous act by a British trader named Williamson, who thought to thus rid his country (England) of a dangerous foe. The unholy price of the assassination was a barrel of liquor. It was supposed that the Illinois, Kaskaskia, Peoria, and Cahokia Indians were more or less guilty as accomplices in the horrible deed. That an Illinois Indian was guilty of the act was sufficient. The Sacs and Foxes, and other Western tribes friendly to Pontiac and his cause were aroused to furious revenge. They went upon the warpath against the Illinois Indians. A relentless war ensued, and, says Parkman, "over the grave of Pontiac more blood was poured out in atonement than flowed from the veins of the slaughtered heroes on the corpse of Patroclus."
The body of the murdered chief was borne across the river and buried near Fort St. Louis. No monument ever marked the resting-place of the great hero and defender of his people.