Amherst, who was military commander at this time, was driven nearly out of his senses. A foe like the French, who would stand and do battle, he could fight; but this phantom foe, that vanished like mist through the woods, baffled the English soldier. In less than six months two thousand whites had been slain; and Amherst could not even find his foe, let alone strike him. "Can we not inoculate them with smallpox, or set bloodhounds to track them?" he writes distractedly.
By the summer of 1764 the English had taken the war path. Bradstreet was to go up the lakes with twelve hundred men, Bouquet, with like forces, to follow the old Pennsylvania road to the Ohio, both generals to unite somewhere south of Lake Erie. Of Bradstreet the least said the better. He had done well in the great war when he captured Fort Frontenac almost without a blow; but now he strangely played the fool. He seemed to think that peace, peace at any price, was the object, whereas peace that is not a victory is worthless with the Indian. Deputies met him on the 12th of August near Presqu' Isle, Lake Erie. They carried no wampum belts and were really spies. Without demanding reparation, without a word as to restoring harried captives, without hostages for good conduct, Bradstreet entered into a fool's peace with his foes, proceeded up to Detroit, and was back at Niagara by winter; though he must have realized the worthlessness of the campaign when his messengers sent to the Illinois were ambushed.
BOUQUET
When Bouquet heard of the sham peace he was furious and repudiated Bradstreet's treaty in toto. Bouquet was a veteran of the great war, and knew bushfighting from seven years' experience on Pennsylvania frontiers. Slowly, with his fifteen hundred rangers and five hundred Highlanders, express riders keeping the trail open from fort to fort, scouts to fore, Bouquet moved along the old army trail used by Forbes to reach Fort Pitt. Friendly Indians had been warned to keep green branches as signals in the muzzles of their guns. All others were to be shot without mercy. Indians vanished before his march like mist before the sun. August 5 found Bouquet south of Fort Pitt at a place known as Bushy Run. The scouts had gone ahead to prepare nooning for the army at the Run. In seven hours the men had marched seventeen miles spite of sweltering heat; but at one, just as the thirsty columns were nearing the rest place, the crack—crack—crack of rifle shots to the fore set every man's blood jumping. From quick march they broke to a run, priming guns, ball in mouth as they ran. A moment later the old trick of Braddock's ambush was being repeated, but this time the Indians were dealing with a seasoned man. Bouquet swung his fighters in a circle round the stampeding horses and provision wagons. The heat was terrific, the men almost mad with thirst, the horses neighing and plunging and breaking away to the woods; and the army stood, a red-coated, tartan-plaid target for invisible foes! By this time the men were fighting as Indians fight—breaking ranks, jumping from tree to tree. It is n't easy to keep men standing as targets when they can't get at the foe; but Bouquet, riding from place to place, kept his men in hand till darkness screened them. Sixty had fallen. A circular barricade was built of flour bags. Inside this the wounded were laid, and the army camped without water. The agonies of that night need not be told. Here the neighing of horses would bring down a clatter of bullets aimed in the dark; and the groans of the wounded, trampled by the stampeding cavalcade, would mingle with the screams of terror from the horses. The night continued hot almost as day in the sultry forest, and the thirst with both man and beast became anguish. Another such day and another such night, and Bouquet could foresee his fate would be worse than Braddock's. Passing from man to man, he gave the army their instructions for the next day. They would form in three platoons, with the center battalion advanced to the fore, as if to lead attack. Suddenly the center was to feign defeat and turn as if in panic flight. It was to be guessed that the Indians would pursue headlong. Instantly the flank battalions were to sweep through the woods in wide circle and close in on the rear of the savages. Then the fleeing center was to turn. The savages would be surrounded. Daybreak came with a cracking of shots from ambush. Officers and men carried out instructions exactly as Bouquet had planned. At ten o'clock the center column broke ranks, wavered, turned, … fled in wild panic! With the whooping of a wolf pack in full cry, the savages burst from ambush in pursuit. The sides deployed. A moment later the center had turned to fight the pursuer, and the Highlanders broke from the woods, yelling their slogan, with broadswords cutting a terrible hand-to-hand swath. Sixty Indians were slashed to death in as many seconds. Though the British lost one hundred and fifteen, killed and wounded, the Indians were in full flight, blind terror at their heels. The way was now open to Port Pitt, but Bouquet did not dally inside the palisades. On down the Ohio he pursued the panic-stricken savages, pausing neither for deputies nor reënforcements. At Muskingum Creek the Indians sent back the old men to sue, sue abjectedly, for peace at any cost.
Bouquet met them with the stern front that never fails to win respect. They need not palm off their lie that the fault lay with the foolish young warriors. If the old chiefs would not control the young braves, then the whole tribe, the whole Indian race, must pay the penalty. In terror the deputies hung their heads. He would not even discuss the terms of peace, Bouquet declared, till the Indians restored every captive,—man, woman, and child, even the child of Indian parentage born in captivity. The captives must be given suitable clothing, horses, and presents. Twelve days only would he permit them to gather the captives. If man, woman, or child were lacking on the twelfth day, he would pursue them and punish them to the uttermost ends of earth.
The Indians were dumfounded. These were not soft words. Not thus had the French spoken, with the giving of manifold presents. But powder was exhausted. No more was coming from the French traders of the Mississippi. Winter was approaching, and the Indians must hunt or starve. Again the coureurs are sent spurring the woods from tribe to tribe with wampum belts, but this time the belts are the white bands of peace. While Bouquet waits he sends back over the trail for hospital nurses to receive the captives, and the army is set knocking up rude barracks of log and thatch in the wilderness. Then the captives begin to come. It is a scene for the brush of artist, for all frontiersmen who have lost friends have rallied to Bouquet's camp, hoping against hope and afraid to hope. There is the mother, whose infant child has been snatched from her arms in some frontier attack, now scanning the lines as they come in, mad with hope and fear. There is the husband, whose wife has been torn away to some savage's tepee, searching, searching, searching among the sad, wild-eyed, ill-clad rabble for one with some resemblance to the wife he loved. There is the father seeking lost daughters and afraid of what he may find; and there are the captives themselves, some of the women demented from the abuse they have received. England may have spent her millions to protect her colonies, but she never spent in anguish what these rude frontiersmen suffered at Bouquet's camp.
