A copy of this document is preserved in the office of the secretary of state at Albany, among the papers procured in London by Mr. Brodhead.
[492] “It seems,” writes Sir William Johnson to the lords of trade, “as if the people were determined to bring on a new war, though their own ruin may be the consequence.”
[493] Doc. Hist. N. Y. II. 861-893, etc. MS. Johnson Papers. MS. Gage Papers.
[494] Carver says that Pontiac was killed in 1767. This may possibly be a mere printer’s error. In the Maryland Gazette, and also in the Pennsylvania Gazette, were published during the month of August, 1769, several letters from the Indian country, in which Pontiac is mentioned as having been killed during the preceding April. M. Chouteau states that, to the best of his recollection, the chief was killed in 1768; but oral testimony is of little weight in regard to dates. The evidence of the Gazettes appears conclusive.
[495] Carver, Travels, 166, says that Pontiac was stabbed at a public council in the Illinois, by “a faithful Indian who was either commissioned by one of the English governors, or instigated by the love he bore the English nation.” This account is without sufficient confirmation. Carver, who did not visit the Illinois, must have drawn his information from hearsay. The open manner of dealing with his victim, which he ascribes to the assassin, is wholly repugnant to Indian character and principles; while the gross charge, thrown out at random against an English governor, might of itself cast discredit on the story.
I have followed the account which I received from M. Pierre Chouteau, and from M. P. L. Cerré, another old inhabitant of the Illinois, whose father was well acquainted with Pontiac. The same account may be found, concisely stated, in Nicollet, p. 81. M. Nicollet states that he derived his information both from M. Chouteau and from the no less respectable authority of the aged Pierre Menard of Kaskaskia. The notices of Pontiac’s death in the provincial journals of the day, to a certain extent, confirm this story. We gather from them, that he was killed at the Illinois, by one or more Kaskaskia Indians, during a drunken frolic, and in consequence of his hostility to the English. One letter, however, states on hearsay that he was killed near Fort Chartres; and Gouin’s traditional account seems to support the statement. On this point, I have followed the distinct and circumstantial narrative of Chouteau, supported as it is by Cerré. An Ottawa tradition declares that Pontiac took a Kaskaskia wife, with whom he had a quarrel, and she persuaded her two brothers to kill him.
I am indebted to the kindness of my friend Mr. Lyman C. Draper for valuable assistance in my inquiries in relation to Pontiac’s death.
[496] “This murder, which roused the vengeance of all the Indian tribes friendly to Pontiac, brought about the successive wars, and almost total extermination, of the Illinois nation.”—Nicollet, 82.
“The Kaskaskias, Peorias, Cahokias, and Illonese are nearly all destroyed by the Sacs and Foxes, for killing in cool blood, and in time of peace, the Sac’s chief, Pontiac.”—Mass. Hist. Coll. Second Series, II. 8.
The above extract exhibits the usual confusion of Indian names, the Kaskaskias, Peorias, and Cahokias being component tribes of the Illonese or Illinois nation. Pontiac is called a chief of the Sacs. This, with similar mistakes, may easily have arisen from the fact that he was accustomed to assume authority over the warriors of any tribe with whom he chanced to be in contact.