Meanwhile the condition of the garrison at Detroit was becoming desperate. Both ammunition and food were becoming exhausted, many of the defenders were wounded or sick, and each day seemed to add to the strength of the savage besiegers. On the morning of June 30th, seven weeks after the beginning of the siege, a large number of boats flying the English flag were seen coming up the river. Joy gave place to horror when it was seen that these boats were filled with Indians and with white prisoners, the latter being those who were captured at Point Pelee. While these savage victors had been making their way westward, Lieutenant Cuyler and his handful of fugitives were on their way to Niagara, where they brought news of the destruction of Fort Sandusky and of the possible fate of Detroit. At Fort Niagara was the armed schooner Gladwin, named after the defender of Detroit, and on July 21st, she sailed for the besieged fort carrying with her supplies and a reinforcement of sixty men. On the night of the 23d, while the schooner was lying becalmed between Fighting Island and the mainland in the Detroit River, she was attacked by the Indians, who were completely repulsed. For several days, while slowly making her way up the river against headwinds and current, the cannon of the Gladwin spread consternation and havoc among the savages along the shores. Late in July, Captain Dalzell arrived with a score of barges, bringing cannon, ammunition, supplies, and an additional force of three hundred men. Pontiac, however, was still hopeful of success. His force had been increased by more than a thousand warriors, and this fact led to the sending of another reinforcement from Fort Niagara. Six hundred regulars under the command of Major Wilkins left late in September. Near Pointe-aux-Pins they encountered a terrific gale on Lake Erie in which seventy men and three officers besides an immense amount of stores and ammunition were lost, a calamity which compelled the survivors to return to Niagara. Winter brought partial relief to Detroit. The great number of Pontiac’s warriors made the struggle for subsistence a hard one and with the coming of the cold months the tribes separated to keep from starvation, leaving only a part of their fighting men to maintain the siege, thus removing for the time being the immediate danger of the capture and massacre of the garrison.
During the winter that followed, the English prepared to begin a campaign in the spring of a magnitude heretofore unknown among the wilderness tribes. The daring and confidence of the Indians were becoming more and more menacing. On September 14th, one of the most terrible massacres of the Lake country occurred at Devil’s Hole, three miles below Niagara Falls. The Devil’s Hole is now visited by thousands of tourists each year, but probably not one in a hundred knows of the bloody conflict that gave it its name. On that day, a convoy of soldiers were returning to Fort Niagara from Fort Schlosser, and in the gloomy chasm of the “Hole,” which leads from the bluffs above down to the river, a party of ambushed Senecas were awaiting them. Unaware of their danger, the soldiers came within a few rods of the ambush, and in the massacre that followed all but three of the total number of twenty-four were killed. A strong force from Niagara came to give the Indians battle and was completely defeated, losing about twoscore of its men.
The English were now practically wiped out of the Lake country, with the exception of along the Niagara and at Detroit, and the investment at the latter place threatened to be successful unless prompt steps were taken for the relief of the fort with an overwhelming force. It was not until August of the following year that a force sufficiently powerful for the campaign was gathered at Fort Schlosser. With three thousand men, General Bradstreet set out in bateaux to first strike a blow at the Indians along Lake Erie. Instead of fighting, however, the Ohio tribes were anxious to make peace with the invaders, and after a few skirmishes and many promises on the part of the Indians, Bradstreet reached Detroit. The long siege, which had existed for more than a year, was broken, treaties of peace were signed with many Indian tribes, and the English again secured possession at Michilimackinac, Green Bay, and Sault Ste. Marie. But Pontiac was irreconciliable and, like Robert Bruce of old, fled into the West with a few of his followers to await another opportunity to swoop down upon his enemies.
The Monument Erected to those who Fought and Died on Mackinac Island.
But the balance of fate still seemed to be with the untamed children of the wilderness, for Bradstreet’s return to Fort Niagara was marked by disasters sufficient to offset much that he had achieved. At Rocky River, near Cleveland, he was caught in a terrific gale and met a fate similar to that which had overtaken Major Wilkins in the preceding September. In the rush for shore, twenty-five of his bateaux, six cannon, and a great quantity of his baggage and ammunition were lost, together with scores of his men. The force was now divided, a part of it to make its way through the wilderness, and the remainder to travel in the uninjured bateaux. Bradstreet reached Niagara on November 4th, but for twelve weeks the land force fought its way through tangles of forest and swamp, fighting, starving, and dying of disease and exposure. The number of those who were lost in the storm and in this overland march has never been recorded, but it was so large as to occasion petitions to the government, which was an unusual thing in those days of war and carnage. From that day to this, at various times, Lake Erie has given up relics of the lost fleets of Major Wilkins and General Bradstreet in portions of old bateaux, gun-flints, musket-barrels, bayonets, cannon balls, and other objects. At one time, when a sandbar at the mouth of the Rocky River changed its position, a vast quantity of these relics were revealed, showing that one of the lost bateaux had sunk there and had been uncovered after a lapse of many generations.
For a number of years after the subjugation of the Indian tribes, the peace of the Lakes was disturbed only by the rivalries of the fur-traders and unimportant skirmishes with the savages. The era of warships on the Inland Seas had now begun, and by the time the Revolutionary War broke out, they were patrolled by quite a number of armed vessels bearing the flag of England. The Lakes were destined to play but a small part in the struggle for independence, however, and the most tragic event of these years upon them was the loss in a storm of the British ship Ontario, of twenty-two guns, which went down between Niagara and Oswego with her entire crew and more than a hundred of the 8th King’s Own Regiment. At this time, Spain was scheming to gain a foothold in the Lake regions, and, in 1781, a force under Don Eugenio Purre left St. Louis in the depth of winter and captured the English fort at St. Joseph. For only a few hours the flag of Spain floated over the Lake country, Don Eugenio’s scheme being merely to secure a “claim” to the regions, and once his banner had risen triumphantly above the captured fort he abandoned his position and retreated to St. Louis.
Several times during the Revolutionary War it was proposed that an attempt be made to capture Detroit, but no efforts were made in this direction, so that when peace was declared and the colonies were granted their independence, England still remained in possession of the Great Lakes. It was not until 1796 that the line of forts along their shores were surrendered into the hands of the Americans. On July 4th of that year, Forts Niagara, Lewiston, and Schlosser floated for the first time in history the banner of the new nation, and a week later, Captain Moses Porter raised the same emblem above Detroit. Thus after having been the stage of almost ceaseless war for more than a century and a half did it seem that peace had at last come to the Great Lakes regions. Yet were the clouds already gathering which a few years later were to burst forth in another storm of blood along the shores and upon the waters of the Inland Seas.