And in associations, too, how different, though the circumstances were not unlike! This Indian Fabius, this Pontiac, wary and brave, and unbroken by defeat, fighting for his own land against a swarm of invaders, has had no poet, no historian to immortalise him, else all this ground over which I now tread had been as classical as the shores of Thrasymene.
As they have called Tecumseh the Indian Napoleon, they might style Pontiac the Indian Alexander—I do not mean him of Russia, but the Greek. Here, for instance, is a touch of magnanimity quite in the Alexander-the-great style. Pontiac, before the commencement of the war, had provided for the safety of a British officer, Major Rogers by name, who was afterwards employed to relieve Detroit, when besieged by the Indians. On this occasion he sent Pontiac a present of a bottle of brandy, to show he had not forgotten his former obligations to him. Those who were around the Indian warrior when the present arrived, particularly some Frenchmen, warned him not to taste it, as it might be poisoned. Pontiac instantly took a draught from it, saying, as he put the bottle to his lips, that "it was not in the power of Major Rogers to hurt him who had so lately saved his life." I think this story is no unworthy pendant to that of Alexander and his physician.
But what avails it all! who knows or cares about Pontiac and his Ottawas?
"Vain was the chief's, the warrior's pride! He had no poet—and he died!"
If I dwell on these horrid and obscure conflicts, it is partly to amuse the languid idle hours of convalescence, partly to inspire you with some interest for the localities around me:—and I may as well, while the pen is in my hand, give you the conclusion of the story.
Pontiac carried on the war with so much talent, courage, and resources, that the British government found it necessary to send a considerable force against him. General Bradstreet came up here with three thousand men, wasting the lands of the Miami and Wyandot Indians, "burning their villages, and destroying their corn-fields;" and I pray you to observe that in all the accounts of our expeditions against the Indians, as well as those of the Americans under General Wayne and General Harrison, mention is made of the destruction of corn-fields (plantations of Indian corn) to a great extent, which show that some attention must have been paid to agriculture, even by these wild hunting tribes. I find mention also of a very interesting and beautiful tradition connected with these regions. To the east of the Detroit territory, there was settled from ancient times a band of Wyandots or Hurons, who were called the neutral nation; they never took part in the wars and conflicts of the other tribes. They had two principal villages, which were like the cities of refuge among the Israelites; whoever fled there from an enemy found a secure and inviolable sanctuary. If two enemies from tribes long at deadly variance met there, they were friends while standing on that consecrated ground. To what circumstances this extraordinary institution owed its existence is not known. It was destroyed after the arrival of the French in the country—not by them, but by some national and internal feud.
But to return to Pontiac. With all his talents, he could not maintain a standing or permanent army, such a thing being contrary to all the Indian usages, and quite incompatible with their mode of life. His warriors fell away from him every season, and departed to their hunting grounds to provide food for their families. The British pressed forward, took possession of their whole country, and the tribes were obliged to beg for peace. Pontiac disdained to take any part in these negotiations, and retired to the Illinois, where he was murdered, from some motive of private animosity, by a Peoria Indian. The Ottawas, Chippewas, and Pottowottomies, who had been allied under his command, thought it incumbent on them to avenge his death, and nearly exterminated the whole nation of the Peorias—and this was the life and the fall of Pontiac.
The name of this great chief is commemorated in that of a flourishing village, or rising town, about twenty miles west of Detroit, which is called Pontiac, as one of the townships in Upper Canada is styled Tecumseh: thus literally illustrating those beautiful lines in Mrs. Sigourney's poem on Indian names:—
"Their memory liveth on your hills, Their baptism on your shore; Your everlasting rivers speak Their dialect of yore!"
For rivers, bearing their old Indian names, we have here the Miami, the Huron, the Sandusky: but most of the points of land, rivers, islands, &c., bear the French appellations, as Point Pelée, River au Glaize, River des Canards, Gros-Isle, &c.