The soldiers looked from their loopholes, thinking to see their assailants gathering for a rush against the feeble barrier. But in this they were agreeably disappointed. For though their clamors filled the air, and their guns blazed thick and hot, while the bullets pelted the fort with leaden hail, yet very few were visible. Some were sheltered behind barns and fences, some skulked among bushes, others lay flat in hollows of the ground while those who could find no shelter were leaping about with the agility of monkeys, to render it impossible for the marksmen at the fort to hit them. Each had filled his mouth with bullets, for the convenience of loading, and each was charging and firing without suspending these swift movements for a moment.
At the end of six hours the assailants grew weary and withdrew. It was found that only five men had been wounded in the fort, while the cautious enemy had sustained but trifling loss.
Gladwyn, believing the affair ended, dispatched La Butte, a neutral interpreter, accompanied by two old Canadians, Chapeton and Godefroy, to open negotiations. Many other Canadian inhabitants took this opportunity of leaving the place.
Pontiac received the three ambassadors politely, and heard their offers of peace with seeming acquiescence. He, however, stepped aside to talk the matter over with the other chiefs, after which Pontiac declared that, out of their earnest desire for a lasting treaty, they wished to hold council with their English fathers themselves, and they were especially desirous that Major Campbell, the veteran officer, second in command at the fort, should visit their camp.
When the word reached Campbell he prepared at once to go, in spite of Gladwyn's fears of treachery. He felt, he said, no fear of the Indians, with whom he had always been on the most friendly terms. Gladwyn, with some hesitation, gave a reluctant consent. Campbell left the fort accompanied by Lieutenant McDougal, and attended by La Butte and several other Canadians. A Canadian met them and warned the two British officers they were entering the lion's den, but the brave men refused to turn back.
As they entered the Indian camp a howling multitude of women and children surrounded them, armed with clubs, sticks and stones. But Pontiac, with a word and a gesture, quelled the mob, and conducted them to the council-house, where they were surrounded by sinister faces. Campbell made his speech. It was heard in perfect silence, and no reply was made. For a full hour the unfortunate officers saw before them the same concourse of dark faces bending an unwavering gaze upon them. At last Campbell rose to go. Pontiac made an imperious gesture for him to resume his seat. "My father," said he, "will sleep to-night in the lodges of his red children." The gray-haired soldier and his companion were captives.
Many of the Indians were eager to kill the captives on the spot; but Pontiac protected them from injury and insult, and conducted them to the house of M. Meloche, near Parent's creek, where good quarters were assigned them, and as much liberty allowed as was consistent with safe custody. The peril of their situation was diminished by the circumstance that two Indians had been detained at the fort as prisoners, for some slight offense, a few days prior to this, and it is quite possible Pontiac designed to effect an exchange.
Late the same night La Butte returned with anxious face to the fort. Some of the officers suspected him, no doubt unjustly, with a share in the treachery. Feeling the suspicion, he spent the remainder of the night in the narrow street, gloomy and silent.
Thatcher informs us concerning these two prisoners that McDougal effected his escape, "but Major Campbell was tomahawked by an infuriated savage named Wasson, in revenge for the death of a relative. One account says 'they boiled his heart and ate it, and made a pouch of the skin of his arms!' The brutal assassin fled to Saginaw, apprehensive of the vengeance of Pontiac; and it is but justice to the memory of that chieftain to say that he was indignant at the atrocious act and used every possible exertion to apprehend the murderer. Doubtless had he been captured the chief would have inflicted the death penalty."
It is said that the wily chieftain found out in some manner that the Ojibway maiden, Catharine, disclosed the plot to Gladwyn, and ordered four Indians to take her and bring her before him. The order was promptly obeyed, according to the diary of a Canadian who was contemporary, and having arrived at the Pottawatomie village, they seized Catharine "and obliged her to march before them, uttering cries of joy in the manner they do when they hold a victim in their clutches on whom they are going to exercise their cruelty; they made her enter the fort, and took her before the commandant (Gladwyn), as if to confront her with him, and asked him if it was not from her he had learned their design; but they were no better satisfied than if they had kept themselves quiet. They obtained from that officer bread and beer for themselves and for her. They then led her to their chief (Pontiac) in the village."