Thus basely terminated the career of the warrior whose great natural endowments made him the greatest of his race, but his memory is still cherished by the remnant of the tribes who felt the power of his influence.
The body was soon found, and the village became a pandemonium of howling savages. His few friends seized their arms to wreak vengeance on the perpetrator of the murder, but the Illinois, interposing in behalf of their countryman, drove them from the town. Foiled in their attempt to obtain retribution they fled to the tribes over whom Pontiac had held sway, to spread the tidings and call them to avenge his murder. Meanwhile St. Ange procured the body of his guest, and mindful of his former friendship, buried it with warlike honors near the fort under his command at St. Louis.
A war of extermination was declared against the abettors of this crime. Swarms of Ottawas, Sacs, Foxes, Pottawatomies and other northern tribes who had been fired by the eloquence, or led to victory by the martyred chief, descended on the prairies of Illinois, and whole villages and tribes were extirpated to appease his shade.
It was at this time that the famous "Starved Rock" took its expressive but unpoetical name. It is a rocky bluff about six miles below the beautiful city of Ottawa, Illinois, named after the tribe of which Pontiac was head chief. The great rock overhangs the sluggish Illinois river on the left bank, and is about one hundred and twenty-five feet high and inaccessible except by a narrow and difficult path in the rear. Its top is nearly an acre in extent. Here La Salle and Tonty built a palisade, which they named Fort St. Louis, and collected at its base about twenty thousand Indians, whom they formed into a defensive league against the encroachments of the dreaded Iroquois.
Tradition states, that in the war of extermination which followed the cold-blooded and unprovoked murder of Pontiac in time of peace, a remnant of the Illinois Indians made their last stand at this famous stronghold. Here they were besieged by a vastly superior force of Pottawatomies. But the besieged knew that a few warriors could defend this rock against a host, and defied their enemies for a time and kept them at bay. Hunger and thirst, more formidable enemies, however, soon accomplished what the foe was unable to effect. Their small quantity of provisions quickly failed, and their supply of water was stopped by the enemy severing the cords of rawhide attached to the vessels by which they elevated it from the river below. Thus environed by relentless foes, they took a last lingering look at their beautiful hunting grounds, spread out like a panorama on the gently rolling river and slowly gave way to despair.
Charles Lanman says of this tragic event, "Day followed day, and the last lingering hope was abandoned. Their destiny was sealed, and no change for good could possibly take place, for the human bloodhounds that watched their prey were utterly without mercy. The feeble white-haired chief crept into a thicket and breathed his last. The recently strong warrior, uttering a protracted but feeble yell of exultation, hurled his tomahawk at some fiend below and then yielded himself up to the pains of his condition. The blithe form of the soft-eyed youth parted with his strength, and was compelled to totter and fall upon the earth and die. Ten weary, weary days passed on, and the strongest man and the last of his tribe was numbered with the dead."
Years afterward their bones were seen whitening on the summit of this lofty fortress, known since as "Starved Rock."
All this horrible torture and slaughter was because a brutal English Indian trader (and most of them were brutal) bribed an Indian already drunk on the whisky he had supplied, to murder probably one of the greatest warriors and rulers of all history, considering his environment.
"But," as Parkman, the great chieftain's biographer, strikingly says, "Could his shade have revisited the scene of murder, his savage spirit would have exulted in the vengeance which overwhelmed the abettors of the crime. Tradition has but faintly preserved the memory of the event and its only annalists, men who held the intestine feuds of the savage tribes in no more account than the quarrels of panthers or wildcats, have left but a meager record. Yet enough remains to tell us that over the grave of Pontiac more blood was poured out in atonement than flowed from the hecatombs of slaughtered heroes on the corpse of Patroelus.