The Old Northwest | Page 6

tide of English invasion was
rolled back at once, all would be lost. The colonial farmers would push
in after the soldiers; the forests would be cut away; the hunting-grounds
would be destroyed; the native population would be driven away or
enslaved. In the silence of his wigwam he thought out a plan of action,
and by the closing weeks of 1762 he was ready. Never was plot more
shrewdly devised and more artfully carried out.
During the winter of 1762-63 his messengers passed stealthily from
nation to nation throughout the whole western country, bearing the
pictured wampum belts and the reddened tomahawks which
symbolized war; and in April, 1763, the Lake tribes were summoned to
a great council on the banks of the Ecorces, below Detroit, where
Pontiac in person proclaimed the will of the Master of Life as revealed
to the Delaware prophet, and then announced the details of his plan.
Everywhere the appeal met with approval; and not only the scores of
Algonquin peoples, but also the Seneca branch of the Iroquois
confederacy and a number of tribes on the lower Mississippi, pledged
themselves with all solemnity to fulfill their prophet's injunction "to
drive the dogs which wear red clothing into the sea." While keen-eyed
warriors sought to keep up appearances by lounging about the forts and
begging in their customary manner for tobacco, whiskey, and
gunpowder, every wigwam and forest hamlet from Niagara to the
Mississippi was astir. Dusky maidens chanted the tribal war-songs, and
in the blaze of a hundred camp-fires chiefs and warriors performed the
savage pantomime of battle.
A simultaneous attack, timed by a change of the moon, was to be made
on the English forts and settlements throughout all the western country.
Every tribe was to fall upon the settlement nearest at hand, and
afterwards all were to combine--with French aid, it was confidently
believed--in an assault on the seats of English power farther east. The
honor of destroying the most important of the English strongholds,
Detroit, was reserved for Pontiac himself.
The date fixed for the rising was the 7th of May. Six days in advance

Pontiac with forty of his warriors appeared at the fort, protested
undying friendship for the Great Father across the water, and insisted
on performing the calumet dance before the new commandant, Major
Gladwyn. This aroused no suspicion. But four days later a French
settler reported that his wife, when visiting the Ottawa village to buy
venison, had observed the men busily filing off the ends of their
gunbarrels; and the blacksmith at the post recalled the fact that the
Indians had lately sought to borrow files and saws without being able to
give a plausible explanation of the use they intended to make of the
implements.
The English traveler Jonathan Carver, who visited the post five years
afterwards, relates that an Ottawa girl with whom Major Gladwyn had
formed an attachment betrayed the plot. Though this story is of
doubtful authenticity, there is no doubt that, in one way or another, the
commandant was amply warned that treachery was in the air. The
sounds of revelry from the Indian camps, the furtive glances of the
redskins lounging about the settlement, the very tension of the
atmosphere, would have been enough to put an experienced Indian
fighter on his guard.
Accordingly when, on the fated morning, Pontiac and sixty redskins,
carrying under long blankets their shortened muskets, appeared before
the fort and asked admission, they were taken aback to find the whole
garrison under arms. On their way from the gate to the council house
they were obliged to march literally between rows of glittering steel.
Well might even Pontiac falter. With uneasy glances, the party crowded
into the council room, where Gladwyn and his officers sat waiting.
"Why," asked the chieftain stolidly, "do I see so many of my father's
young men standing in the street with their guns?" "To keep them in
training," was the laconic reply.
The scene that was planned was then carried out, except in one vital
particular. When, in the course of his speech professing strong
attachment to the English, the chieftain came to the point where he was
to give the signal for slaughter by holding forth the wampum belt of
peace inverted, he presented the emblem--to the accompaniment of a
significant clash of arms and roll of drums from the mustered garrison
outside--in the normal manner; and after a solemn warning from the
commandant that vengeance would follow any act of aggression, the

council broke up. To the forest leader's equivocal announcement that he
would bring all of his wives and children in a few days to shake hands
with their English fathers, Gladwyn deigned no reply.
Balked in his plans, the chief retired, but only to meditate fresh
treachery;