lationship with the Indian tribes. The possession of Canada and the establishment of the French posts along the southern shores of the Great Lakes and on the inland rivers brought the Frenchmen into close touch with the forest life of the native savage. The Frenchmen, moreover, were tradesmen going and coming as adventure or commerce dictated, and with the Gallic facility of manner and pliability of temperament they readily made friends with the red men of the forest. They gave them presents, flattered and amused them. Their missionaries, too, brought religion, aid and sympathy to the superstitious natives. The French adventurers, moreover, of easy habits, often made. love to the dusky maidens of the tribes, sometimes married them and in an apt and adroit manner adapted themselves to the wild life of the tribesmen. With the British it was far otherwise. The Anglo-Saxon displayed "no such phenomena of mingling races." Cold, sturdy, indomitable, the Briton came for a serious purpose and he came to stay. He settled to cultivate the land for agriculture and for the establishment of permanent homes. The Indian, by contract and intuition, therefore rightly decided that he had more to fear from the emigrants from England than from the volatile and more complacent invaders from France. The defeat of Braddock and the ignominious flight of his soldiers strengthened the idea of the Indian that the Frenchman was the more agile and courageous and in the end would be conqueror. It is not the province of this article to follow the varying fortunes of the French and Indian war. It was prosecuted for five succeeding years with the full energy of both nations. The earlier years were unpropitious to the British, but in the year 1758 the tide began to turn and the culmination was reached in that memorable encounter on the Plains of Abraham before Quebec. It was September 13, 1759, that the invincible Wolfe led his British forces against the French under the intrepid Montcalm. Both leaders fell in that contest and the "rock-built citadel of Canada passed forever from the hands of its ancient masters." The Hurons of Lorette, the Abenakis, and other tribes. domiciled in Canada, ranged themselves on the side of France throughout the war. The numerous tribes of the remote west had also, with few exceptions, been the active allies of the French. The conquest of Canada left the Indians of the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys subject to British domination. The Red men were repulsed but not conquered. They were scattered over a vast territory, their total number between the Mississippi on the west, the Ocean on the east, between the Ohio on the south and the Great Lakes on the north, was probably not in excess of two hundred thousand and their fighting warriors not more than ten thousand.* Fort Duquesne was in November, 1758, captured from the French by the British forces under Gen. John Forbes. The military posts of the French in the east, on the waters of Lake Erie and the Alleghany, viz., Presqu' Isle, Le Boeuf and Venango, passed into the hands of the British soon after the taking of Fort Dequesne. Most of the western forts were transferred to the English, during the autumn of 1760; but the extreme western settlements on the Illinois, viz., Forts Ouatanon, Vincennes, Kaskaskia, Chartres and Cahokia remained several years longer under French control. In the fall of 1760 Major Robert Rogers was directed by the then British commander, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, to traverse the great lakes with a detachment of provincial troops and, in the name of England, take possession of Detroit, Michillimackinac and the other western forts included in the surrender of the French. Major Rogers with two hundred rangers left Montreal, ascended the St. Lawrence, crossed lakes Ontario and Erie and reached the mouth of the Cuyahoga on the 7th of November. No body of troops under the British flag had ever before penetrated so far west on the lakes. Rogers and his men encamped in the neighboring forest. Shortly after their arrival a party of Indian chiefs and warriors appeared at the * Estimate of William Johnson in 1763; Iroquois 1,950; Delawares 600; Shawnees 300; Wyandots 450; Miamis and Kickapoos 800; Ottawas, Ojibwas and other wandering tribes of the Northwest "defy all efforts at enumeration." The British population in the colonies was then about 1,000,000; the French something like 100,000. +Rogers called this river Chocage. Roger's camp was on the present site of the City of Cleveland. camp and declared they were envoys from Pontiac, "ruler of all that country," and demanded in his name, that the British soldiers "should advance no further" until they had conferred with the great chief, who was rapidly approaching. That same day Pontiac himself appeared; and "it is here," says Parkman, "for the first time, that this remarkable man stands forth distinctly on the page of history." The 'place and date of birth of Pontiac are both matters of dispute. There seems to be no doubt that he was the son of an Ottawa chief; his mother is variously stated to have been an Ojibwa, a Miami, and a Sac. Preponderance of evidence, as the lawyers say, seems to favor the Ojibwas. Authorities also vary as to the date of his nativity from 1712 to 1720.* Historical writers usually content themselves with the vague statement that he was born "on the Ottawa river" without designating which Ottawa river, for many were so called; indeed, the Ottawas were in the habit of calling every stream upon which they sojourned any length of time, Ottawa, after their own tribe. The Miami Chief Richardville is on record as often asserting that Pontiac was born by the Maumee at the mouth of the Auglaize.† In any event Pontiac, like his great successor, the incomparable Shawanee chief, Tecumseh, was a native of Ohio. The Ottawas, Ojibwas and the Pottawattamies had formed. a sort of alliance of which Pontiac was the virtual head. He was of a despotic and commanding temperament, and he wielded practical authority among all the tribes of the Illinois country, and was known to all the Indian nations of America. Pontiac, conscious of his power and position, haughtily asked Major Rogers, "What his business was in that country," and how he dared enter it without Pontiac's permission. Rogers informed the chief that * Parkman says he was about fifty years old when he met Major Rogers, which was in 1760. Chief Richardville also asserted that Pontiac was born of an Ottawa father and a Miami mother. The probability of this tradition is followed by Knapp in his History of the Maumee Valley and accepted by Dr. C. E. Slocum of Defiance, a very careful and reliable authority. Dodge in Redmen of the Ohio Valley says some claimed Pontiac was a Catawba prisoner, adopted into the Ottawa tribe. the war was over, the French defeated, the country surrendered to the British, and he was on his way to receive the posts from the French occupiers. Pontiac was wily and diplomatic. He received the news stolidly, reserved his answer till next morning, when his reply was that as he desired to live in peace with the British, he would let them remain in his country as long as "they treated him with due respect and deference." Both parties smoked the calumet and protested friendship. Rogers proceeded on his errand. On November 29, 1760, the French garrison at Detroit transferred that historic and most important western station to British possession.* The stormy season prevented Rogers from advancing farther. Michillimackinac and the three remoter posts of St. Marie, La Baye (Green Bay) and St. Joseph remained in the hands of the French until the next year. The interior posts of the Illinois country were also retained by the French, but the British conquest of America was completed. The victory of England and the transfer of the French strongholds to British commanders was a terrible and portentous blow to the Indian. He could not fail to foresee therein dire results to his race. His prophetic vision read the handwriting on the wall! Expressions and signs of discontent and apprehension began to be audible among the Indian tribes; "from the Potomac to Lake Superior, and from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, in every wigwam and hamlet of the forest, a deep-rooted hatred of the English increased with rapid growth." When the French occupied the military posts of the lakes and the rivers they freely supplied the neighboring Indians * Detroit was first settled by Cadillac, July 24, 1701 with fifty soldiers and fifty artisans and traders. So it had been the chief western stronghold of the French for 150 years. Detroit at this time (1760) contained about two thousand inhabitants. The center of the settlement was a fortified town, known as the Fort, to distinguish it from the dwellings scattered along the river banks. The Fort stood on the western bank of the river and contained about a hundred small wood houses with bark or thatch straw roofs. These primitive dwellings were packed closely together and surrounded and protected by a palisade about twenty-five feet high; at each corner was a wooden bastion and a blockhouse was erected over each gateway. The only public buildings in the enclosure were a council house, the barracks and a rude little church. |