which, remote as it was, was then esteemed one of the best constructed military works in America. Its ramparts of stone, garnished with twenty cannon, scowled across the encroaching Mississippi, destined, before many years, to ingulf curtain and bastion in its ravenous abyss.

St. Ange's position was by no means an enviable one. He had a critical part to play. On the one hand, he had been advised of the cession to the English, and ordered to yield up the country whenever they should arrive to claim it. On the other, he was beset by embassies from Pontiac, from the Shawanoes, and from the Miamis, and plagued day and night by an importunate mob of Illinois Indians, demanding arms, ammunition, and assistance against the common enemy. Perhaps, in his secret heart St. Ange would have rejoiced to see the scalps of all the Englishmen in the backwoods fluttering in the wind over the Illinois wigwams; but his situ ation forbade him to comply with the solicitations of his intrusive petitioners, and it is to be hoped that some sense of honor and humanity enforced the dictates of prudence. Accordingly, he cajoled them with flatteries and promises, and from time to time distributed a few presents to stay their importunity, still praying daily that the English might appear and relieve him from his uneasy dilemma.1

While Laclede was founding St. Louis, while the discontented settlers of the Illinois were deserting their homes, and while St. Ange was laboring to pacify his Indian neighbors, all the tribes from the Maumee to the Mississippi were in a turmoil of

1 MS. Letter-St. Ange to D'Abbadie, Sept. 9.

excitement. Pontiac was among them, furious as a wild beast at bay. By the double campaign of 1764, his best hopes had been crushed to the earth; but he stood unshaken amidst the ruin, and still struggled with desperate energy to retrieve his broken cause. On the side of the northern lakes, the movements of Bradstreet had put down the insurrection of the tribes, and wrested back the military posts which cunning and treachery had placed within their grasp. In the south, Bouquet had forced to abject submission the warlike Delawares and Shawanoes, the warriors on whose courage and obstinacy Pontiac had grounded his strongest confidence. On every hand defeat and disaster were closing around him. One sanctuary alone remained, the country of the Illinois. Here the flag of France still floated on the banks of the Mississippi, and here no English foot had dared to penetrate. He resolved to invoke all his resources, and bend all his energies to defend this last citadel.1

1 By the following extract from an official paper, signed by Captain Grant, and forwarded from Detroit, it appears that Pontiac still retained, or professed to retain, his original designs against the garrison of Detroit. The paper has no date, but was apparently written in the autumn of 1764. By a note appended to it, we are told that the Baptiste Campau referred to was one of those who had acted as Pontiac's secretaries during the summer of 1763.

"On Tuesday last Mr. Jadeau told me, in the presence of Col. Gladwin & Lieut. Hay of the 6th Regiment, that one Lesperance, a Frenchman, on his way to the Illinois, he saw a letter with the Ottawas, at the Miamee River, he is sure wrote by one Baptist Campau, (a deserter from the

settlement of Detroit,) & signed by Pontiac, from the Illinois, setting forth that there were five hundred English coming to the Illinois, & that they, the Ottawas, must have patience; that he, Pontiac, was not to return until he had defeated the English, and then he would come with an army from the Illinois to take Detroit, which he desired they might publish to all the nations about. That powder & ball was in as great plenty as water. That the French Commissary La Cleff had sold above forty thousand weight of powder to the inhabitants, that the English if they came there might not have it.

"There was another letter on the subject sent to an inhabitant of Detroit, but he can't tell in whose hands it is."

The fur

He was not left to contend unaided. trading French, living at the settlements on the Mississippi, scattered about the forts of Ouatanon, Vincennes, and Miami, or domesticated among the Indians of the Rivers Illinois and Wabash, dreaded the English as dangerous competitors in their vocation, and were eager to bar them from the country. They lavished abuse and calumny on the objects of their jealousy, and spared no falsehood which ingenious malice and self-interest could suggest. They gave out that the English were bent on the ruin of the tribes, and to that end were stirring them up to mutual hostility. They insisted that, though the armies of France had been delayed so long, they were nevertheless on their way, and that the bayonets of the white-coated warriors would soon glitter among the forests of the Mississippi. Forged letters were sent to Pontiac, signed by the King of France, exhorting him to stand his ground but a few weeks longer, and all would then be well. To give the better coloring to their falsehoods, some of these incendiaries assumed the uniform of French officers, and palmed themselves off upon their credulous auditors as ambassadors from the king. Many of the principal traders distributed among the warriors supplies of arms and ammunition, in some instances given gratuitously, and in others sold on credit, with the understanding that payment should be made from the plunder of the English.'

1 MS. Gage Papers. MS. Johnson Papers. Croghan, Journal. Hildreth, Pioneer History, 68. Examination of Gershom Hicks, see Penn. Gaz. No. 1846.

Hicks was an English miscreant,

naturalized among the Indians. In the autumn of 1764, he accompanied a war-party against the frontier, and volunteered to come as a spy to Fort Pitt, to ascertain the possibility of taking scalps in the neighborhood.

Now that the insurrection in the east was quelled, and the Delawares and Shawanoes beaten into submission, it was thought that the English would lose no time in taking full possession of the country, which, by the peace of 1763, had been transferred into their hands. Two principal routes would give access to the Illinois. Troops might advance from the south, up the great natural highway of the Mississippi, or they might descend from the east by way of Fort Pitt and the Ohio. In either case, to meet and repel them was the determined the determined purpose of Pontiac.

When we last took leave of him, he was on the River Maumee, whither he had retired with his chosen adherents, on the approach of Bradstreet's army, and where, by successive tidings, he learned the humiliation of his allies, and the triumph of his enemies. Towards the close of autumn, he left his encampment, and, followed by four hundred warriors,

He was detected, seized, and examined, and the information he gave proved authentic.

Johnson's letters to the Board of Trade, in the early part of 1765, contain constant references to the sinister conduct of the Illinois French. The commander-in-chief is still more bitter in his invectives, and seems to think that French officers of the crown were concerned in these practices, as well as the traders. If we may judge, however, from the correspondence of St. Ange and his subordinates, they may be acquitted of the charge of any active interference in the matter.

to the Illinois, where he met with Pondiac; and that then their fathers, the French, told them, if they would be strong, and keep the English out of the possession of that country but this summer, that the King of France would send over an army next spring, to assist his children, the Indians.". Croghan, Journal, 1765.

The Diary of the Siege of Detroit, under date May 17, 1765, says that Pontiac's nephew came that day from the Illinois, with news that Pontiac had caused six Englishmen and several disaffected Indians to be burned; and that he had seven large war-belts to raise the western tribes for another attack on Detroit, to be made in June of that year, without French assistance.

journeyed westward, to visit in succession the different tribes, and gain their coöperation in his plans of final defence. Crossing over to the Wabash, he passed from village to village, among the Kickapoos, the Piankishaws, and the three tribes of the Miamis, rousing them by his imperious eloquence, and breathing into them his own fierce spirit of resistance. Thence, by rapid marches through forests and over prairies, he reached the banks of the Mississippi, and summoned the four tribes of the Illinois to a general meeting. But these degenerate savages, beaten by the surrounding tribes for many a generation past, had lost their warlike spirit, and, though abundantly noisy and boastful, showed no zeal for fight, and entered with no zest into the schemes of the Ottawa war-chief. Pontiac had his own way of dealing with such spirits. "If you hesitate," he exclaimed, frowning on the cowering assembly, "I will consume your tribes as the fire consumes the dry grass on the prairie." The doubts of the Illinois vanished like the mist, and with marvellous alacrity they declared their concurrence in the views of the orator. Having secured these allies, such as they were, Pontiac departed, and hastened to Fort Chartres. St. Ange, so long tormented with embassy after embassy, and mob after mob, thought that the crowning evil was come at last, when he saw the arch-demon Pontiac enter at the gate, with four hundred warriors at his back. Arrived at the council-house, Pontiac addressed the commandant in a tone of high courtesy: "Father, we have long wished to see you, to shake hands with you, and, whilst smoking the calumet of peace, to recall the battles in which we fought together against the misguided Indians and