squatters on their territory. It was the Senecas, not
Pontiac, who began the plot for the destruction of the
British in the hinterland, and in the war which followed
more than a thousand Seneca warriors took part. Happily,
as has been mentioned, Sir William Johnson was able to
keep the other tribes of the Six Nations loyal to the
British; but the 'Door-keepers of the Long House,' as
the Senecas were called, stood aloof and hostile.

The motives of the Indians in the rising of 1763 may,
therefore, be summarized as follows: amity with the
French, hostility towards the British, hope of plunder,
and fear of aggression. The first three were the controlling
motives of Pontiac's Indians about Detroit. They called
it the 'Beaver War.' To them it was a war on behalf of
the French traders, who loaded them with gifts, and
against the British, who drove them away empty-handed.
But the Senecas and the Delawares, with their allies of
the Ohio valley, regarded it as a war for their lands.
Already the Indians had been forced out of their
hunting-grounds in the valleys of the Juniata and the
Susquehanna. The Ohio valley would be the next to go,
unless the Indians went on the war-path. The chiefs there
had good reason for alarm. Not so Pontiac at Detroit,
because no settlers were invading his hunting-grounds.
And it was for this lack of a strong motive that Pontiac's
campaign, as will hereafter appear, broke down before
the end of the war; that even his own confederates deserted
him; and that, while the Senecas and Delawares were still
holding out, he was wandering through the Indian country