The War Chief of the Ottawas : A chronicle of the Pontiac war by Thomas Guthrie Marquis
page 89 of 106 (83%)
page 89 of 106 (83%)
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out again, provided some examples are made of our good
friends, the French, who set them on.' Pontiac and his band of savages paddled southward for the Maumee, and spent the winter among the Indians along its upper waters. Again he broke his plighted word and plotted a new confederacy, greater than the Three Fires, and sent messengers with wampum belts and red hatchets to all the tribes as far south as the mouth of the Mississippi and as far north as the Red River. But his glory had departed. He could call; but the warriors would not come when he summoned them. Fort Detroit was freed from hostile Indians, and the soldiers could go to rest without expecting to hear the call to arms. But before the year closed it was to be the witness of still another tragedy. Two or three weeks after the massacre at the Devil's Hole, Major Wilkins with some six hundred troops started from Fort Schlosser with a fleet of bateaux for Detroit. No care seems to have been taken to send out scouts to learn if the forest bordering the river above the falls was free from Indians, and, as the bateaux were slowly making their way against the swift stream towards Lake Erie, they were savagely attacked from the western bank by Indians in such force that Wilkins was compelled to retreat to Fort Schlosser. It was not until November that another attempt was made to send troops and provisions to Detroit. Early in this month Wilkins once more set out from Fort Schlosser, this time with forty-six bateaux heavily laden with troops, |
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