"Got what, Chippewa?"

"Him--Mac-naw--got fort--got so'gers--got whole island. Know dat,
for been dere."

This was astounding news, indeed! The commanding officer of that
ill-starred garrison could not himself have been more astonished,
when he was unexpectedly summoned to surrender by an enemy who
appeared to start out of the earth, than was le Bourdon, at hearing
this intelligence. To western notions, Michilimackinac was another
Gibraltar, although really a place of very little strength, and
garrisoned by only one small company of regulars. Still, habit had
given the fortress a sort of sanctity among the adventurers of that
region; and its fall, even in the settled parts of the country,
sounded like the loss of a province. It is now known that,
anticipating the movements of the Americans, some three hundred
whites, sustained by more than twice that number of Indians,
including warriors from nearly every adjacent tribe, had surprised
the post on the 17th of July, and compelled the subaltern in
command, with some fifty odd men, to surrender. This rapid and
highly military measure, on the part of the British, completely cut
off the post of Chicago, at the head of Lake Michigan, leaving it
isolated, on what was then a very remote wilderness. Chicago,
Mackinac, and Detroit, were the three grand stations of the
Americans on the upper lakes, and here were two of them virtually
gone at a blow!