Painful and harassing as were the precautions it was
found necessary to adopt on these occasions, and little
desirous as were the garrison to mingle with the natives
on such terms, still the plan was pursued by the Governor
from the policy already named: nay, it was absolutely
essential to the future interests of England that the
Indians should be won over by acts of confidence and
kindness; and so little disposition had hitherto been
manifested by the English to conciliate, that every thing
was to be apprehended from the untameable rancour with
which these people were but too well disposed to repay
a neglect at once galling to their pride and injurious
to their interests.

Such, for a term of many months, had been the trying and
painful duty that had devolved on the governor of Detroit;
when, in the summer of 1763, the whole of the western
tribes of Indians, as if actuated by one common impulse,
suddenly threw off the mask, and commenced a series of
the most savage trespasses upon the English settlers in
the vicinity of the several garrisons, who were cut off
in detail, without mercy, and without reference to either
age or sex. On the first alarm the weak bodies of troops,
as a last measure of security, shut themselves up in
their respective forts, where they were as incapable of
rendering assistance to others as of receiving it
themselves. In this emergency the prudence and forethought
of the governor of Detroit were eminently conspicuous;
for, having long foreseen the possibility of such a
crisis, he had caused a plentiful supply of all that was