engrossed every faculty of his mind, and riveted both
eye and ear in painful tension to the aperture in his
hiding-place. The chiefs had resumed their places, and
the silence of a few minutes had succeeded to the fierce
affray of the warriors, when Ponteac, in a calm and
deliberate voice, proceeded to state he had summoned all
the heads of the nations together, to hear a plan he had
to offer for the reduction of the last remaining forts
of their enemies, Michilimackinac and Detroit. He pointed
out the tediousness of the warfare in which they were
engaged; the desertion of the hunting-grounds by their
warriors; and their consequent deficiency in all those
articles of European traffic which they were formerly in
the habit of receiving in exchange for their furs. He
dwelt on the beneficial results that would accrue to them
all in the event of the reduction of those two important
fortresses; since, in that case, they would be enabled
to make such terms with the English as would secure to
them considerable advantages; while, instead of being
treated with the indignity of a conquered people, they
would be enabled to command respect from the imposing
attitude this final crowning of their successes would
enable them to assume. He stated that the prudence and
vigilance of the commanders of these two unreduced
fortresses were likely long to baffle, as had hitherto
been the case, every open attempt at their capture; and
admitted he had little expectation of terrifying them
into a surrender by the same artifice that had succeeded
with the forts on the Ohio and the lower lakes. The plan,
however, which he had to propose, was one he felt assured