Chapter 7

1760-1763.

ANGER OF THE INDIANS.—THE CONSPIRACY.

The country was scarcely transferred to the English, when smothered murmurs of discontent began to be audible among the Indian tribes.  From the head of the Potomac to Lake Superior, and from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, in every wigwam and hamlet of the forest, a deep-rooted hatred of the English increased with rapid growth.  Nor is this to be wondered at.  We have seen with what sagacious policy the French had labored to ingratiate themselves with the Indians; and the slaughter of the Monongahela, with the horrible devastation of the western frontier, the outrages perpetrated at Oswego, and the massacre at Fort William Henry, bore witness to the success of their efforts.  Even the Delawares and Shawanoes, the faithful allies of William Penn, had at length been seduced by their blandishments; and the Iroquois, the ancient enemies of Canada, had half forgotten their former hostility, and well-nigh taken part against the British colonists.  The remote nations of the west had also joined in the war, descending in their canoes for hundreds of miles, to fight against the enemies of France.  All these tribes entertained towards the English that rancorous enmity which an Indian always feels against those to whom he has been opposed in war.

Under these circumstances, it behooved the English to use the utmost care in their conduct towards the tribes.  But even when the conflict with France was impending, and the alliance with the Indians was of the last importance, they had treated them with indifference and neglect.  They were not likely to adopt a different course now that their friendship seemed a matter of no consequence.  In truth, the intentions of the English were soon apparent.  In the zeal for retrenchment, which prevailed after the close of hostilities, the presents which it had always been customary to give the Indians, at stated intervals, were either withheld altogether, or doled out with a niggardly and reluctant hand; while, to make the matter worse, the agents and officers of government often appropriated the presents to themselves, and afterwards sold them at an exorbitant price to the Indians.  When the French had possession of the remote forts, they were accustomed, with a wise liberality, to supply the surrounding Indians with guns, ammunition, and clothing, until the latter had forgotten the weapons and garments of their forefathers, and depended on the white men for support.  The sudden withholding of these supplies was, therefore, a grievous calamity.  Want, suffering, and death, were the consequences; and this cause alone would have been enough to produce general discontent.  But, unhappily, other grievances were superadded.

The English fur-trade had never been well regulated, and it was now in a worse condition than ever.  Many of the traders, and those in their employ, were ruffians of the coarsest stamp, who vied with each other in rapacity, violence, and profligacy.  They cheated, cursed, and plundered the Indians, and outraged their families; offering, when compared with the French traders, who were under better regulation, a most unfavorable example of the character of their nation.

The officers and soldiers of the garrisons did their full part in exciting the general resentment.  Formerly, when the warriors came to the forts, they had been welcomed by the French with attention and respect.  The inconvenience which their presence occasioned had been disregarded, and their peculiarities overlooked.  But now they were received with cold looks and harsh words from the officers, and with oaths, menaces, and sometimes blows, from the reckless and brutal soldiers.  When, after their troublesome and intrusive fashion, they were lounging everywhere about the fort, or lazily reclining in the shadow of the walls, they were met with muttered ejaculations of impatience, or abrupt orders to be gone, enforced, perhaps, by a touch from the butt of a sentinel’s musket.  These marks of contempt were unspeakably galling to their haughty spirit.
But what most contributed to the growing discontent of the tribes was the intrusion of settlers upon their lands, at all times a fruitful source of Indian hostility.  Its effects, it is true,  could only be felt by those whose country bordered upon the English settlements; but among these were the most powerful and influential of the tribes.  The Delawares and Shawanoes, in particular, had by this time been roused to the highest pitch of exasperation.  Their best lands had been invaded, and all remonstrance had been fruitless.  They viewed with wrath and fear the steady progress of the white man, whose settlements had passed the Susquehanna, and were fast extending to the Alleghanies, eating away the forest like a spreading canker.  The anger of the Delawares was abundantly shared by their ancient conquerors, the Six Nations.  The threatened occupation of Wyoming by settlers from Connecticut gave great umbrage to the confederacy.  The Senecas were more especially incensed at English intrusion, since, from their position, they were farthest removed from the soothing influence of Sir William Johnson, and most exposed to the seductions of the French; while the Mohawks, another member of the confederacy, were justly alarmed at seeing the better part of their lands patented out without their consent.  Some Christian Indians of the Oneida tribe, in the simplicity of their hearts, sent an earnest petition to Sir William Johnson, that the English forts within the limits of the Six Nations might be removed, or, as the petition expresses it, kicked out of the way.

The discontent of the Indians gave great satisfaction to the French, who saw in it an assurance of safe and bloody vengeance on their conquerors.  Canada, it is true, was gone beyond hope of recovery; but they still might hope to revenge its loss.  Interest, moreover, as well as passion, prompted them to inflame the resentment of the Indians; for most of the inhabitants of the French settlements upon the lakes and the Mississippi were engaged in the fur-trade, and, fearing the English as formidable rivals, they would gladly have seen them driven out of the country.  Traders, habitans, coureurs de bois, and all classes of this singular population, accordingly dispersed themselves among the villages of the Indians, or held councils with them in the secret places of the woods, urging them to take up arms against the English.  They exhibited the conduct of the latter in its worst light, and spared neither misrepresentation nor falsehood.  They told their excited hearers that the English had formed a deliberate scheme to root out the whole Indian race, and, with that design, had already begun to hem them in with settlements on the one hand, and a chain of forts on the other.  Among other atrocious plans for their destruction, they had instigated the Cherokees to attack and destroy the tribes of the Ohio valley.  These groundless calumnies found ready belief.  The French declared, in addition, that the King of France had of late years fallen asleep; that, during his slumbers, the English had seized upon Canada; but that he was now awake again, and that his armies were advancing up the St.  Lawrence and the Mississippi, to drive out the intruders from the country of his red children.  To these fabrications was added the more substantial encouragement of arms, ammunition, clothing, and provisions, which the French trading companies, if not the officers of the crown, distributed with a liberal hand.

The fierce passions of the Indians, excited by their wrongs, real or imagined, and exasperated by the representations of the French, were yet farther wrought upon by influences of another kind.  A prophet rose among the Delawares.  This man may serve as a counterpart to the famous Shawanoe prophet, who figured so conspicuously in the Indian outbreak, under Tecumseh, immediately before the war with England in 1812.  Many other parallel instances might be shown, as the great susceptibility of the Indians to superstitious impressions renders the advent of a prophet among them no very rare occurrence.  In the present instance, the inspired Delaware seems to have been rather an enthusiast than an impostor; or perhaps he combined both characters.  The objects of his mission were not wholly political.  By means of certain external observances, most of them sufficiently frivolous and absurd, his disciples were to strengthen and purify their natures, and make themselves acceptable to the Great Spirit, whose messenger he proclaimed himself to be.  He also enjoined them to lay aside the weapons and clothing which they received from the white men, and return to the primitive life of their ancestors.  By so doing, and by strictly observing his other precepts, the tribes would soon be restored to their ancient greatness and power, and be enabled to drive out the white men who infested their territory.  The prophet had many followers.  Indians came from far and near, and gathered together in large encampments to listen to his exhortations.  His fame spread even to the nations of the northern lakes; but though his disciples followed most of his injunctions, flinging away flint and steel, and making copious use of emetics, with other observances equally troublesome, yet the requisition to abandon the use of fire-arms was too inconvenient to be complied with.  

With so many causes to irritate their restless and warlike spirit, it could not be supposed that the Indians would long remain quiet.  Accordingly, in the summer of the year 1761, Captain Campbell, then commanding at Detroit, received information that a deputation of Senecas had come to the neighboring village of the Wyandots for the purpose of instigating the latter to destroy him and his garrison.  On farther inquiry, the plot proved to be general; and Niagara, Fort Pitt, and other posts, were to share the fate of Detroit.  Campbell instantly despatched messengers to Sir Jeffrey Amherst, and the commanding officers of the different forts; and, by this timely discovery, the conspiracy was nipped in the bud.  During the following summer, 1762, another similar design was detected and suppressed.  They proved to be the precursors of a tempest.  When, early in 1763, it was announced to the tribes that the King of France had ceded all their country to the King of England, without even asking their leave, a ferment of indignation at once became apparent among them; and, within a few weeks, a plot was matured, such as was never, before or since, conceived or executed by a North American Indian.  It was determined to attack all the English forts upon the same day; then, having destroyed their garrisons, to turn upon the defenceless frontier, and ravage and lay waste the settlements, until, as many of the Indians fondly believed, the English should all be driven into the sea, and the country restored to its primitive owners.

It is difficult to determine which tribe was first to raise the cry of war.  There were many who might have done so, for all the savages in the backwoods were ripe for an outbreak, and the movement seemed almost simultaneous.  The Delawares and Senecas were the most incensed, and Kiashuta, a chief of the latter, was perhaps foremost to apply the torch; but, if this was the case, he touched fire to materials already on the point of igniting.  It belonged to a greater chief than he to give method and order to what would else have been a wild burst of fury, and convert desultory attacks into a formidable and protracted war.  But for Pontiac, the whole might have ended in a few troublesome inroads upon the frontier, and a little whooping and yelling under the walls of Fort Pitt.
Pontiac, as already mentioned, was principal chief of the Ottawas.  The Ottawas, Ojibwas, and Pottawattamies, had long been united in a loose kind of confederacy, of which he was the virtual head.  Over those around him his authority was almost despotic, and his power extended far beyond the limits of the three united tribes.  His influence was great among all the nations of the Illinois country; while, from the  sources of the Ohio to those of the Mississippi, and, indeed, to the farthest boundaries of the wide-spread Algonquin race, his name was known and respected.

The fact that Pontiac was born the son of a chief would in no degree account for the extent of his power; for, among Indians, many a chief’s son sinks back into insignificance, while the offspring of a common warrior may succeed to his place.  Among all the wild tribes of the continent, personal merit is indispensable to gaining or preserving dignity.  Courage, resolution, address, and eloquence are sure passports to distinction.  With all these Pontiac was pre-eminently endowed, and it was chiefly to them, urged to their highest activity by a vehement ambition, that he owed his greatness.  He possessed a commanding energy and force of mind, and in subtlety and craft could match the best of his wily race.  But, though capable of acts of magnanimity, he was a thorough savage, with a wider range of intellect than those around him, but sharing all their passions and prejudices, their fierceness and treachery.  His faults were the faults of his race; and they cannot eclipse his nobler qualities.  His memory is still cherished among the remnants of many Algonquin tribes, and the celebrated Tecumseh adopted him for his model, proving himself no unworthy imitator.

Pontiac was now about fifty years old.  Until Major Rogers came into the country, he had been, from motives probably both of interest and inclination, a firm friend of the French.  Not long before the French war broke out, he had saved the garrison of Detroit from the imminent peril of an attack from some of the discontented tribes of the north.  During the war, he had fought on the side of France.  It is said that he commanded the Ottawas at the memorable defeat of Braddock; and it is certain that he was treated with much honor by the French officers, and received especial marks of esteem from the Marquis of Montcalm.

We have seen how, when the tide of affairs changed, the subtle and ambitious chief trimmed his bark to the current, and gave the hand of friendship to the English.  That he was disappointed in their treatment of him, and in all the hopes that he had formed from their alliance, is sufficiently evident from one of his speeches.  A new light soon began to dawn upon his untaught but powerful mind, and he saw the altered posture of affairs under its true aspect
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It was a momentous and gloomy crisis for the Indian race, for never before had they been exposed to such imminent and pressing danger.  With the downfall of Canada, the tribes had sunk at once from their position of importance.  Hitherto the two rival European nations had kept each other in check upon the American continent, and the Indians had, in some measure, held the balance of power between them.  To conciliate their good will and gain their alliance, to avoid offending them by injustice and encroachment, was the policy both of the French and English.  But now the face of affairs was changed.  The English had gained an undisputed ascendency, and the Indians, no longer important as allies, were treated as mere barbarians, who might be trampled upon with impunity.  Abandoned to their own feeble resources and divided strength, they must fast recede, and dwindle away before the steady progress of the colonial power.  Already their best hunting-grounds were invaded, and from the eastern ridges of the Alleghanies they might see, from far and near, the smoke of the settlers’ clearings, rising in tall columns from the dark-green bosom of the forest.  The doom of the race was sealed, and no human power could avert it; but they, in their ignorance, believed otherwise, and vainly thought that, by a desperate effort, they might yet uproot and overthrow the growing strength of their destroyers.

It would be idle to suppose that the great mass of the Indians understood, in its full extent, the danger which threatened their race.  With them, the war was a mere outbreak of fury, and they turned against their enemies with as little reason or forecast as a panther when he leaps at the throat of the hunter.  Goaded by wrongs and indignities, they struck for revenge, and for relief from the evil of the moment.  But the mind of Pontiac could embrace a wider and deeper view.  The peril of the times was unfolded in its full extent before him, and he resolved to unite the tribes in one grand effort to avert it.  He did not, like many of his people, entertain the absurd idea that the Indians, by their unaided strength, could drive the English into the sea.  He adopted the only plan consistent with reason, that of restoring the French ascendency in the west, and once more opposing a check to British encroachment.  With views like these, he lent a greedy ear to the plausible falsehoods of the Canadians, who assured him that the armies of King Louis were already advancing to recover Canada, and that the French and their red brethren, fighting side by side, would drive the English dogs back within their own narrow limits.
Revolving these thoughts, and remembering that his own ambitious views might be advanced by the hostilities he meditated, Pontiac no longer hesitated.  Revenge, ambition, and patriotism wrought upon him alike, and he resolved on war.  At the close of the year 1762, he sent ambassadors to the different nations.  They visited the country of the Ohio and its tributaries, passed northward to the region of the upper lakes, and the borders of the river Ottawa; and far southward towards the mouth of the Mississippi.   Bearing with them the war-belt of wampum, broad and long, as the importance of the message demanded, and the tomahawk stained red, in token of war, they went from camp to camp, and village to village.  Wherever they appeared, the sachems and old men assembled, to hear the words of the great Pontiac.  Then the chief of the embassy flung down the tomahawk on the ground before them, and holding the war-belt in his hand, delivered, with vehement gesture, word for word, the speech with which he was charged.  It was heard everywhere with approval; the belt was accepted, the hatchet snatched up, and the assembled chiefs stood pledged to take part in the war.  The blow was to be struck at a certain time in the month of May following, to be indicated by the changes of the moon.  The tribes were to rise together, each destroying the English garrison in its neighborhood, and then, with a general rush, the whole were to turn against the settlements of the frontier.

The tribes, thus banded together against the English, comprised, with a few unimportant exceptions, the whole Algonquin stock, to whom were united the Wyandots, the Senecas, and several tribes of the lower Mississippi.  The Senecas were the only members of the Iroquois confederacy who joined in the league, the rest being kept quiet by the influence of Sir William Johnson, whose utmost exertions, however, were barely sufficient to allay their irritation.

While thus on the very eve of an outbreak, the Indians concealed their designs with the dissimulation of their race.  The warriors still lounged about the forts, with calm, impenetrable faces, begging, as usual, for tobacco, gunpowder, and whiskey.  Now and then, some slight intimation of danger would startle the garrisons from their security.  An English trader, coming in from the Indian villages, would report that, from their manner and behavior, he suspected them of brooding mischief; or some scoundrel half-breed would be heard boasting in his cups that before next summer he would have English hair to fringe his hunting-frock.  On one occasion, the plot was nearly discovered.  Early in March, 1763, Ensign Holmes, commanding at Fort Miami, was told by a friendly Indian that the warriors in the neighboring village had lately received a war-belt, with a message urging them to destroy him and his garrison, and that this they were preparing to do.  Holmes called the Indians together, and boldly charged them with their design.  They did as Indians on such occasions have often done, confessed their fault with much apparent contrition, laid the blame on a neighboring tribe, and professed eternal friendship to their brethren, the English.  Holmes writes to report his discovery to Major Gladwyn, who, in his turn, sends the information to Sir Jeffrey Amherst, expressing his opinion that there has been a general irritation among the Indians, but that the affair will soon blow over, and that, in the neighborhood of his own post, the savages were perfectly tranquil.  Within cannon shot of the deluded officer’s palisades, was the village of Pontiac himself, the arch enemy of the English, and prime mover in the plot.

With the approach of spring, the Indians, coming in from their wintering grounds, began to appear in small parties about the various forts; but now they seldom entered them, encamping at a little distance in the woods.  They were fast pushing their preparations for the meditated blow, and waiting with stifled eagerness for the appointed hour.