Chapter 23.

1763-1764.

THE INDIANS RAISE THE SIEGE OF DETROIT.

I return to the long-forgotten garrison of Detroit, which was left still beleaguered by an increasing multitude of savages, and disheartened by the defeat of Captain Dalzell’s detachment.  The schooner, so boldly defended by her crew against a force of more than twenty times their number, brought to the fort a much-needed supply of provisions.  It was not, however, adequate to the wants of the garrison; and the whole were put upon the shortest possible allowance.
It was now the end of September.  The Indians, with unexampled pertinacity, had pressed the siege since the beginning of May; but at length their constancy began to fail.  The tidings had reached them that Major Wilkins, with a strong force, was on his way to Detroit.  They feared the consequences of an attack, especially as their ammunition was almost exhausted; and, by this time, most of them were inclined to sue for peace, as the easiest mode of gaining safety for themselves, and at the same time lulling the English into security.  They thought that by this means they might retire unmolested to their wintering grounds, and renew the war with good hope of success in the spring.

Accordingly, on the twelfth of October, Wapocomoguth, great chief of the Mississaugas, a branch of the Ojibwas, living within the present limits of Upper Canada, came to the fort with a pipe of peace.  He began his speech to Major Gladwyn, with the glaring falsehood that he and his people had always been friends of the English.  They were now, he added, anxious to conclude a formal treaty of lasting peace and amity.  He next declared that he had been sent as deputy by the Pottawattamies, Ojibwas, and Wyandots, who had instructed him to say that they sincerely repented of their bad conduct, asked forgiveness, and humbly begged for peace.  Gladwyn perfectly understood the hollowness of these professions, but the circumstances in which he was placed made it expedient to listen to their overtures.  His garrison was threatened with famine, and it was impossible to procure provisions while completely surrounded by hostile Indians.  He therefore replied, that, though he was not empowered to grant peace, he would still consent to a truce.  The Mississauga deputy left the fort with this reply, and Gladwyn immediately took advantage of this lull in the storm to collect provisions among the Canadians; an attempt in which he succeeded so well that the fort was soon furnished with a tolerable supply for the winter.

The Ottawas alone, animated by Pontiac, had refused to ask for peace, and still persisted in a course of petty hostilities.  They fired at intervals on the English foraging parties, until, on the thirty-first of October, an unexpected blow was given to the hopes of their great chief.  French messengers came to Detroit with a letter from M.  Neyon, commandant of Fort Chartres, the principal post in the Illinois country.  This letter was one of those which, on demand of General Amherst, Neyon, with a very bad grace, had sent to the different Indian tribes.  It assured Pontiac that he could expect no assistance from the French; that they and the English were now at peace, and regarded each other as brothers; and that the Indians had better abandon hostilities which could lead to no good result.  The emotions of Pontiac at receiving this message may be conceived.  His long-cherished hopes of assistance from the French were swept away at once, and he saw himself and his people thrown back upon their own slender resources.  His cause was lost.  At least, there was no present hope for him but in dissimulation.  True to his Indian nature, he would put on a mask of peace, and bide his time.  On the day after the arrival of the message from Neyon, Gladwyn wrote as follows to Amherst: “This moment I received a message from Pondiac, telling me that he should send to all the nations concerned in the war to bury the hatchet; and he hopes your Excellency will forget what has passed.”

Having soothed the English commander with these hollow overtures, Pontiac withdrew with some of his chiefs to the Maumee, to stir up the Indians in that quarter, and renew the war in the spring.

About the middle of November, not many days after Pontiac’s departure, two friendly Wyandot Indians from the ancient settlement at Lorette, near Quebec, crossed the river, and asked admittance into the fort.  One of them then unslung his powder-horn, and, taking out a false bottom, disclosed a closely folded letter, which he gave to Major Gladwyn.  The letter was from Major Wilkins, and contained the disastrous news that the detachment under his command had been overtaken by a storm, that many of the boats had been wrecked, that seventy men had perished, that all the stores and ammunition had been destroyed, and the detachment forced to return to Niagara.  This intelligence had an effect upon the garrison which rendered the prospect of the cold and cheerless winter yet more dreary and forlorn.

The summer had long since drawn to a close, and the verdant landscape around Detroit had undergone an ominous transformation.  Touched by the first October frosts, the forest glowed like a bed of tulips; and, all along the river bank, the painted foliage, brightened by the autumnal sun, reflected its mingled colors upon the dark water below.  The western wind was fraught with life and exhilaration; and in the clear, sharp air, the form of the fish-hawk, sailing over the distant headland, seemed almost within range of the sportsman’s gun.

A week or two elapsed, and then succeeded that gentler season which bears among us the name of the Indian summer; when a light haze rests upon the morning landscape, and the many-colored woods seem wrapped in the thin drapery of a veil; when the air is mild and calm as that of early June, and at evening the sun goes down amid a warm, voluptuous beauty, that may well outrival the softest tints of Italy.  But through all the still and breathless afternoon the leaves have fallen fast in the woods, like flakes of snow; and every thing betokens that the last melancholy change is at hand.  And, in truth, on the morrow the sky is overspread with cold and stormy clouds; and a raw, piercing wind blows angrily from the north-east.  The shivering sentinel quickens his step along the rampart, and the half-naked Indian folds his tattered blanket close around him.  The shrivelled leaves are blown from the trees, and soon the gusts are whistling and howling amid gray, naked twigs and mossy branches.  Here and there, indeed, the beech-tree, as the wind sweeps among its rigid boughs, shakes its pale assemblage of crisp and rustling leaves.  The pines and firs, with their rough tops of dark evergreen, bend and moan in the wind; and the crow caws sullenly, as, struggling against the gusts, he flaps his black wings above the denuded woods.

The vicinity of Detroit was now almost abandoned by its besiegers, who had scattered among the forests to seek sustenance through the winter for themselves and their families.  Unlike the buffalo-hunting tribes of the western plains, they could not at this season remain together in large bodies.  The comparative scarcity of game forced them to separate into small bands, or even into single families.  Some steered their canoes far northward, across Lake Huron; while others turned westward, and struck into the great wilderness of Michigan.  Wandering among forests, bleak, cheerless, and choked with snow, now famishing with want, now cloyed with repletion, they passed the dull, cold winter.  The chase yielded their only subsistence; and the slender lodges, borne on the backs of the squaws, were their only shelter.  Encamped at intervals by the margin of some frozen lake, surrounded by all that is most stern and dreary in the aspects of nature, they were subjected to every hardship, and endured all with stubborn stoicism.  Sometimes, during the frosty night, they were gathered in groups about the flickering lodge-fire, listening to traditions of their forefathers, and wild tales of magic and incantation.  Perhaps, before the season was past, some bloody feud broke out among them; perhaps they were assailed by their ancient enemies the Dahcotah; or perhaps some sinister omen or evil dream spread more terror through the camp than the presence of an actual danger would have awakened.  With the return of spring, the scattered parties once more united, and moved towards Detroit, to indulge their unforgotten hatred against the English.

Detroit had been the central point of the Indian operations; its capture had been their favorite project; around it they had concentrated their greatest force, and the failure of the attempt proved disastrous to their cause.  Upon the Six Nations, more especially, it produced a marked effect.  The friendly tribes of this confederacy were confirmed in their friendship, while the hostile Senecas began to lose heart.  Availing himself of this state of things, Sir William Johnson, about the middle of the winter, persuaded a number of Six Nation warriors, by dint of gifts and promises, to go out against the enemy.  He stimulated their zeal by offering rewards of fifty dollars for the heads of the two principal Delaware chiefs.  Two hundred of them, accompanied by a few provincials, left the Oneida country during the month of February, and directed their course southward.  They had been out but a few days, when they found an encampment of forty Delawares, commanded by a formidable chief, known as Captain Bull, who, with his warriors, was on his way to attack the settlements.  They surrounded the camp undiscovered, during the night, and at dawn of day raised the war-whoop and rushed in.  The astonished Delawares had no time to snatch their arms.  They were all made prisoners, taken to Albany, and thence sent down to New York, where they were conducted, under a strong guard, to the common jail; the mob crowding round them as they passed, and admiring the sullen ferocity of their countenances.  Not long after this success, Captain Montour, with a party of provincials and Six Nation warriors, destroyed the town of Kanestio, and other hostile villages, on the upper branches of the Susquehanna.  This blow, inflicted by supposed friends, produced more effect upon the enemy than greater reverses would have done, if encountered at the hands of the English alone.

The calamities which overwhelmed the borders of the middle provinces were not unfelt at the south.  It was happy for the people of the Carolinas that the Cherokees, who had broken out against them three years before, had at that time received a chastisement which they could never forget, and from which they had not yet begun to recover.  They were thus compelled to remain comparatively quiet; while the ancient feud between them and the northern tribes would, under any circumstances, have prevented their uniting with the latter.  The contagion of the war reached them, however, and they perpetrated numerous murders; while the neighboring nation of the Creeks rose in open hostility, and committed formidable ravages.  Towards the north, the Indian tribes were compelled, by their position, to remain tranquil, yet they showed many signs of uneasiness; and those of Nova Scotia caused great alarm, by mustering in large bodies in the neighborhood of Halifax.  The excitement among them was temporary, and they dispersed without attempting mischief.