Chapter 26.

1764.

BRADSTREET’S ARMY ON THE LAKES.

The campaign of 1763, a year of disaster to the English colonies, was throughout of a defensive nature, and no important blow had been struck against the enemy.  With the opening of the following spring, preparations were made to renew the war on a more decisive plan.  Before the commencement of hostilities, Sir William Johnson and his deputy, George Croghan, severally addressed to the lords of trade memorials, setting forth the character, temper, and resources of the Indian tribes, and suggesting the course of conduct which they judged it expedient to pursue.  They represented that, before the conquest of Canada, all the tribes, jealous of French encroachment, had looked to the English to befriend and protect them; but that now one general feeling of distrust and hatred filled them all.  They added that the neglect and injustice of the British government, the outrages of ruffian borderers and debauched traders, and the insolence of English soldiers, had aggravated this feeling, and given double effect to the restless machinations of the defeated French; who, to revenge themselves on their conquerors, were constantly stirring up the Indians to war.  A race so brave and tenacious of liberty, so wild and erratic in their habits, dwelling in a country so savage and inaccessible, could not be exterminated or reduced to subjection without an immoderate expenditure of men, money, and time.  The true policy of the British government was therefore to conciliate; to soothe their jealous pride, galled by injuries and insults; to gratify them by presents, and treat them with a respect and attention to which their haughty spirit would not fail to respond.  We ought, they said, to make the Indians our friends; and, by a just, consistent, and straightforward course, seek to gain their esteem, and wean them from their partiality to the French.  To remove the constant irritation which arose from the intrusion of the white inhabitants on their territory, Croghan urged the expediency of purchasing a large tract of land to the westward of the English settlements; thus confining the tribes to remoter hunting-grounds.  For a moderate sum the Indians would part with as much land as might be required.  A little more, laid out in annual presents, would keep them in good temper; and by judicious management all hostile collision might be prevented, till, by the extension of the settlements, it should become expedient to make yet another purchase.

This plan was afterwards carried into execution by the British government.  Founded as it is upon the supposition that the Indian tribes must gradually dwindle and waste away, it might well have awakened the utmost fears of that unhappy people.  Yet none but an enthusiast or fanatic could condemn it as iniquitous.  To reclaim the Indians from their savage state has again and again been attempted, and each attempt has failed.  Their intractable, unchanging character leaves no other alternative than their gradual extinction, or the abandonment of the western world to eternal barbarism; and of this and other similar plans, whether the offspring of British or American legislation, it may alike be said that sentimental philanthropy will find it easier to cavil at than to amend them.

Now, turning from the Indians, let us observe the temper of those whose present business it was to cudgel them into good behavior; that is to say, the British officers, of high and low degree.  They seem to have been in a mood of universal discontent, not in the least surprising when one considers that they were forced to wage, with crippled resources, an arduous, profitless, and inglorious war; while perverse and jealous legislatures added gall to their bitterness, and taxed their patience to its utmost endurance.  The impossible requirements of the commander-in-chief were sometimes joined to their other vexations.  Sir Jeffrey Amherst, who had, as we have seen, but a slight opinion of Indians, and possibly of everybody else except a British nobleman and a British soldier, expected much of his officers; and was at times unreasonable in his anticipations of a prompt “vengeance on the barbarians.” Thus he had no sooner heard of the loss of Michillimackinac, Miami, and other western outposts, than he sent orders to Gladwyn to re-establish them at once.  Gladwyn, who had scarcely force enough to maintain himself at Detroit, thereupon writes to his friend Bouquet: “The last I received from the General is of the second July, in which I am ordered to establish the outposts immediately.  At the time I received these orders, I knew it was impossible to comply with any part of them: the event shows I was right.  I am heartily wearied of my command, and I have signified the same to Colonel Amherst (Sir Jeffrey’s adjutant).  I hope I shall be relieved soon; if not, I intend to quit the service, for I would not choose to be any longer exposed to the villany and treachery of the settlement and Indians.”

Two or three weeks before the above was written, George Croghan, Sir William Johnson’s deputy, who had long lived on the frontier, and was as well versed in Indian affairs as the commander-in-chief was ignorant of them, wrote to Colonel Bouquet:—“Seven tribes in Canada have offered their services to act with the King’s troops; but the General seems determined to neither accept of Indians’ services, nor provincials’....  I have resigned out of the service, and will start for England about the beginning of December.  Sir Jeffrey Amherst would not give his consent; so I made my resignation in writing, and gave my reasons for so doing.  Had I continued, I could be of no more service than I have been these eighteen months past; which was none at all, as no regard was had to any intelligence I sent, no more than to my opinion.” Croghan, who could not be spared, was induced, on Gage’s accession to the command, to withdraw his resignation and retain his post.

Next, we have a series of complaints from Lieutenant Blane of Fort Ligonier; who congratulates Bouquet on his recent victory at Bushy Run, and adds: “I have now to beg that I may not be left any longer in this forlorn way, for I can assure you the fatigue I have gone through begins to get the better of me.  I must therefore beg that you will appoint me, by the return of the convoy, a proper garrison....  My present situation is fifty times worse than ever.” And again, on the seventeenth of September: “I must beg leave to recommend to your particular attention the sick soldiers here; as there is neither surgeon nor medicine, it would really be charity to order them up.  I must also beg leave to ask what you intend to do with the poor starved militia, who have neither shirts, shoes, nor any thing else.  I am sorry you can do nothing for the poor inhabitants....  I really get heartily tired of this post.” He endured it some two months more, and then breaks out again on the twenty-fourth of November: “I intend going home by the first opportunity, being pretty much tired of a service that’s so little worth any man’s time; and the more so, as I cannot but think I have been particularly unlucky in it.”

Now follow the letters, written in French, of the gallant Swiss, Captain Ecuyer, always lively and entertaining even in his discontent.  He writes to Bouquet from Bedford, on the thirteenth of November.  Like other officers on the frontier, he complains of the settlers, who, notwithstanding their fear of the enemy, always did their best to shelter deserters; and he gives a list of eighteen soldiers who had deserted within five days: “I have been twenty-two years in service, and I never in my life saw any thing equal to it,—a gang of mutineers, bandits, cut-throats, especially the grenadiers.  I have been obliged, after all the patience imaginable, to have two of them whipped on the spot, without court-martial.  One wanted to kill the sergeant and the other wanted to kill me....  For God’s sake, let me go and raise cabbages.  You can do it if you will, and I shall thank you eternally for it.  Don’t refuse, I beg you.  Besides, my health is not very good; and I don’t know if I can go up again to Fort Pitt with this convoy.”

Bouquet himself was no better satisfied than his correspondents.  On the twentieth of June, 1764, he wrote to Gage, Amherst’s successor: “I flatter myself that you will do me the favor to have me relieved from this command, the burden and fatigues of which I begin to feel my strength very unequal to.”

Gage knew better than to relieve him, and Bouquet was forced to resign himself to another year of bush-fighting.  The plan of the summer’s campaign had been settled; and he was to be the most important, if not the most conspicuous, actor in it.  It had been resolved to march two armies from different points into the heart of the Indian country.  The first, under Bouquet, was to advance from Fort Pitt into the midst of the Delaware and Shawanoe settlements of the valley of the Ohio.  The other, under Colonel Bradstreet, was to pass up the lakes, and force the tribes of Detroit, and the regions beyond, to unconditional submission.

The name of Bradstreet was already well known in America.  At a dark and ill-omened period of the French war, he had crossed Lake Ontario with a force of three thousand provincials, and captured Fort Frontenac, a formidable stronghold of the French, commanding the outlet of the lake.  He had distinguished himself, moreover, by his gallant conduct in a skirmish with the French and Indians on the River Oswego.  These exploits had gained for him a reputation beyond his merits.  He was a man of more activity than judgment, self-willed, vain, and eager for notoriety; qualities which became sufficiently apparent before the end of the campaign.

Several of the northern provinces furnished troops for the expedition; but these levies did not arrive until after the appointed time; and, as the service promised neither honor nor advantage, they were of very indifferent quality, looking, according to an officer of the expedition, more like candidates for a hospital than like men fit for the arduous duty before them.  The rendezvous of the troops was at Albany, and thence they took their departure about the end of June.  Adopting the usual military route to the westward, they passed up the Mohawk, crossed the Oneida Lake, and descended the Onondaga.  The boats and bateaux, crowded with men, passed between the war-worn defences of Oswego, which guarded the mouth of the river on either hand, and, issuing forth upon Lake Ontario, steered in long procession over its restless waters.  A storm threw the flotilla into confusion; and several days elapsed before the ramparts of Fort Niagara rose in sight, breaking the tedious monotony of the forest-covered shores.  The troops landed beneath its walls.  The surrounding plains were soon dotted with the white tents of the little army, whose strength, far inferior to the original design, did not exceed twelve hundred men.

A striking spectacle greeted them on their landing.  Hundreds of Indian cabins were clustered along the skirts of the forest, and a countless multitude of savages, in all the picturesque variety of their barbaric costume, were roaming over the fields, or lounging about the shores of the lake.  Towards the close of the previous winter, Sir William Johnson had despatched Indian messengers to the tribes far and near, warning them of the impending blow; and urging all who were friendly to the English, or disposed to make peace while there was yet time, to meet him at Niagara, and listen to his words.  Throughout the winter, the sufferings of the Indians had been great and general.  The suspension of the fur-trade; the consequent want of ammunition, clothing, and other articles of necessity; the failure of expected aid from the French; and, above all, the knowledge that some of their own people had taken up arms for the English, combined to quench their thirst for war.  Johnson’s messengers had therefore been received with unexpected favor, and many had complied with his invitation.  Some came to protest their friendship for the English; others hoped, by an early submission, to atone for past misconduct.  Some came as spies; while others, again, were lured by the hope of receiving presents, and especially a draught of English milk, that is to say, a dram of whiskey.  The trader, Alexander Henry, the same who so narrowly escaped the massacre at Michillimackinac, was with a party of Ojibwas at the Sault Ste.  Marie, when a canoe, filled with warriors, arrived, bringing the message of Sir William Johnson.  A council was called; and the principal messenger, offering a belt of wampum, spoke as follows: “My friends and brothers, I am come with this belt from our great father, Sir William Johnson.  He desired me to come to you, as his ambassador, and tell you that he is making a great feast at Fort Niagara; that his kettles are all ready, and his fires lighted.  He invites you to partake of the feast, in common with your friends, the Six Nations, who have all made peace with the English.  He advises you to seize this opportunity of doing the same, as you cannot otherwise fail of being destroyed; for the English are on their march with a great army, which will be joined by different nations of Indians.  In a word, before the fall of the leaf they will be at Michillimackinac, and the Six Nations with them.”

The Ojibwas had been debating whether they should go to Detroit, to the assistance of Pontiac, who had just sent them a message to that effect; but the speech of Johnson’s messenger turned the current of their thoughts.  Most of them were in favor of accepting the invitation; but, distrusting mere human wisdom in a crisis so important, they resolved, before taking a decisive step, to invoke the superior intelligence of the Great Turtle, the chief of all the spirits.  A huge wigwam was erected, capable of containing the whole population of the little village.  In the centre, a sort of tabernacle was constructed by driving posts into the ground, and closely covering them with hides.  With the arrival of night, the propitious time for consulting their oracle, all the warriors assembled in the spacious wigwam, half lighted by the lurid glare of fires, and waited, in suspense and awe, the issue of the invocation.  The medicine man, or magician, stripped almost naked, now entered the central tabernacle, which was barely large enough to receive him, and carefully closed the aperture.  At once the whole structure began to shake with a violence which threatened its demolition; and a confusion of horrible sounds, shrieks, howls, yells, and moans of anguish, mingled with articulate words, sounded in hideous discord from within.  This outrageous clamor, which announced to the horror-stricken spectators the presence of a host of evil spirits, ceased as suddenly as it had begun.  A low, feeble sound, like the whine of a young puppy, was next heard within the recess; upon which the warriors raised a cry of joy, and hailed it as the voice of the Great Turtle—the spirit who never lied.  The magician soon announced that the spirit was ready to answer any question which might be proposed.  On this, the chief warrior stepped forward; and, having propitiated the Great Turtle by a present of tobacco thrust through a small hole in the tabernacle, inquired if the English were in reality preparing to attack the Indians, and if the troops were already come to Niagara.  Once more the tabernacle was violently shaken, a loud yell was heard, and it was apparent to all that the spirit was gone.  A pause of anxious expectation ensued; when, after the lapse of a quarter of an hour, the weak, puppy-like voice of the Great Turtle was again heard addressing the magician in a language unknown to the auditors.  When the spirit ceased speaking, the magician interpreted his words.  During the short interval of his departure, he had crossed Lake Huron, visited Niagara, and descended the Saint Lawrence to Montreal.  Few soldiers had as yet reached Niagara; but as he flew down the Saint Lawrence, he had seen the water covered with boats, all filled with English warriors, coming to make war on the Indians.  Having obtained this answer to his first question, the chief ventured to propose another; and inquired if he and his people, should they accept the invitation of Sir William Johnson, would be well received at Niagara.  The answer was most satisfactory.  “Sir William Johnson,” said the spirit, “will fill your canoes with presents; with blankets, kettles, guns, gunpowder and shot; and large barrels of rum, such as the stoutest of the Indians will not be able to lift; and every man will return in safety to his family.” This grateful response produced a general outburst of acclamations; and, with cries of joy, many voices were heard to exclaim, “I will go too! I will go too!”

 They set out, accordingly, for Niagara; and thither also numerous bands of warriors were tending, urged by similar messages, and encouraged, it may be, by similar responses of their oracles.  Crossing fresh-water oceans in their birch canoes, and threading the devious windings of solitary streams, they came flocking to the common centre of attraction.  Such a concourse of savages has seldom been seen in America.  Menomonies, Ottawas, Ojibwas, Mississaugas, from the north; Caughnawagas from Canada, even Wyandots from Detroit, together with a host of Iroquois, were congregated round Fort Niagara to the number of more than two thousand warriors; many of whom had brought with them their women and children.  Even the Sacs, the Foxes, and the Winnebagoes had sent their deputies; and the Osages, a tribe beyond the Mississippi, had their representative in this general meeting.

Though the assembled multitude consisted, for the most part, of the more pacific members of the tribes represented, yet their friendly disposition was by no means certain.  Several straggling soldiers were shot at in the neighborhood, and it soon became apparent that the utmost precaution must be taken to avert a rupture.  The troops were kept always on their guard; while the black muzzles of the cannon, thrust from the bastions of the fort, struck a wholesome awe into the savage throng below.

Although so many had attended the meeting, there were still numerous tribes, and portions of tribes, who maintained a rancorous, unwavering hostility.  The Delawares and Shawanoes, however, against whom Bouquet, with the army of the south, was then in the act of advancing, sent a message to the effect, that, though they had no fear of the English, and though they regarded them as old women, and held them in contempt, yet, out of pity for their sufferings, they were willing to treat of peace.  To this insolent missive Johnson made no answer; and, indeed, those who sent it were, at this very time, renewing the bloody work of the preceding year along the borders of Pennsylvania and Virginia.  The Senecas, that numerous and warlike people, to whose savage enmity were to be ascribed the massacre at the Devil’s Hole, and other disasters of the last summer, had recently made a preliminary treaty with Sir William Johnson, and at the same time pledged themselves to appear at Niagara to ratify and complete it.  They broke their promise; and it soon became known that they had leagued themselves with a large band of hostile Delawares, who had visited their country.  Upon this, a messenger was sent to them, threatening that, unless they instantly came to Niagara, the English would march upon them and burn their villages.  The menace had full effect; and a large body of these formidable warriors appeared at the English camp, bringing fourteen prisoners, besides several deserters and runaway slaves.  A peace was concluded, on condition that they should never again attack the English, and that they should cede to the British crown a strip of land, between the Lakes Erie and Ontario, four miles in width, on both sides of the River, or Strait, of Niagara.  A treaty was next made with a deputation of Wyandots from Detroit, on condition of the delivery of prisoners, and the preservation of friendship for the future.

Councils were next held, in turn, with each of the various tribes assembled around the fort, some of whom craved forgiveness for the hostile acts they had committed, and deprecated the vengeance of the English; while others alleged their innocence, urged their extreme wants and necessities, and begged that English traders might once more be allowed to visit them.  The council-room in the fort was crowded from morning till night; and the wearisome formalities of such occasions, the speeches made and replied to, and the final shaking of hands, smoking of pipes, and serving out of whiskey, engrossed the time of the superintendent for many successive days.

Among the Indians present were a band of Ottawas from Michillimackinac, and remoter settlements, beyond Lake Michigan, and a band of Menomonies from Green Bay.  The former, it will be remembered, had done good service to the English, by rescuing the survivors of the garrison of Michillimackinac from the clutches of the Ojibwas; and the latter had deserved no less at their hands, by the protection they had extended to Lieutenant Gorell, and the garrison at Green Bay.  Conscious of their merits, they had come to Niagara in full confidence of a favorable reception.  Nor were they disappointed; for Johnson met them with a cordial welcome, and greeted them as friends and brothers.  They, on their part, were not wanting in expressions of pleasure; and one of their orators exclaimed, in the figurative language of his people, “When our brother came to meet us, the storms ceased, the lake became smooth, and the whole face of nature was changed.”

They disowned all connection or privity with the designs of Pontiac.  “Brother,” said one of the Ottawa chiefs, “you must not imagine I am acquainted with the cause of the war.  I only heard a little bird whistle an account of it, and, on going to Michillimackinac, I found your people killed; upon which I sent our priest to inquire into the matter.  On the priest’s return, he brought me no favorable account, but a war-hatchet from Pontiac, which I scarcely looked on, and immediately threw away.”

Another of the Ottawas, a chief of the remoter band of Lake Michigan, spoke to a similar effect, as follows: “We are not of the same people as those residing about Michillimackinac; we only heard at a distance that the enemy were killing your soldiers, on which we covered our heads, and I resolved not to suffer my people to engage in the war.  I gathered them together, and made them sit still.  In the spring, on uncovering my head, I perceived that they had again begun a war, and that the sky was all cloudy in that quarter.”

The superintendent thanked them for their fidelity to the English; reminded them that their true interest lay in the preservation of peace, and concluded with a gift of food and clothing, and a permission, denied to all the rest, to open a traffic with the traders, who had already begun to assemble at the fort.  “And now, my brother,” said a warrior, as the council was about to break up, “we beg that you will tell us where we can find some rum to comfort us; for it is long since we have tasted any, and we are very thirsty.” This honest request was not refused.  The liquor was distributed, and a more copious supply promised for the future; upon which the deputation departed, and repaired to their encampment, much pleased with their reception.

Throughout these conferences, one point of policy was constantly adhered to.  No general council was held.  Separate treaties were made, in order to promote mutual jealousies and rivalries, and discourage the feeling of union, and of a common cause among the widely scattered tribes.  Johnson at length completed his task, and, on the sixth of August, set sail for Oswego.  The march of the army had hitherto been delayed by rumors of hostile designs on the part of the Indians, who, it was said, had formed a scheme for attacking Fort Niagara, as soon as the troops should have left the ground.  Now, however, when the concourse was melting away, and the tribes departing for their distant homes, it was thought that the danger was past, and that the army might safely resume its progress.  They advanced, accordingly, to Fort Schlosser, above the cataract, whither their boats and bateaux had been sent before them, craned up the rocks at Lewiston, and dragged by oxen over the rough portage road.  The troops had been joined by three hundred friendly Indians, and an equal number of Canadians.  The appearance of the latter in arms would, it was thought, have great effect on the minds of the enemy, who had always looked upon them as friends and supporters.  Of the Indian allies, the greater part were Iroquois, and the remainder, about a hundred in number, Ojibwas and Mississaugas; the former being the same who had recently arrived from the Sault Ste.  Marie, bringing with them their prisoner, Alexander Henry.  Henry was easily persuaded to accompany the expedition; and the command of the Ojibwas and Mississaugas was assigned to him—“To me,” writes the adventurous trader, “whose best hope it had lately been to live by their forbearance.” His long-continued sufferings and dangers hardly deserved to be rewarded by so great a misfortune as that of commanding a body of Indian warriors; an evil from which, however, he was soon to be relieved.  The army had hardly begun its march, when nearly all his followers ran off, judging it wiser to return home with the arms and clothing given them for the expedition, than to make war against their own countrymen and relatives.  Fourteen warriors still remained; but on the following night, when the army lay at Fort Schlosser, having contrived by some means to obtain liquor, they created such a commotion in the camp, by yelling and firing their guns, as to excite the utmost indignation of the commander.  They received from him, in consequence, a reproof so harsh and ill judged, that most of them went home in disgust; and Henry found his Indian battalion suddenly dwindled to four or five vagabond hunters.  A large number of Iroquois still followed the army, the strength of which, farther increased by a re-enforcement of Highlanders, was now very considerable.

The troops left Fort Schlosser on the eighth.  Their boats and bateaux pushed out into the Niagara, whose expanded waters reposed in a serenity soon to be exchanged for the wild roar and tumultuous struggle of the rapids and the cataract.  They coasted along the southern shore of Lake Erie until the twelfth, when, in the neighborhood of Presqu’ Isle, they were overtaken by a storm of rain, which forced them to drag their boats on shore, and pitch their tents in the dripping forest.  Before the day closed, word was brought that strange Indians were near the camp.  They soon made their appearance, proclaiming themselves to be chiefs and deputies of the Delawares and Shawanoes, empowered to beg for peace in the name of their respective tribes.  Various opinions were entertained of the visitors.  The Indian allies wished to kill them, and many of the officers believed them to be spies.  There was no proof of their pretended character of deputies; and, for all that appeared to the contrary, they might be a mere straggling party of warriors.  Their professions of an earnest desire for peace were contradicted by the fact that they brought with them but one small belt of wampum; a pledge no less indispensable in a treaty with these tribes than seals and signatures in a convention of European sovereigns.  Bradstreet knew, or ought to have known, the character of the treacherous enemy with whom he had to deal.  He knew that the Shawanoes and Delawares had shown, throughout the war, a ferocious and relentless hostility; that they had sent an insolent message to Niagara; and, finally, that in his own instructions he was enjoined to deal sternly with them, and not be duped by pretended overtures.  Yet, in spite of the suspicious character of the self-styled deputies, in spite of the sullen wrath of his Indian allies, and the murmured dissent of his officers, he listened to their proposals, and entered into a preliminary treaty.  He pledged himself to refrain from attacking the Delawares and Shawanoes, on condition that within twenty-five days the deputies should again meet him at Sandusky, in order to yield up their prisoners, and conclude a definite treaty of peace.  It afterwards appeared—and this, indeed, might have been suspected at the time—that the sole object of the overtures was to retard the action of the army until the season should be too far advanced to prosecute the campaign.  At this very moment, the Delaware and Shawanoe war-parties were murdering and scalping along the frontiers; and the work of havoc continued for weeks, until it was checked at length by the operations of Colonel Bouquet.

Bradstreet was not satisfied with the promise he had made to abandon his own hostile designs.  He consummated his folly and presumption by despatching a messenger to his superior officer, Colonel Bouquet, informing him that the Delawares and Shawanoes had been reduced to submission without his aid, and that he might withdraw his troops, as there was no need of his advancing farther.  Bouquet, astonished and indignant, paid no attention to this communication, but pursued his march as before.

The course pursued by Bradstreet in this affair—a course which can only be ascribed to the vain ambition of finishing the war without the aid of others—drew upon him the severe censures of the commander-in-chief, who, on hearing of the treaty, at once annulled it.  Bradstreet has been accused of having exceeded his orders, in promising to conclude a definite treaty with the Indians, a power which was vested in Sir William Johnson alone; but as upon this point his instructions were not explicit, he may be spared the full weight of this additional charge.
Having, as he thought, accomplished not only a great part of his own task, but also the whole of that which had been assigned to Colonel Bouquet, Bradstreet resumed his progress westward, and in a few days reached Sandusky.  He had been ordered to attack the Wyandots, Ottawas, and Miamis, dwelling near this place; but at his approach, these Indians, hastening to avert the danger, sent a deputation to meet him, promising that, if he would refrain from attacking them, they would follow him to Detroit, and there conclude a treaty.  Bradstreet thought proper to trust this slippery promise; though, with little loss of time, he might have reduced them, on the spot, to a much more effectual submission.  He now bent his course for Detroit, leaving the Indians of Sandusky much delighted, and probably no less surprised, at the success of their embassy.  Before his departure, however, he despatched Captain Morris, with several Canadians and friendly Indians, to the Illinois, in order to persuade the savages of that region to treat of peace with the English.  The measure was in a high degree ill advised and rash, promising but doubtful advantage, and exposing the life of a valuable officer to imminent risk.  The sequel of Morris’s adventure will soon appear.

The English boats now entered the mouth of the Detroit, and on the twenty-sixth of August came within sight of the fort and adjacent settlements.  The inhabitants of the Wyandot village on the right, who, it will be remembered, had recently made a treaty of peace at Niagara, ran down to the shore, shouting, whooping, and firing their guns,—a greeting more noisy than sincere,—while the cannon of the garrison echoed salutation from the opposite shore, and cheer on cheer, deep and heartfelt, pealed welcome from the crowded ramparts.

Well might Gladwyn’s beleaguered soldiers rejoice at the approaching succor.  They had been beset for more than fifteen months by their wily enemy; and though there were times when not an Indian could be seen, yet woe to the soldier who should wander into the forest in search of game, or stroll too far beyond range of the cannon.  Throughout the preceding winter, they had been left in comparative quiet; but with the opening spring the Indians had resumed their pertinacious hostilities; not, however, with the same activity and vigor as during the preceding summer.  The messages of Sir William Johnson, and the tidings of Bradstreet’s intended expedition, had had great effect upon their minds, and some of them had begged abjectly for peace; but still the garrison were harassed by frequent alarms, and days and nights of watchfulness were their unvarying lot.  Cut off for months together from all communication with their race; pent up in an irksome imprisonment; ill supplied with provisions, and with clothing worn threadbare, they hailed with delight the prospect of a return to the world from which they had been banished so long.  The army had no sooner landed than the garrison was relieved, and fresh troops substituted in their place.  Bradstreet’s next care was to inquire into the conduct of the Canadian inhabitants of Detroit, and punish such of them as had given aid to the Indians.  A few only were found guilty, the more culpable having fled to the Illinois on the approach of the army.

Pontiac too was gone.  The great war-chief, his vengeance unslaked, and his purpose unshaken, had retired, as we have seen, to the banks of the Maumee, whence he sent a haughty defiance to the English commander.  The Indian villages near Detroit were half emptied of their inhabitants, many of whom still followed the desperate fortunes of their indomitable leader.  Those who remained were, for the most part, brought by famine and misery to a sincere desire for peace, and readily obeyed the summons of Bradstreet to meet him in council.

The council was held in the open air, on the morning of the seventh of September, with all the accompaniments of military display which could inspire awe and respect among the assembled savages.  The tribes, or rather fragments of tribes, represented at this meeting, were the Ottawas, Ojibwas, Pottawattamies, Miamis, Sacs, and Wyandots.  The Indians of Sandusky kept imperfectly the promise they had made, the Wyandots of that place alone sending a full deputation; while the other tribes were merely represented by the Ojibwa chief Wasson.  This man, who was the principal chief of his tribe, and the most prominent orator on the present occasion, rose and opened the council.

“My brother,” he said, addressing Bradstreet, “last year God forsook us.  God has now opened our eyes, and we desire to be heard.  It is God’s will our hearts are altered.  It was God’s will you had such fine weather to come to us.  It is God’s will also there should be peace and tranquillity over the face of the earth and of the waters.”

Having delivered this exordium, Wasson frankly confessed that the tribes which he represented were all justly chargeable with the war, and now deeply regretted their delinquency.  It is common with Indians, when accused of acts of violence, to lay the blame upon the unbridled recklessness of their young warriors; and this excuse is often perfectly sound and valid; but since, in the case of a premeditated and long-continued war, it was glaringly inadmissible, they now reversed the usual course, and made scapegoats of the old chiefs and warriors, who, as they declared, had led the people astray by sinister counsel and bad example.

Bradstreet would grant peace only on condition that they should become subjects of the King of England, and acknowledge that he held over their country a sovereignty as ample and complete as over any other part of his dominions.  Nothing could be more impolitic and absurd than this demand.  The smallest attempt at an invasion of their liberties has always been regarded by the Indians with extreme jealousy, and a prominent cause of the war had been an undue assumption of authority on the part of the English.  This article of the treaty, could its purport have been fully understood, might have kindled afresh the quarrel which it sought to extinguish; but happily not a savage present was able to comprehend it.  Subjection and sovereignty are ideas which never enter into the mind of an Indian, and therefore his language has no words to express them.  Most of the western tribes, it is true, had been accustomed to call themselves children of the King of France; but the words were a mere compliment, conveying no sense of any political relation whatever.  Yet it was solely by means of this harmless metaphor that the condition in question could be explained to the assembled chiefs.  Thus interpreted, it met with a ready assent; since, in their eyes, it involved no concession beyond a mere unmeaning change of forms and words.  They promised, in future, to call the English king father, instead of brother; unconscious of any obligation which so trifling a change could impose, and mentally reserving a full right to make war on him or his people, whenever it should suit their convenience.  When Bradstreet returned from his expedition, he boasted that he had reduced the tribes of Detroit to terms of more complete submission than any other Indians had ever before yielded; but the truth was soon detected and exposed by those conversant with Indian affairs.

At this council, Bradstreet was guilty of the bad policy and bad taste of speaking through the medium of a French interpreter; so that most of his own officers, as well as the Iroquois allies, who were strangers to the Algonquin language, remained in ignorance of all that passed.  The latter were highly indignant, and refused to become parties to the treaty, or go through the usual ceremony of shaking hands with the chiefs of Detroit, insisting that they had not heard their speeches, and knew not whether they were friends or enemies.  In another particular, also, Bradstreet gave great offence.  From some unexplained impulse or motive, he cut to pieces, with a hatchet, a belt of wampum which was about to be used in the council; and all the Indians present, both friends and enemies, were alike incensed at this rude violation of the ancient pledge of faith, which, in their eyes, was invested with something of a sacred character.

Having settled the affairs of Detroit, Bradstreet despatched Captain Howard, with a strong detachment, to take possession of Michillimackinac, which had remained unoccupied since its capture in the preceding summer.  Howard effected his object without resistance, and, at the same time, sent parties of troops to reoccupy the deserted posts of Green Bay and Sault Ste.  Marie.  Thus, after the interval of more than a year, the flag of England was again displayed among the solitudes of the northern wilderness.

While Bradstreet’s army lay encamped on the fields near Detroit, Captain Morris, with a few Iroquois and Canadian attendants, was pursuing his adventurous embassy to the country of the Illinois.  Morris, who has left us his portrait, prefixed to a little volume of prose and verse, was an officer of literary tastes, whose round English face did not indicate any especial degree of enterprise or resolution.  He seems, however, to have had both; for, on a hint from the General, he had offered himself for the adventure, for which he was better fitted than most of his brother officers, inasmuch as he spoke French.  He was dining, on the eve of his departure, in the tent of Bradstreet, when his host suddenly remarked, in the bluff way habitual to him, that he had a French fellow, a prisoner, whom he meant to hang; but that, if Morris would like him for an interpreter, he might have him.  The prisoner in question was the Canadian Godefroy, who was presently led into the tent; and who, conscious of many misdemeanors, thought that his hour was come, and fell on his knees to beg his life.  Bradstreet told him that he should be pardoned if he would promise to “go with this gentleman, and take good care of him,” pointing to his guest.  Godefroy promised; and, to the best of his power, he kept his word, for he imagined that Morris had saved his life.

Morris set out on the following afternoon with Godefroy, another Canadian, two servants, and a party of Indians, ascended the Maumee, and soon approached the camp of Pontiac; who, as already mentioned, had withdrawn to this river with his chosen warriors.  The party disembarked from their canoes; and an Ottawa chief, who had joined them, lent them three horses.  Morris and the Canadians mounted, and, preceded by their Indian attendants, displaying an English flag, advanced in state towards the camp, which was two leagues or more distant.  As they drew near, they were met by a rabble of several hundred Indians, called by Morris “Pontiac’s army.” They surrounded him, beat his horse, and crowded between him and his followers, apparently trying to separate them.  At the outskirts of the camp stood Pontiac himself, who met the ambassador with a scowling brow, and refused to offer his hand.  Here, too, stood a man, in the uniform of a French officer, holding his gun with the butt resting on the ground, and assuming an air of great importance; while two Pawnee slaves stood close behind him.  He proved to be a French drummer, calling himself Saint Vincent, one of those renegades of civilization to be found in almost every Indian camp.  He now took upon himself the office of a master of ceremonies; desired Morris to dismount, and seated himself at his side on a bear-skin.  Godefroy took his place near them; and the throng of savages, circle within circle, stood crowded around.  “Presently,” says Morris, “came Pontiac, and squatted himself, after his fashion, opposite to me.” He opened the interview by observing that the English were liars, and demanding of the ambassador if he had come to lie to them, like the rest.  “This Indian,” pursues Morris, “has a more extensive power than ever was known among that people, for every chief used to command his own tribe; but eighteen nations, by French intrigue, had been brought to unite and choose this man for their commander.”

Pontiac now produced a letter directed to himself, and sent from New Orleans, though purporting to be written by the King of France.  It contained, according to Morris, the grossest calumnies that the most ingenious malice could devise to incense the Indians against the English.  The old falsehood was not forgotten: “Your French Father,” said the writer, “is neither dead nor asleep; he is already on his way, with sixty great ships, to revenge himself on the English, and drive them out of America.” Much excitement followed the reading of the letter, and Morris’s situation became more than unpleasant; but Saint Vincent befriended him, and hurried him off to his wigwam to keep him out of harm’s way.

On the next day there was a grand council.  Morris made a speech, in which he indiscreetly told the Indians that the King of France had given all the country to the King of England.  Luckily, his auditors received the announcement with ridicule rather than anger.  The chiefs, however, wished to kill him; but Pontiac interposed, on the ground that the life of an ambassador should be held sacred.  “He made a speech,” says Morris, “which does him honor, and shows that he was acquainted with the law of nations.” He seemed in a mood more pacific than could have been expected, and said privately to Godefroy: “I will lead the nations to war no more.  Let them be at peace if they choose; but I will never be a friend to the English.  I shall be a wanderer in the woods; and, if they come there to seek me, I will shoot at them while I have an arrow left.” Morris thinks that he said this in a fit of despair, and that, in fact, he was willing to come to terms.

The day following was an unlucky one.  One of Morris’s Indians, a Mohawk chief, ran off, having first stolen all he could lay hands on, and sold the ambassador’s stack of rum, consisting of two barrels, to the Ottawas.  A scene of frenzy ensued.  A young Indian ran up to Morris, and stabbed at him savagely; but Godefroy caught the assassin’s hand, and saved his patron’s life.  Morris escaped from the camp, and lay hidden in a cornfield till the howling and screeching subsided, and the Indians slept themselves sober.  When he returned, an Indian, called the Little Chief, gave him a volume of Shakespeare,—the spoil of some slaughtered officer,—and then begged for gunpowder.

Having first gained Pontiac’s consent, Morris now resumed his journey to the Illinois.  The river was extremely low, and it was with much ado that they pushed their canoe against the shallow current, or dragged it over stones and sandbars.  On the fifth day, they met an Indian mounted on a handsome white horse, said to have belonged to General Braddock, and to have been captured at the defeat of his army, nine years before.  On the morning of the seventh day, they reached the neighborhood of Fort Miami.  This post, captured during the preceding year, had since remained without a garrison; and its only tenants were the Canadians, who had built their houses within its palisades, and a few Indians, who thought fit to make it their temporary abode.  The meadows about the fort were dotted with the lodges of the Kickapoos, a large band of whom had recently arrived; but the great Miami village was on the opposite side of the stream, screened from sight by the forest which intervened.

The party landed a little below the fort; and, while his followers were making their way through the border of woods that skirted the river, Morris remained in the canoe, solacing himself by reading Antony and Cleopatra in the volume he had so oddly obtained.  It was fortunate that he did so; for his attendants had scarcely reached the open meadow, which lay behind the woods, when they were encountered by a mob of savages, armed with spears, hatchets, and bows and arrows, and bent on killing the Englishman.  Being, for the moment, unable to find him, the chiefs had time to address the excited rabble, and persuade them to postpone their intended vengeance.  The ambassador, buffeted, threatened, and insulted, was conducted to the fort, where he was ordered to remain; though, at the same time, the Canadian inhabitants were forbidden to admit him into their houses.  Morris soon discovered that this unexpected rough treatment was owing to the influence of a deputation of Delaware and Shawanoe chiefs, who had recently arrived, bringing fourteen war-belts of wampum, and exciting the Miamis to renew their hostilities against the common enemy.  Thus it was fully apparent that while the Delawares and Shawanoes were sending one deputation to treat of peace with Bradstreet on Lake Erie, they were sending another to rouse the tribes of the Illinois to war.  From Fort Miami, the deputation had proceeded westward, spreading the contagion among all the tribes between the Mississippi and the Ohio; declaring that they would never make peace with the English, but would fight them as long as the sun should shine, and calling on their brethren of the Illinois to follow their example.

They had been aware of the approach of Morris, and had urged the Miamis to put him to death when he arrived.  Accordingly, he had not been long at the fort when two warriors, with tomahawks in their hands, entered, seized him by the arms, and dragged him towards the river.  Godefroy stood by, pale and motionless.  “Eh bien, vous m’abandonnez donc!” said Morris.  “Non, mon capitaine,” the Canadian answered, “je ne vous abandonnerai jamais;” and he followed, as the two savages dragged their captive into the water.  Morris thought that they meant to drown and scalp him, but soon saw his mistake; for they led him through the stream, which was fordable, and thence towards the Miami village.  As they drew near, they stopped, and began to strip him, but grew angry at the difficulty of the task; till, in rage and despair, he tore off his clothes himself.  They then bound his arms behind him with his own sash, and drove him before them to the village, where they made him sit on a bench.  A whooping, screeching mob of savages was instantly about him, and a hundred voices clamored together in dispute as to what should be done with him.  Godefroy stood by him with a courageous fidelity that redeemed his past rascalities.  He urged a nephew of Pontiac, who was present, to speak for the prisoner.  The young Indian made a bold harangue to the crowd; and Godefroy added that, if Morris were killed, the English would take revenge on those who were in their power at Detroit.  A Miami chief, called the Swan, now declared for the Englishman, untied his arms, and gave him a pipe to smoke; whereupon another chief, called the White Cat, snatched it from him, seized him, and bound him fast by the neck to a post.  Naked, helpless, and despairing, he saw the crowd gathering around to torture him.  “I had not the smallest hope of life,” he says, “and I remember that I conceived myself as if going to plunge into a gulf, vast, immeasurable; and that, a few moments after, the thought of torture occasioned a sort of torpor and insensibility.  I looked at Godefroy, and, seeing him exceedingly distressed, I said what I could to encourage him; but he desired me not to speak.  I supposed it gave offence to the savages; and therefore was silent; when Pacanne, chief of the Miami nation, and just out of his minority, having mounted a horse and crossed the river, rode up to me.  When I heard him calling to those about me, and felt his hand behind my neck, I thought he was going to strangle me, out of pity; but he untied me, saying, as it was afterwards interpreted to me: ‘I give that man his life.  If you want English meat, go to Detroit, or to the lake, and you’ll find enough.  What business have you with this man’s flesh, who is come to speak with us?’ I fixed my eyes steadfastly on this young man, and endeavored by looks to express my gratitude.”

An Indian now offered him a pipe, and he was then pushed with abuse and blows out of the village.  He succeeded in crossing the river and regaining the fort, after receiving a sharp cut of a switch from a mounted Indian whom he met on the way.

He found the Canadians in the fort disposed to befriend him.  Godefroy and the metamorphosed drummer, Saint Vincent, were always on the watch to warn him of danger; and one l’Esperance gave him an asylum in his garret.  He seems to have found some consolation in the compassion of two handsome young squaws, sisters, he was told, of his deliverer, Pacanne; but the two warriors who had stripped and bound him were constantly lurking about the fort, watching an opportunity to kill him; and the Kickapoos, whose lodges were pitched on the meadow, sent him a message to the effect that, if the Miamis did not put him to death, they themselves would do so, whenever he should pass their camp.  He was still on the threshold of his journey, and his final point of destination was several hundred miles distant; yet, with great resolution, he determined to persevere, and, if possible, fulfil his mission.  His Indian and Canadian attendants used every means to dissuade him, and in the evening held a council with the Miami chiefs, the result of which was most discouraging.  Morris received message after message, threatening his life, should he persist in his design; and word was brought him that several of the Shawanoe deputies were returning to the fort, expressly to kill him.  Under these circumstances, it would have been madness to persevere; and, abandoning his mission, he set out for Detroit.  The Indian attendants, whom he had brought from Sandusky, after behaving with the utmost insolence, abandoned him in the woods; their ringleader being a Christian Huron, of the Mission of Lorette, whom Morris pronounces the greatest rascal he ever knew.  With Godefroy and two or three others who remained with him, he reached Detroit on the seventeenth of September, half dead with famine and fatigue.  He had expected to find Bradstreet; but that agile commander had decamped, and returned to Sandusky.  Morris, too ill and exhausted to follow, sent him his journal, together with a letter, in which he denounced the Delaware and Shawanoe ambassadors, whom he regarded, and no doubt with justice, as the occasion of his misfortunes.  The following is his amiable conclusion:—

“The villains have nipped our fairest hopes in the bud.  I tremble for you at Sandusky; though I was greatly pleased to find you have one of the vessels with you, and artillery.  I wish the chiefs were assembled on board the vessel, and that she had a hole in her bottom.  Treachery should be paid with treachery; and it is a more than ordinary pleasure to deceive those who would deceive us.”

Bradstreet had retraced his course to Sandusky, to keep his engagement with the Delaware and Shawanoe deputies, and await the fulfilment of their worthless promise to surrender their prisoners, and conclude a definitive treaty of peace.  His hopes were defeated.  The appointed time expired, and not a chief was seen; though, a few days after, several warriors came to the camp, with a promise that, if Bradstreet would remain quiet, and refrain from attacking their villages, they would bring in the prisoners in the course of the following week.  Bradstreet accepted their excuses; and, having removed his camp to the carrying-place of Sandusky, lay waiting in patient expectation.  It was here that he received, for the first time, a communication from General Gage, respecting the preliminary treaty, concluded several weeks before.  Gage condemned his conduct in severe terms, and ordered him to break the engagements he had made, and advance at once upon the enemy, choosing for his first objects of attack the Indians living upon the plains of the Scioto.  The fury of Bradstreet was great on receiving this message; and it was not diminished when the journal of Captain Morris was placed in his hands, fully proving how signally he had been duped.  He was in no temper to obey the orders of the commander-in-chief; and, to justify himself for his inaction, he alleged the impossibility of reaching the Scioto plains at that advanced season.  Two routes thither were open to his choice, one by the River Sandusky, and the other by Cayahoga Creek.  The water in the Sandusky was sunk low with the drought, and the carrying-place at the head of Cayahoga Creek was a few miles longer than had been represented; yet the army were ready for the attempt, and these difficulties could not have deterred a vigorous commander.  Under cover of such excuses, Bradstreet remained idle at Sandusky for several days, while sickness and discontent were rife in his camp.  The soldiers complained of his capricious, peremptory temper, his harshness to his troops, and the unaccountable tenderness with which he treated the Sandusky Indians, some of whom had not yet made their submission; while he enraged his Iroquois allies by his frequent rebukes and curses.

At length, declaring that provisions were failing and the season growing late, he resolved to return home; and broke up his camp with such precipitancy that two soldiers, who had gone out in the morning to catch fish for his table, were inhumanly left behind; the colonel remarking that they might stay and be damned.  Soon after leaving Sandusky, he saw fit to encamp one evening on an open, exposed beach, on the south shore of Lake Erie, though there was in the neighborhood a large river, “wherein,” say his critics, “a thousand boats could lie with safety.” A storm came on: half his boats were dashed to pieces; and six pieces of cannon, with ammunition, provisions, arms, and baggage, were lost or abandoned.  For three days the tempest raged unceasingly; and, when the angry lake began to resume its tranquillity, it was found that the remaining boats were insufficient to convey the troops.  A body of Indians, together with a detachment of provincials, about a hundred and fifty in all, were therefore ordered to make their way to Niagara along the pathless borders of the lake.  They accordingly set out, and, after many days of hardship, reached their destination; though such had been their sufferings, from fatigue, cold, and hunger; from wading swamps, swimming creeks and rivers, and pushing their way through tangled thickets, that many of the provincials perished miserably in the woods.  On the fourth of November, seventeen days after their departure from Sandusky, the main body of the little army arrived in safety at Niagara; and the whole, re-embarking on Lake Ontario, proceeded towards Oswego.  Fortune still seemed adverse; for a second tempest arose, and one of the schooners, crowded with troops, foundered in sight of Oswego, though most of the men were saved.  The route to the settlements was now a short and easy one.  On their arrival, the regulars went into quarters; while the troops levied for the campaign were sent home to their respective provinces.

This expedition, ill conducted as it was, produced some beneficial results.  The Indians at Detroit had been brought to reason, and for the present, at least, would probably remain tranquil; while the re-establishment of the posts on the upper lakes must necessarily have great effect upon the natives of that region.  At Sandusky, on the other hand, the work had been but half done.  The tribes of that place felt no respect for the English; while those to the southward and westward had been left in a state of turbulence, which promised an abundant harvest of future mischief.  In one particular, at least, Bradstreet had occasioned serious detriment to the English interest.  The Iroquois allies, who had joined his army, were disgusted by his treatment of them, while they were roused to contempt by the imbecility of his conduct towards the enemy; and thus the efforts of Sir William Johnson to secure the attachment of these powerful tribes were in no small degree counteracted and neutralized.

While Bradstreet’s troops were advancing upon the lakes, or lying idle in their camp at Sandusky, another expedition was in progress at the southward, with abler conduct and a more auspicious result.