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In that month the famous insurrection of the Indian tribes broke out, which, from the name of the chief who was its prime mover and master spirit, is commonly called Pontiac's war. The Delawares and Shawnees, and other of those emigrant tribes of the Ohio, among whom Washington had mingled, were foremost in this conspiracy.
So the dinner party was turned into a council of war, and, before it broke up, an attack on Pontiac's camp had been arranged for the following night. The day just concluded had been one of unhappiness and anxiety for the great Ottawa chieftain. The rumored defection of his Wyandot allies was proved true.
But the mere fact that so many jealously distinct tribes united in this common cause proves how much they all must have suffered at the hands of the colonists. While Pontiac's war continued in the West Murray had to deal with a political war in Canada which rose to its height in 1764.
In all Indian annals no name is more illustrious than Pontiac's; no figure more forcefully displays the good and bad qualities of his race. Principal chief of the Ottawa tribe, he was also by 1763 the head of a powerful confederation of Ottawas, Ojibwas, and Potawatomi, and a leader known and respected among Algonquin peoples from the sources of the Ohio to the Mississippi.
Pontiac's wrong-doings had brought it more profit than penalty, more praise than punishment: for, after five years in France in the care of the Little Chemist's widow, Madelinette Lajeunesse had become the greatest singer of her day.
In the village there were perhaps forty other men. On both sides of the river lay the fertile farms of the French settlers. Back of the farms on the east or Canadian side, and about five miles from Detroit, was the teeming village of Pontiac's Ottawas. Potawatomis and Wyandots also lived near. At Pontiac's call there waited more than a thousand warriors. The set time approached.
For the silence of the wilderness, he heard the clang and turmoil of human labor, the din of congregated thousands; and where the great river rolls down through the forest, in lonely grandeur, he saw the waters lashed into foam beneath the prows of panting steamboats, flocking to the broad levee." Pontiac's war long kept the English from taking actual possession of the western country.
Hope grew strong in Pontiac's heart as week after week his tribes and allies brought to his camp trophies of victory guns, prisoners, scalps. But Detroit troubled him. The most violent attacks produced no effect. To starve the garrison seemed the only way to conquer it.
The tide of white blood was surging ever farther into the west, and the Indians' hunting grounds. Many of the Indians grew uneasy. Pontiac's Bloody Belt passed from village to village, but the weary and nervous traveler was always welcome at the cabin of Logan, "friend of the white man."
I am convinced that once Black Hoof believes the settlers are in that frame of mind he will return and strike just as venomously as the Shawnees struck in the old French War and in Pontiac's War, after feasting with the whites and making them believe the red man was their friend." She straightened and drew a deep breath, and in a low voice said: "At last you've answered me. Now go!"
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