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Updated: May 26, 2025
His forces now numbered, it is recorded, about eight hundred twenty warriors: two hundred fifty Ottawas, his own tribe and under his immediate command; one hundred fifty Pottawottomis, under Ninivay; fifty Wyandots, under Takee; two hundred Ojibwas, under Wasson; and one hundred seventy of the same tribe, under Sekahos.
They would have been pleased with any whites who would not cheat them, nor sell them whiskey, nor whip them for their poor gypsy habits, nor conduct themselves indecently toward their women, many of whom among the Pottawottomis especially those of nearly unmixed French descent are singularly comely, and some of them educated.
The lands on both sides of the Missouri in particular were owned by the Pottawottomis and Omahas, two tribes whom unjust treatment by our United States Government had the effect of rendering most hospitable to strangers whom they regarded as persecuted like themselves. They were pleased with the Mormons.
The Miami chief Richardville is on record as often asserting that Pontiac was born by the Maumee at the mouth of the Auglaize. In any event, Pontiac, like his great successor, the incomparable Shawano chief, Tecumseh, was a native of Ohio. The Ottawas, Ojibwas, and the Pottawottomis had formed a sort of alliance of which Pontiac was the virtual head.
The Wyandots and Pottawottomis, however, never as enthusiastic in this war as the other tribes, late in July decided to withdraw from the besieging confederacy and make peace with the British. They did so, and exchanged prisoners with Gladwyn. The Ottawas and Ojibwas, however, still held on, watching the Fort and keeping up a desultory fusillade. The end was drawing nigh.
On July 29th, Captain James Dalzell arrived from Niagara with artillery supplies and two hundred eighty men in twenty-two barges. Their approach to the Fort was bravely contested by the combined Indian forces, even the Wyandots and Pottawottomis breaking their treaty and treacherously joining in the assault. Dalzell's troops entered the Fort, and he proposed an immediate sortie.
Alienated from their ancient friends, here were Delawares from the Susquehanna eager to speed the fatal stroke, and Shawanoes from Grave Creek and the Muskingum; scattered warriors of the Six Nations; Ojibwas, Pottawottomis from the far Michigan; Abenakis and Caughnawagas from Canada; Ottawas from Lake Superior, led on by the royal Pontiac; and Hurons from the falls of Montreal and the mission of Lorette, whose barbarous leader gloried in a name torn from the most famous pages of Christian story.
A day or two later the four tribes, Ottawas, Ojibwas, Pottawottomis, and Wyandots, clamored about the Fort, and the attack was begun by volleys of bullets fired at the palisade walls. Thus opened the famous siege of Detroit, which lasted six months, from May 1 to November 1 , one of the longest and most bitterly contested sieges in the history of Western Indian warfare.
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