[1763 A.D.]

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 out 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 neighbourhood, and then, with a general rush, the whole were to turn against the settlements of the frontier.b

THE INDIAN WAR AND THE PAXTON BOYS

A simultaneous attack was unexpectedly made in May, 1763, along the whole frontier of Pennsylvania and Virginia. The English traders scattered through the region beyond the mountains were plundered and slain. The posts between the Ohio and Lake Erie were surprised and taken-indeed, all the posts in the western country, except Niagara, Detroit, Fort Pitt, and Ligonier. The three latter were closely blockaded, and the troops which Amherst hastily sent forward to relieve them did not reach their destination without some very hard fighting. This sudden onslaught, falling heaviest on Pennsylvania, excited the ferocity of the back settlers, chiefly Presbyterians of Scotch and Irish descent, having very little in common with the mild spirit of the Quakers. Well versed in the Old Testament, the same notion had obtained among them current in the early times of New England and Virginia, that as the Israelites exterminated the Canaanites, so they ought to exterminate the bloody heathen Indians, stigmatised as the children of Ham. Under this impression, and imagining them to be in correspondence with the hostile Indians, some settlers of Paxton township attacked the remnant of a friendly tribe who were living quietly under the guidance of Moravian missionaries at Conestoga, on the Susquehanna. All who fell into their hands, men, women, and children, were ruthlessly murdered. Those who escaped by being absent fled for refuge to Lancaster, and were placed for security in the workhouse there. The "Paxton Boys," as they called themselves, rushed into Lancaster, broke open the doors of the workhouse, and perpetrated a new

H. W.-VOL. XXIII. Q

[1764 A.D.]

massacre.1 It was in vain that Franklin, lately returned from Europe in December, denounced these murders in an eloquent and indignant pamphlet. Such was the fury of the mob, including many persons of respectable character and standing, that they even marched in arms to Philadelphia in January, 1764, for the destruction of some other friendly Indians who had taken refuge in that city. Thus beset, these unhappy fugitives attempted to escape to New York, to put themselves under the protection of Sir William Johnson, the Indian agent; but Lieutenant-Governor Colden refused to allow them to enter that province.

Owing to the royal veto on the late act for a volunteer militia, and the repeated refusals of the assembly to establish a compulsive one, there was no organised military force in the province except a few regular troops in the barracks at Philadelphia. By Franklin's aid, a strong body of volunteers for the defence of the city was speedily enrolled. When the insurgents approached, Franklin went out to meet them, and after a long negotiation, and agreeing to allow them to appoint two delegates to lay their grievances before the assembly, they were persuaded to disperse without further bloodshed. So ended this most disgraceful affair. There was no power in the province adequate to punish these outrages. The Christian Indians presently re-established themselves high up the eastern branch of the Susquehanna. Five or six years after, destined yet to suffer further outrages, they migrated to the country northwest of the Ohio, and settled, with their missionaries, in three villages on the Muskingum.

General Gage, successor of Amherst as commander-in-chief of the British forces in America, had called upon the colonies for troops to assist in subduing the Indians. So extensive was the combination that Major Loftus, while attempting to ascend the Mississippi in March, with four hundred men, to take possession of the Illinois country, was attacked near the present site of Fort Adams, and obliged to give over the enterprise. New England, remote from the seat of danger, answered Gage's call scantily and reluctantly. Virginia furnished seven hundred men, and Pennsylvania one thousand. A pack of bloodhounds was sent out from England. Two expeditions were presently organised and sent into the Indian country, one under Bouquet by way of Pittsburg, the other under Bradstreet along the lakes. The Indians, finding themselves thus vigorously attacked, consented to a treaty, by which they agreed to give up all prisoners, and to relinquish all claims to lands within gunshot of any fort, of which the British were authorised to build as many as they chose. Indians committing murders on white men were to be given up, to be tried by a jury half Indians and half colonists.

PARKMAN'S ACCOUNT OF THE DEATH OF PONTIAC AND THE END OF INDIAN POWER

At the end of September, after protracted conferences with Pontiac and other chiefs, Sir William Johnson's deputy, George Croghan, left Detroit and departed for Niagara, whence, after a short delay, he passed eastward, to report the results of his mission to the commander-in-chief. But before

['So fierce and active were the war-parties on the borders that the English governor of Pennsylvania had recourse to a measure which the frontier inhabitants had long demanded, and issued a proclamation offering a high bounty for Indian scalps, whether of men or women; a barbarous expedient, fruitful of butcheries and murders, but incapable of producing any decisive result.-PARKMAN.b]

[1764 A.D.]

leaving the Indian country he exacted from Pontiac a promise that in the spring he would descend to Oswego and, in behalf of the tribes lately banded in his league, conclude a treaty of peace and amity with Sir William Johnson.

Croghan's efforts had been attended with signal success. The tribes of the west, of late bristling in defiance and hot for fight, had craved forgiveness, and proffered the peaceful calumet. The war was over; the last flickerings of that wide conflagration had died away; but the embers still glowed beneath the ashes, and fuel and a breath alone were wanting to rekindle those desolating fires.

In the mean time a hundred Highlanders of the Forty-second Regiment, those veterans whose battle-cry had echoed over the bloodiest fields of America, had left Fort Pitt under command of Captain Sterling, and, descending the Ohio, undeterred by the rigour of the season, arrived at Fort Chartres just as the snows of early winter began to whiten the naked forests. The flag of France descended from the rampart, and, with the stern courtesies of war, St. Ange yielded up his post, the citadel of the Illinois, to its new masters. In that act was consummated the double triumph of British power in America. England had crushed her hereditary foe, and France, in her fall, had left to irretrievable ruin the savage tribes to whom her policy and self-interest had lent a transient support.

Spring returned, and Pontiac remembered the promise he had made to visit Sir William Johnson at Oswego.

We may well imagine with what bitterness of mood the defeated war-chief urged his canoe along the margin of Lake Erie and gazed upon the horizonbounded waters and the lofty shores, green with primeval verdure. Little could he have dreamed, and little could the wisest of that day have imagined, that, within the space of a single human life, that lonely lake would be studded with the sails of commerce, that cities and villages would rise upon the ruins of the forest, and that the poor mementoes of his lost race-the wampum beads, the rusty tomahawk, and the arrowhead of stone, turned up by the ploughshare-would become the wonder of schoolboys and the prized relics of the antiquary's cabinet. Yet it needed no prophetic eye to foresee that, sooner or later, the doom must come. The star of his people's destiny was fading from the sky, and, to a mind like his, the black and withering future must have stood revealed in all its desolation.

The chiefs passed the portage, and, once more embarking, pushed out upon Lake Ontario. Soon their goal was reached, and the cannon boomed hollow salutation from the batteries of Oswego.

Here they found Sir William Johnson waiting to receive them, attended by the chief sachems of the Iroquois, whom he had invited to the spot, that their presence might give additional weight and solemnity to the meeting. Johnson opened the meeting with the usual formalities, presenting his auditors with a belt of wampum to wipe the tears from their eyes, with another to cover the bones of their relatives, another to open their ears that they might hear, and another to clear their throats that they might speak with ease. Then, amid solemn silence, Pontiac's great peace-pipe was lighted and passed around the assembly, each man present inhaling a whiff of the sacred smoke. These tedious forms, together with a few speeches of compliment, consumed the whole morning; for this savage people, on whose supposed simplicity poets and rhetoricians have lavished their praises, may challenge the world to outmatch their bigoted adherence to usage and ceremonial.

The councils closed on the 31st, with a bountiful distribution of presents to Pontiac and his followers. Thus ended this memorable meeting, in

[1764-1769 A.D.] which Pontiac sealed his submission to the English, and renounced forever the bold design by which he had trusted to avert or retard the ruin of his race. His hope of seeing the empire of France restored in America was scattered to the winds, and with it vanished every rational scheme of resistance to English encroachment. Nothing now remained but to stand an idle spectator, while, in the north and in the south, the tide of British power rolled westward in resistless might; while the fragments of the rival empire, which he would fain have set up as a barrier against the flood, lay scattered a miserable wreck, and while the remnant of his people melted away or fled for refuge to remoter deserts. For them the prospects of the future were as clear as they were calamitous. Destruction or civilisation-between these lay their choice, and few who knew them could doubt which alternative they would embrace.

In 1769 Pontiac was at St. Louis for two or three days, when, hearing that a large number of Indians were assembled at Cahokia, on the opposite side of the river, and that some drinking bout or other social gathering was in progress, he told St. Ange that he would cross over to see what was going forward. St. Ange tried to dissuade him, and urged the risk to which he would expose himself; but Pontiac persisted, boasting that he was a match for the English and had no fear for his life.

An English trader named Williamson was then in the village. He had looked on the movements of Pontiac with a jealousy probably not diminished by the visit of the chief to the French at St. Louis, and he now resolved not to lose so favourable an opportunity to despatch him. With this view, he gained the ear of a strolling Indian belonging to the Kaskaskia tribe of the Illinois, bribed him with a barrel of liquor, and promised him a further reward if he would kill the chief. The bargain was quickly made. When Pontiac entered the forest, the assassin stole close upon his track, and, watching his moment, glided behind him and buried a tomahawk in his brain.

The dead body was soon discovered, and startled cries and wild howlings announced the event. The word was caught up from mouth to mouth, and the place resounded with infernal yells. The warriors snatched their weapons. The Illinois took part with their guilty countryman, and the few followers of Pontiac, driven from the village, fled to spread the tidings and call the nations to revenge. Meanwhile the murdered chief lay on the spot where he had fallen, until St. Ange, mindful of former friendship, sent to claim the body, and buried it with warlike honours near his fort of St. Louis.

Thus basely perished this champion of a ruined race. But could his shade have revisited the scene of murder, his savage spirit would have exulted in the vengeance which overwhelmed the abettors of the crime. Whole tribes were rooted out to expiate it. Chiefs and sachems whose veins had thrilled with his eloquence, young warriors whose aspiring hearts had caught the inspiration of his greatness, mustered to revenge his fate, and from the north and the east their united bands descended on the villages of the Illinois. Tradition has but faintly preserved the memory of the event, and its only annalists, men who held the intestine feuds of the savage tribes in no more account than the quarrels of panthers or wildcats, have left but a meagre record. Yet enough remains to tell us that over the grave of Pontiac more blood was poured out in atonement than flowed from the veins of the slaughtered heroes on the corpse of Patroclus, and the remnant of the Illinois who survived the carnage remained forever after sunk in utter insignificance.

Neither mound nor tablet marked the burial-place of Pontiac. For a mausoleum, a city has risen above the forest hero, and the race whom he

[1769 A.D.]

hated with such burning rancour trample with unceasing footsteps over his forgotten grave.b

As an epilogue to the story of French and Indian dominion in the United States we may quote from another work of Parkman, who has linked his name indissolubly with their history: a

"The French dominion is a memory of the past, and when we evoke its departed shades they rise upon us from their graves in strange, romantic guise. Again their ghostly camp-fires seem to burn, and the fitful light is cast around on lord and vassal and black-robed priest, mingled with wild forms of savage warriors, knit in close fellowship on the same stern errand. A boundless vision grows upon us: an untamed continent; vast wastes of forest verdure; mountains silent in primeval sleep; river, lake, and glimmering pool; wilderness oceans mingling with the sky. Such was the domain which France conquered for civilisation. Plumed helmets gleamed in the shade of its forests, priestly vestments in its dens and fastnesses of ancient barbarism. Men steeped in antique learning, pale with the close breath of the cloister, here spent the noon and evening of their lives, ruled savage hordes with a mild, parental sway, and stood serene before the direst shapes of death."t