1763.
DETROIT.
To the credulity of mankind each great calamity has its dire prognostics.
Signs and portents in the heavens, the vision of an Indian bow, and the
figure of a scalp imprinted on the disk of the moon, warned the New
England Puritans of impending war. The apparitions passed away, and Philip
of Mount Hope burst from the forest with his Narragansett warriors. In
October, 1762, thick clouds of inky blackness gathered above the fort and
settlement of Detroit. The river darkened beneath the awful shadows, and
the forest was wrapped in double gloom. Drops of rain began to fall, of
strong, sulphurous odor, and so deeply colored that the people, it is
said, collected them and used them for writing.[172] A literary and
philosophical journal of the time seeks to explain this strange phenomenon
on some principle of physical science; but the simple Canadians held a
different faith. Throughout the winter, the shower of black rain was the
foremost topic of their fireside talk; and forebodings of impending evil
disturbed the breast of many a timorous matron.
La Motte-Cadillac was the founder of Detroit. In the year 1701, he planted
the little military colony, which time has transformed into a thriving
American city.[173] At an earlier date, some feeble efforts had been made
to secure the possession of this important pass; and when La Hontan
visited the lakes, a small post, called Fort St. Joseph, was standing near
the present site of Fort Gratiot. The wandering Jesuits, too, made
frequent sojourns upon the borders of the Detroit, and baptized the savage
children whom they found there.
Fort St. Joseph was abandoned in the year 1688. The establishment of
Cadillac was destined to a better fate, and soon rose to distinguished
importance among the western outposts of Canada. Indeed, the site was
formed by nature for prosperity; and a bad government and a thriftless
people could not prevent the increase of the colony. At the close of the
French war, as Major Rogers tells us, the place contained twenty-five
hundred inhabitants.[174] The centre of the settlement was the fortified
town, currently called the Fort, to distinguish it from the straggling
dwellings along the river banks. It stood on the western margin of the
river, covering a small part of the ground now occupied by the city of
Detroit, and contained about a hundred houses, compactly pressed together,
and surrounded by a palisade. Both above and below the fort, the banks of
the stream were lined on both sides with small Canadian dwellings,
extending at various intervals for nearly eight miles. Each had its garden
and its orchard, and each was enclosed by a fence of rounded pickets. To
the soldier or the trader, fresh from the harsh scenery and ambushed
perils of the surrounding wilds, the secluded settlement was welcome as an
oasis in the desert.
The Canadian is usually a happy man. Life sits lightly upon him; he laughs
at its hardships, and soon forgets its sorrows. A lover of roving and
adventure, of the frolic and the dance, he is little troubled with
thoughts of the past or the future, and little plagued with avarice or
ambition. At Detroit, all his propensities found ample scope. Aloof from
the world, the simple colonists shared none of its pleasures and
excitements, and were free from many of its cares. Nor were luxuries
wanting which civilization might have envied them. The forests teemed with
game, the marshes with wild fowl, and the rivers with fish. The apples and
pears of the old Canadian orchards are even to this day held in esteem.
The poorer inhabitants made wine from the fruit of the wild grape, which
grew profusely in the woods, while the wealthier class procured a better
quality from Montreal, in exchange for the canoe loads of furs which they
sent down with every year. Here, as elsewhere in Canada, the long winter
was a season of social enjoyment; and when, in summer and autumn, the
traders and voyageurs, the _coureurs de bois_, and half-breeds, gathered
from the distant forests of the north-west, the whole settlement was alive
with dancing and feasting, drinking, gaming, and carousing.
[Illustration: FORT AND SETTLEMENTS OF DETROIT, A. D. 1763.]
Within the limits of the settlement were three large Indian villages. On
the western shore, a little below the fort, were the lodges of the
Pottawattamies; nearly opposite, on the eastern side, was the village of
the Wyandots; and on the same side, five miles higher up, Pontiac's band
of Ottawas had fixed their abode. The settlers had always maintained the
best terms with their savage neighbors. In truth, there was much
congeniality between the red man and the Canadian. Their harmony was
seldom broken; and among the woods and wilds of the northern lakes roamed
many a lawless half-breed, the mongrel offspring of the colonists of
Detroit and the Indian squaws.
We have already seen how, in an evil hour for the Canadians, a party of
British troops took possession of Detroit, towards the close of the year
1760. The British garrison, consisting partly of regulars and partly of
provincial rangers, was now quartered in a well-built range of barracks
within the town or fort. The latter, as already mentioned, contained about
a hundred small houses. Its form was nearly square, and the palisade which
surrounded it was about twenty-five feet high. At each corner was a wooden
bastion, and a blockhouse was erected over each gateway. The houses were
small, chiefly built of wood, and roofed with bark or a thatch of straw.
The streets also were extremely narrow, though a wide passage way, known
as the _chemin du ronde_, surrounded the town, between the houses and the
palisade. Besides the barracks, the only public buildings were a
council-house and a rude little church.
The garrison consisted of a hundred and twenty soldiers, with about forty
fur-traders and _engages_; but the latter, as well as the Canadian
inhabitants of the place, could little be trusted, in the event of an
Indian outbreak. Two small, armed schooners, the Beaver and the Gladwyn,
lay anchored in the stream, and several light pieces of artillery were
mounted on the bastions.
Such was Detroit,--a place whose defences could have opposed no resistance
to a civilized enemy; and yet, far removed as it was from the hope of
speedy succor, it could only rely, in the terrible struggles that awaited
it, upon its own slight strength and feeble resources.[175]
Standing on the water bastion of Detroit, a pleasant landscape spread
before the eye. The river, about half a mile wide, almost washed the foot
of the stockade; and either bank was lined with the white Canadian
cottages. The joyous sparkling of the bright blue water; the green
luxuriance of the woods; the white dwellings, looking out from the
foliage; and, in the distance, the Indian wigwams curling their smoke
against the sky,--all were mingled in one broad scene of wild and rural
beauty.
Pontiac, the Satan of this forest paradise, was accustomed to spend the
early part of the summer upon a small island at the opening of the Lake
St. Clair, hidden from view by the high woods that covered the intervening
Isle au Cochon.[176] "The king and lord of all this country," as Rogers
calls him, lived in no royal state. His cabin was a small, oven-shaped
structure of bark and rushes. Here he dwelt, with his squaws and children;
and here, doubtless, he might often have been seen, lounging, half-naked,
on a rush mat, or a bear-skin, like any ordinary warrior. We may fancy the
current of his thoughts, the turmoil of his uncurbed passions, as he
revolved the treacheries which, to his savage mind, seemed fair and
honorable. At one moment, his fierce heart would burn with the
anticipation of vengeance on the detested English; at another, he would
meditate how he best might turn the approaching tumults to the furtherance
of his own ambitious schemes. Yet we may believe that Pontiac was not a
stranger to the high emotion of the patriot hero, the champion not merely
of his nation's rights, but of the very existence of his race. He did not
dream how desperate a game he was about to play. He hourly flattered
himself with the futile hope of aid from France, and thought in his
ignorance that the British colonies must give way before the rush of his
savage warriors; when, in truth, all the combined tribes of the forest
might have chafed in vain rage against the rock-like strength of the
Anglo-Saxon.
Looking across an intervening arm of the river, Pontiac could see on its
eastern bank the numerous lodges of his Ottawa tribesmen, half hidden
among the ragged growth of trees and bushes. On the afternoon of the fifth
of May, a Canadian woman, the wife of St. Aubin, one of the principal
settlers, crossed over from the western side, and visited the Ottawa
village, to obtain from the Indians a supply of maple sugar and venison.
She was surprised at finding several of the warriors engaged in filing off
the muzzles of their guns, so as to reduce them, stock and all, to the
length of about a yard. Returning home in the evening, she mentioned what
she had seen to several of her neighbors. Upon this, one of them, the
blacksmith of the village, remarked that many of the Indians had lately
visited his shop, and attempted to borrow files and saws for a purpose
which they would not explain.[177] These circumstances excited the
suspicion of the experienced Canadians. Doubtless there were many in the
settlement who might, had they chosen, have revealed the plot; but it is
no less certain that the more numerous and respectable class in the little
community had too deep an interest in the preservation of peace, to
countenance the designs of Pontiac. M. Gouin, an old and wealthy settler,
went to the commandant, and conjured him to stand upon his guard; but
Gladwyn, a man of fearless temper, gave no heed to the friendly
advice.[178]
In the Pottawattamie village, if there be truth in tradition, lived an
Ojibwa girl, who could boast a larger share of beauty than is common in
the wigwam. She had attracted the eye of Gladwyn. He had formed a
connection with her, and she had become much attached to him. On the
afternoon of the sixth, Catharine--for so the officers called her--came to
the fort, and repaired to Gladwyn's quarters, bringing with her a pair of
elk-skin moccasons, ornamented with porcupine work, which he had requested
her to make. There was something unusual in her look and manner. Her face
was sad and downcast. She said little, and soon left the room; but the
sentinel at the door saw her still lingering at the street corner, though
the hour for closing the gates was nearly come. At length she attracted
the notice of Gladwyn himself; and calling her to him, he pressed her to
declare what was weighing upon her mind. Still she remained for a long
time silent, and it was only after much urgency and many promises not to
betray her, that she revealed her momentous secret.
To-morrow, she said, Pontiac will come to the fort with sixty of his
chiefs. Each will be armed with a gun, cut short, and hidden under his
blanket. Pontiac will demand to hold a council; and after he has delivered
his speech, he will offer a peace-belt of wampum, holding it in a reversed
position. This will be the signal of attack. The chiefs will spring up and
fire upon the officers, and the Indians in the street will fall upon the
garrison. Every Englishman will be killed, but not the scalp of a single
Frenchman will be touched.[179]
Such is the story told in 1768 to the traveller Carver at Detroit, and
preserved in local tradition, but not sustained by contemporary letters or
diaries. What is certain is, that Gladwyn received secret information, on
the night of the sixth of May, that an attempt would be made on the morrow
to capture the fort by treachery. He called some of his officers, and told
them what he had heard. The defences of the place were feeble and
extensive, and the garrison by far too weak to repel a general assault.
The force of the Indians at this time is variously estimated at from six
hundred to two thousand; and the commandant greatly feared that some wild
impulse might precipitate their plan, and that they would storm the fort
before the morning. Every preparation was made to meet the sudden
emergency. Half the garrison were ordered under arms, and all the officers
prepared to spend the night upon the ramparts.
The day closed, and the hues of sunset faded. Only a dusky redness
lingered in the west, and the darkening earth seemed her dull self again.
Then night descended, heavy and black, on the fierce Indians and the
sleepless English. From sunset till dawn, an anxious watch was kept from
the slender palisades of Detroit. The soldiers were still ignorant of the
danger; and the sentinels did not know why their numbers were doubled, or
why, with such unwonted vigilance, their officers repeatedly visited their
posts. Again and again Gladwyn mounted his wooden ramparts, and looked
forth into the gloom. There seemed nothing but repose and peace in the
soft, moist air of the warm spring evening, with the piping of frogs
along the river bank, just roused from their torpor by the genial
influence of May. But, at intervals, as the night wind swept across the
bastion, it bore sounds of fearful portent to the ear, the sullen booming
of the Indian drum and the wild chorus of quavering yells, as the
warriors, around their distant camp-fires, danced the war-dance, in
preparation for the morrow's work.[180]