THE BLOODY BELT OF PONTIAC (1763-1769)
HOW AN INDIAN GIRL SAVED FORT DETROIT
Old Fort Detroit was a stockade twenty feet high, in the form of a
square about two-thirds of a mile around. It enclosed a church and
eighty or one hundred houses, mainly of French settlers with a
sprinkling of English traders.
In the block-houses at the corners and protecting the gates, light
cannon were mounted. The garrison consisted of only one hundred and
twenty men of the Eightieth Foot. 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. On May 1 Pontiac and forty chiefs and
warriors entered the fort, and danced the calumet, a peace dance, for
the pleasure of their officers. Pontiac said to Major Gladwyn that he
would return, at the change of the moon, May 7, or in one week, to hold
a council with him, and "brighten the chain of peace with the English."
The major agreed. He was a very foolish man, for a chief. Having
returned to his village, Pontiac called a different kind of a council,
there--a war council of one hundred chiefs. They were to have their
people cut off the ends of muskets that should be carried concealed
under the blankets. Sixty chiefs and warriors should go with him into
the council chamber at the fort; the others should linger in the
streets of the town and at the fort gates.
He would speak to the major with a belt, white on the one side, green
on the other. When he turned the belt and presented it wrong end
first, let every warrior kill an English soldier, beginning with the
officers. At the sound let every warrior outside the council use gun
and hatchet.
On May 5 a French settler's wife crossed the river to buy maple-sugar
and deer-meat at the Ottawa village. She saw the warriors busy filing
at their gun-barrels--shortening the guns to scarce a yard of length.
This was a curious thing to do. When she went back to the post she
spoke about it.
"That," said the blacksmith, "explains why those fellows have been
borrowing all my files and hack-saws. They wouldn't tell me what for.
Something's brewing."
When Major Gladwyn was informed, still he would not believe. But the
fur-traders at the post insisted that when an Indian shortened his gun,
he meant mischief. The opinion of fur-traders carried no weight with
Major Gladwyn, the British officer.
The next evening Catharine, a pretty Ojibwa girl who lived with the
Potawatomis, came to see him in his quarters. She was his favorite.
She had agreed to make him a pair of handsome moccasins, from an elk
hide. Now she brought the moccasins, and the rest of the hide.
Usually she had been much pleased to look upon and talk with the
handsome young major in the red clothes. This time her face was
clouded, she hung her head, and spoke hardly at all. Her eager
girlishness had vanished. The major's delight with the moccasins
failed to cheer her up.
Trying to win her smiles, he told her the moccasins were so beautiful
that he wished to give them to a friend. Would she take the elk-hide
away with her, and make another pair of moccasins for himself!
She finally left, with strangely slow step, and backward glances. At
sunset, when the gates of the fort were to be closed, the guard found
her still inside. As she would not go, the sergeant took word to the
major.
"She won't talk with me, sir," he reported.
"Send her in and I will talk with her," ordered the major.
Catharine came, downcast, silent, and timid.
"Why have you not gone before the gates are shut, Catharine?"
She hesitated.
"I did not wish to take away the skin that is yours."
"But you did take it away, as far as the gate."
She hesitated more.
"Yes, that is so. But if I take it outside I can never return it."
"Why not?"
"I cannot tell. I am afraid."
"You can talk freely. Nothing that you say shall go to other ears. If
you bring me news of value you will be well rewarded, and no one shall
know."
Catharine loved the major. Presently she told him of the mind of
Pontiac, and the deed planned for tomorrow morning.
A cold fear clutched the heart of Major Gladwyn. He recalled the
shortened guns, he recalled the Bloody Belt, he recalled the date made
with him for a big council on the morrow. At last he rather believed.
So he sent away the trembling Catharine, that she might go to her
village. He held a council with his officers.
Here they were, with only one hundred and twenty soldiers, and less
than three weeks' provisions, cut off by one thousand, two thousand,
three thousand merciless Indian warriors, and by the French settlers
and traders who probably would be glad to have the English killed.
"The English are to be struck down, but no Frenchman is to be harmed,"
had said Catharine.
That looked bad indeed.
This night guards were doubled along the parapets, and in the
block-houses. The major himself walked guard most of the night. From
the distant villages of the Ottawas, the Wyandots, and the Potawatomis
drifted the clamor of dances--an ugly sound, full of meaning, now.
Precisely at ten o'clock in the morning a host of bark canoes from the
Ottawa side of the Detroit River slanted across the current, and made
landing. Pontiac approached at the head of a long file of thirty
chiefs and as many warriors. They walked with measured, stately tread.
Every man was closely wrapped in a gay blanket.
They were admitted through the gate of the fort, but it was closed
against the mass of warriors, women and children who pressed after.
As Pontiac, with his escort, stalked for the council room, his quick
glances saw that the soldiers were formed, under arms, and moving from
spot to spot, and that a double rank had been stationed around the
headquarters.
In the council chamber he noted, too, that each officer wore his sword,
and two pistols!
"Why," asked Pontiac, of Major Gladwyn, "do I see so many of my
father's young men standing in the street with their guns?"
"It is best that my young men be exercised as soldiers, or they will
grow lazy and forget," answered the major.
Ha! Pontiac knew. Somehow his plans had been betrayed; his game was
up, unless he chose an open fight.
His chiefs and warriors sat uneasily. They all feared death. By
Indian law they ought to be killed for having intended to shed blood in
a calumet council.
Pontiac started his talk. He acted confused, as though he was not
certain what course to pursue.
Once he did seem about to offer the belt wrong end first, as the
signal--and Major Gladwyn, still sitting, slightly raised his hand.
Instantly from outside the door sounded the clash of arms and the quick
roll of a drum, to show that the garrison was on the alert. The
officers half drew their swords.
Pontiac flushed yet darker. He stammered, and offering the belt right
end first, closed his talk, and sat down again.
Major Gladwyn made a short reply. He said that the English were glad
to be friends, as long as their red brothers deserved it; but any act
of war would be severely punished.
That was all. The major let the Indians file out again. Pontiac knew.
He was too great a leader, in the Indian way, to be balked by one
defeat. He actually proposed another council; he actually persuaded
the foolish major to send out to him two officers, for a peace talk.
One of the officers barely escaped from captivity, the other never came
back.
Then Pontiac boldly besieged Detroit, in white race fashion--the
closest, longest siege ever laid by Indians against any fort on
American soil.
His two thousand Indians swarmed in the forest, held the fences and
walls and buildings of the fields, peppered the palisade with bullets
and arrows, shot fire into the town; captured a supply fleet in the
river, ambushed sallying parties, cut to pieces a column of
reinforcements.
The siege lasted six months. The orders to attack went out. On May 16
Fort Sandusky, at Lake Erie in northern Ohio, was seized by the
Wyandots and Ottawas, during a council.
On May 25, Fort St. Joseph of St. Joseph, Michigan, on Lake Michigan
across the state from Detroit, was seized in like manner by the
Potawatomis. On May 27, Fort Miami, near present Fort Wayne of
Indiana, commanded by Ensign Holmes who had discovered the Bloody Belt,
was forced to surrender to the Wyandots. Ensign Holmes himself was
decoyed into the open, and killed.
On June 4, populous Michilimackinac of northern Michigan was pillaged.
The Chippewas and Sacs celebrated the King's Birthday, in honor of the
English, with a great game of lacrosse in front of the post.
Michilimackinac _did not know that Detroit was being besieged_! The
gates were left open, the officers gathered to witness the game. The
ball was knocked inside the palisades, the players rushed after--and
that was the end of Michilimackinac.
On June 15 the little fort of Presq' Isle, near the modern city of Erie
on the Lake Erie shore of northern Pennsylvania, was attacked. It was
captured in two days, by the Ottawas and Potawatomis from Detroit.
On June 18, Fort Le Boeuf, twelve miles south of it, was burned. Just
when Fort Venango, farther south, fell to the Senecas, no word says,
for not a man of it remained alive. June 1, Fort Ouatanon, below
Lafayette on the Wabash River in west central Indiana, had surrendered.
Niagara in the east was threatened; Fort Legonier, forty miles
southeast of Pittsburg in Pennsylvania, was attacked by the Delawares
and Shawnees, but held out; the strong Fort Pitt (now Pittsburg), with
garrison of over three hundred soldiers and woodsmen, was besieged by
the united Delawares, Shawnees, Wyandots and Mingo Iroquois.
A second Bloody Belt had been dispatched by Pontiac from Detroit; as
fast as it arrived, the allies struck hard. Of twelve fortified
English posts, eight fell. Not only that, but the fiery spirit of
Pontiac had aroused twenty-two tribes extending from Canada to
Virginia, and from New York to the Illinois. A hundred English traders
were murdered in camp, and on the trail. A thousand English are
supposed to have been killed. Five hundred families of northern
Virginia and of western Maryland fled for their lives.
While this work was going on, and the frontier settlements shuddered,
and feared the morrow, Pontiac was sternly sticking to his siege of
Fort Detroit.
The French around there complained to him that his men were robbing
them of provisions, and injuring the corn-fields.
"You must stand that," rebuked Pontiac. "I am fighting your battles
against the English."
He gave out receipts, for the supplies as taken. These receipts were
pieces of bark, pictured with the kind of supplies taken, and signed
with the figure of an otter--the totem of the Ottawas. After the war
every receipt was honored, by payment.
Only his Ottawas were still fighting Detroit, when on October 30, this
1763, there arrived, from the French commander on the lower
Mississippi, a peace belt and a messenger for Pontiac.
He had been told that peace had been declared between the French and
the English, but he had not believed. Now he was told again, by word
direct, that the king of France and the king of England had signed
peace papers; the country was English, his father the king of France
could not help him. He must stop his war, and "take the English by the
hand."
Weeks before this, the Indians to the south had withdrawn; his other
allies were fading into the forest. So, sullen and disappointed, he,
too, withdrew. His sun had set, but he tried to follow it
southwestward.
Before he gave his hand to the English he did attempt another war. The
tribes of the Illinois hesitated, in council.
"If you do not join my people," thundered Pontiac, "I will consume you
as the fire eats the dry grass of the prairies!"
The plot failed, but the Illinois did not forget his insulting words.
In April, 1769, while leaving a council with the Illinois beside the
Mississippi River, and wearing a blue-and-silver uniform coat given to
him years before by the brave General Montcalm of the French, he was
murdered by a Kaskaskia of the Illinois nation, in the forest which
became East St. Louis.
The Kaskaskia had been bribed by an English trader, with a barrel of
whiskey, to do the deed. There died Pontiac. He was buried, it is
said, on the site of the present Southern Hotel in St. Louis City.
The Illinois suffered from this foul crime. All of Pontiac's loyal
people--the Ottawas, the Potawatomis, the Sacs, the Foxes, the
Chippewas--rose against them and swept them from the face of the earth.
Now what of Catharine, who saved Detroit from Pontiac? She saved
Detroit, but Fort Detroit did not save _her_. Pontiac was no fool; he
very quickly had suspected her. He well knew that Major Gladwyn was
her friend, and that she had taken the moccasins in to him.
She was seized by the chief, beaten almost lifeless with a lacrosse
racquet, and condemned to the meanest of labor. After the siege, Major
Gladwyn made no effort to rescue her or reward her. At last, when an
old and miserable woman, she fell into a kettle of boiling maple sap,
and died.