WINDING UP THE INDIAN WAR
Amherst was weary of America. Early in the summer of 1763
he had asked to be relieved of his command; but it was
not until October that General Thomas Gage, then in charge
of the government of Montreal, was appointed to succeed
him, and not until November 17, the day after Gage arrived
in New York, that Amherst sailed for England.
The new commander-in-chief was not as great a general as
Amherst. It is doubtful if he could have planned and
brought to a successful conclusion such campaigns as the
siege of Louisbourg and the threefold march of 1760 on
Montreal, which have given his predecessor a high place
in the military history of North America. But Gage was
better suited for winding up the Indian war. He knew the
value of the officers familiar with the Indian tribes,
and was ready to act on their advice. Amherst had not done
this, and his best officers were now anxious to resign.
George Croghan had resigned as assistant superintendent
of Indian Affairs, but was later induced by Gage to remain
in office. Gladwyn was 'heartily wearied' of his command
and hoped to 'be relieved soon'; Blane and Ourry were
tired of their posts; and the brave Ecuyer was writing in
despair: 'For God's sake, let me go and raise cabbages.'
Bouquet; too, although determined to see the war to a
conclusion, was not satisfied with the situation.
Meanwhile, Sir William Johnson was not idle among the
tribes of the Six Nations. The failure of Pontiac to reduce
Fort Detroit and the victory of Bouquet at Edge Hill had
convinced the Iroquois that ultimately the British would
triumph, and, eager to be on the winning side, they
consented to take the field against the Shawnees and
Delawares. In the middle of February 1764, through Johnson's
influence and by his aid, two hundred Tuscaroras and
Oneidas, under a half-breed, Captain Montour, marched
westward. Near the main branch of the Susquehanna they
surprised forty Delawares, on a scalping expedition against
the British settlements, and made prisoners of the entire
party. A few weeks later a number of Mohawks led by Joseph
Brant (Thayendanegea) put another band of Delawares to
rout, killing their chief and taking three prisoners.
These attacks of the Iroquois disheartened the Shawnees
and Delawares and greatly alarmed the Senecas, who,
trembling lest their own country should be laid waste,
sent a deputation of four hundred of their chief men to
Johnson Hall--Sir William Johnson's residence on the
Mohawk--to sue for peace. It was agreed that the Senecas
should at once stop all hostilities, never again take up
arms against the British, deliver up all prisoners at
Johnson Hall, cede to His Majesty the Niagara carrying-place,
allow the free passage of troops through their country,
renounce all intercourse with the Delawares and Shawnees,
and assist the British in punishing them. Thus, early in
1764, through the energy and diplomacy of Sir William
Johnson, the powerful Senecas were brought to terms.
With the opening of spring preparations began in earnest
for a twofold invasion of the Indian country. One army
was to proceed to Detroit by way of Niagara and the Lakes,
and another from Fort Pitt was to take the field against
the Delawares and the Shawnees. To Colonel John Bradstreet,
who in 1758 had won distinction by his capture of Fort
Frontenac, was assigned the command of the contingent
that was to go to Detroit. Bradstreet was to punish the
Wyandots of Sandusky, and likewise the members of the
Ottawa Confederacy if he should find them hostile. He
was also to relieve Gladwyn and re-garrison the forts
captured by the Indians in 1763. Bradstreet left Albany
in June with a large force of colonial troops and regulars,
including three hundred French Canadians from the St
Lawrence, whom Gage had thought it wise to have enlisted,
in order to impress upon the Indians that they need no
longer expect assistance from the French in their wars
against the British.
To prepare the way for Bradstreet's arrival Sir William
Johnson had gone in advance to Niagara, where he had
called together ambassadors from all the tribes, not only
from those that had taken part in the war, but from all
within his jurisdiction. He had found a vast concourse
of Indians awaiting him. The wigwams of over a thousand
warriors dotted the low-lying land at the mouth of the
river. In a few days the number had grown to two thousand
--representatives of nations as far east as Nova Scotia,
as far west as the Mississippi, and as far north as Hudson
Bay. Pontiac was absent, nor were there any Delaware,
Shawnee, or Seneca ambassadors present. These were absent
through dread; but later the Senecas sent deputies to
ratify the treaty made with Johnson in April. When
Bradstreet and his troops arrived negotiations were in
full swing. For nearly a month councils were held, and
at length all the chiefs present had entered into an
alliance with the British. This accomplished, Johnson,
on August 6, left Niagara for his home, while Bradstreet
continued his journey towards Detroit.
Bradstreet halted at Presqu'isle. Here he was visited by
pretended deputies from the Shawnees and Delawares, who
ostensibly sought peace. He made a conditional treaty
with them and agreed to meet them twenty-five days later
at Sandusky, where they were to bring their British
prisoners. From Presqu'isle he wrote to Bouquet at Fort
Pitt, saying that it would be unnecessary to advance into
the Delaware country, as the Delawares were now at peace.
He also reported his success, as he considered it, to
Gage, but Gage was not impressed: he disavowed the treaty
and instructed Bouquet to continue his preparations.
Continuing his journey, Bradstreet rested at Sandusky,
where more Delawares waited on him and agreed to make
peace. It was at this juncture that he sent Captain Thomas
Morris on his ill-starred mission to the tribes of the
Mississippi. [Footnote: Morris and his companions got
no farther than the rapids of the Maumee, where they were
seized, stripped of clothing, and threatened with death.
Pontiac was now among the Miamis, still striving to get
together a following to continue the war. The prisoners
were taken to Pontiac's camp. But the Ottawa chief did
not deem it wise to murder a British officer on this
occasion, and Morris was released and forced to retrace
his steps. He arrived at Detroit after the middle of
September, only to find that Bradstreet had already
departed. The story will be found in more detail in
Parkman's _Conspiracy of Pontiac_.]
Bradstreet was at Detroit by August 26, and at last the
worn-out garrison of the fort could rest after fifteen
months of exacting duties. Calling the Indians to a
council, Bradstreet entered into treaties with a number
of chiefs, and pardoned several French settlers who had
taken an active part with the Indians in the siege of
Detroit. He then sent troops to occupy Michilimackinac;
Green Bay, and Sault Ste Marie; and sailed for Sandusky
to meet the Delawares and Shawnees, who had promised to
bring in their prisoners. But none awaited him: the
Indians had deliberately deceived him and were playing
for time while they continued their attacks on the border
settlers. Here he received a letter from Gage ordering
him to disregard the treaty he had made with the Delawares
and to join Bouquet at Fort Pitt, an order which Bradstreet
did not obey, making the excuse that the low state of
the water in the rivers made impossible an advance to
Fort Pitt. On October 18 he left Sandusky for Niagara,
having accomplished nothing except occupation of the
forts. Having already blundered hopelessly in dealing
with the Indians, he was to blunder still further. On
his way down Lake Erie he encamped one night, when storm
threatened, on an exposed shore, and a gale from the
north-east broke upon his camp and destroyed half his
boats. Two hundred and eighty of his soldiers had to
march overland to Niagara. Many of them perished; others,
starved, exhausted, frost-bitten, came staggering in by
twos and threes till near the end of December. The
expedition was a fiasco. It blasted Bradstreet's reputation,
and made the British name for a time contemptible among
the Indians.
The other expedition from Fort Pitt has a different
history. All through the summer Bouquet had been recruiting
troops for the invasion of the Delaware country. The
soldiers were slow in arriving, and it was not until the
end of September that all was ready. Early in October
Bouquet marched out of Fort Pitt with one thousand
provincials and five hundred regulars. Crossing the
Alleghany, he made his way in a north-westerly direction
until Beaver Creek was reached, and then turned westward
into the unbroken forest. The Indians of the Muskingum
valley felt secure in their wilderness fastness. No white
soldiers had ever penetrated to their country. To reach
their villages dense woods had to be penetrated, treacherous
marshes crossed, and numerous streams bridged or forded.
But by the middle of October Bouquet had led his army,
without the loss of a man, into the heart of the Muskingum
valley, and pitched his camp near an Indian village named
Tuscarawa, from which the inhabitants had fled at his
approach. The Delawares and Shawnees were terrified: the
victor of Edge Hill was among them with an army strong
enough to crush to atoms any war-party they could muster.
They sent deputies to Bouquet. These at first assumed a
haughty mien; but Bouquet sternly rebuked them and ordered
them to meet him at the forks of the Muskingum, forty
miles distant to the south-west, and to bring in all
their prisoners. By the beginning of November the troops
were at the appointed place, where they encamped. Bouquet
then sent messengers to all the tribes telling them to
bring thither all the captives without delay. Every white
man, woman, and child in their hands, French or British,
must be delivered up. After some hesitation the Indians
made haste to obey. About two hundred captives were
brought, and chiefs were left as hostages for the safe
delivery of others still in the hands of distant tribes.
So far Bouquet had been stern and unbending; he had
reminded the Indians of their murder of settlers and of
their black treachery regarding the garrisons, and hinted
that except for the kindness of their British father they
would be utterly destroyed. He now unbent and offered
them a generous treaty, which was to be drawn up and
arranged later by Sir William Johnson. Bouquet then
retraced his steps to Fort Pitt, and arrived there on
November 28 with his long train of released captives. He
had won a victory over the Indians greater than his
triumph at Edge Hill, and all the greater in that it was
achieved without striking a blow.
There was still, however, important work to be done before
any guarantee of permanent peace in the hinterland was
possible. On the eastern bank of the Mississippi, within
the country ceded to England by the Treaty of Paris, was
an important settlement over which the French flag still
flew, and to which no British troops or traders had
penetrated. It was a hotbed of conspiracy. Even while
Bouquet was making peace with the tribes between the Ohio
and Lake Erie, Pontiac and his agents were trying to make
trouble for the British among the Indians of the
Mississippi.
French settlement on the Mississippi began at the village
of Kaskaskia, eighty-four miles north of the mouth of
the Ohio. Six miles still farther north was Fort Chartres,
a strongly built stone fort capable of accommodating
three hundred men. From here, at some distance from the
river, ran a road to Cahokia, a village situated nearly
opposite the site of the present city of St Louis. The
intervening country was settled by prosperous traders
and planters who, including their four hundred negro
slaves, numbered not less than two thousand. But when it
was learned that all the territory east of the great
river had been ceded to Britain, the settlers began to
migrate to the opposite bank. The French here were hostile
to the incoming British, and feared lest they might now
lose the profitable trade with New Orleans. It was this
region that Gage was determined to occupy.
Already an effort had been made to reach Fort Chartres.
In February 1764 Major Arthur Loftus had set out from
New Orleans with four hundred men; but, when about two
hundred and forty miles north of his starting-point, his
two leading boats were fired upon by Indians. Six men
were killed and four wounded. To advance would mean the
destruction of his entire company. Loftus returned to
New Orleans, blaming the French officials for not supporting
his enterprise, and indeed hinting that they were
responsible for the attack. Some weeks later Captain
Philip Pittman arrived at New Orleans with the intention
of ascending the river; but reports of the enmity of the
Indians to the British made him abandon the undertaking.
So at the beginning of 1765 the French flag still flew
over Fort Chartres; and Saint-Ange, who had succeeded
Neyon de Villiers as commandant of the fort, was praying
that the British might soon arrive to relieve him from
a position where he was being daily importuned by Pontiac
or his emissaries for aid against what they called the
common foe.
But, if the route to Fort Chartres by way of New Orleans
was too dangerous, Bouquet had cleared the Ohio of enemies,
and the country which Gage sought to occupy was now
accessible by way of that river. As a preliminary step,
George Croghan was sent in advance with presents for the
Indians along the route. In May 1765 Croghan left Fort
Pitt accompanied by a few soldiers and a number of friendly
Shawnee and Delaware chiefs. Near the mouth of the Wabash
a prowling band of Kickapoos attacked the party, killing
several and making prisoners of the rest. Croghan and
his fellow-prisoners were taken to the French traders at
Vincennes, where they were liberated. They then went to
Ouiatanon, where Croghan held a council, and induced many
chiefs to swear fealty to the British. After leaving
Ouiatanon, Croghan had proceeded westward but a little
way when he was met by Pontiac with a number of chiefs
and warriors. At last the arch-conspirator was ready to
come to terms. The French on the Mississippi would give
him no assistance. He realized now that his people were
conquered, and before it was too late he must make peace
with his conquerors. Croghan had no further reason to
continue his journey; so, accompanied by Pontiac, he went
to Detroit. Arriving there on August 17, he at once called
a council of the tribes in the neighbourhood. At this
council sat Pontiac, among chiefs whom he had led during
the months of the siege of Detroit. But it was no longer
the same Pontiac: his haughty, domineering spirit was
broken; his hopes of an Indian empire were at an end.
'Father,' he said at this council, 'I declare to all
nations that I had made my peace with you before I came
here; and I now deliver my pipe to Sir William Johnson,
that he may know that I have made peace, and taken the
king of England to be my father in the presence of all
the nations now assembled.' He further agreed to visit
Oswego in the spring to conclude a treaty with Sir William
Johnson himself. The path was now clear for the advance
of the troops to Fort Chartres. As soon as news of
Croghan's success reached Fort Pitt, Captain Thomas
Sterling, with one hundred and twenty men of the Black
Watch, set out in boats for the Mississippi, arriving on
October 9 at Fort Chartres, the first British troops to
set foot in that country. Next day Saint-Ange handed the
keys of the fort to Sterling, and the Union Jack was
flung aloft. Thus, nearly three years after the signing
of the Treaty of Paris, the fleurs-de-lis disappeared
from the territory then known as Canada.
There is still to record the closing act in the public
career of Pontiac. Sir William Johnson, fearing that the
Ottawa chief might fail to keep his promise of visiting
Oswego to ratify the treaty made with Croghan at Detroit,
sent Hugh Crawford, in March 1766, with belts and messages
to the chiefs of the Ottawa Confederacy. But Pontiac was
already preparing for his journey eastward. Nothing in
his life was more creditable than his bold determination
to attend a council far from his hunting-ground, at which
he would be surrounded by soldiers who had suffered
treachery and cruelty at his hands--whose comrades he
had tortured and murdered.
On July 23 there began at Oswego the grand council at
which Sir William Johnson and Pontiac were the most
conspicuous figures. For three days the ceremonies and
speeches continued; and on the third day Pontiac rose in
the assembly and made a promise that he was faithfully
to keep: 'I take the Great Spirit to witness,' he said,
'that what I am going to say I am determined steadfastly
to perform... While I had the French king by the hand,
I kept a fast hold of it; and now having you, father, by
the hand, I shall do the same in conjunction with all
the western nations in my district.'
Before the council ended Johnson presented to each of
the chiefs a silver medal engraved with the words: 'A
pledge of peace and friendship with Great Britain,
confirmed in 1766.' He also loaded Pontiac and his brother
chiefs with presents; then, on the last day of July, the
Indians scattered to their homes.
For three years Pontiac, like a restless spirit, moved
from camp to camp and from hunting-ground to hunting-ground.
There were outbreaks of hostilities in the Indian country,
but in none of these did he take part. His name never
appears in the records of those three years. His days of
conspiracy were at an end. By many of the French and
Indians he was distrusted as a pensioner of the British,
and by the British traders and settlers he was hated for
his past deeds. In 1769 he visited the Mississippi, and
while at Cahokia he attended a drunken frolic held by
some Indians. When he left the feast, stupid from the
effects of rum, he was followed into the forest by a
Kaskaskia Indian, probably bribed by a British trader.
And as Pontiac lurched among the black shadows of the
trees, his pursuer crept up behind him, and with a swift
stroke of the tomahawk cleft his skull. Thus by a
treacherous blow ended the career of a warrior whose
chief weapon had been treachery.
For twelve years England, by means of military officers,
ruled the great hinterland east of the Mississippi--a
region vast and rich, which now teems with a population
immensely greater than that of the whole broad Dominion
of Canada--a region which is to-day dotted with such
magnificent cities as Chicago, Detroit, and Indianapolis.
Unhappily, England made no effort to colonize this
wilderness empire. Indeed, as Edmund Burke has said, she
made 'an attempt to keep as a lair of wild beasts that
earth which God, by an express charter, had given to the
children of men.' She forbade settlement in the hinterland.
She did this ostensibly for the Indians, but in reality
for the merchants in the mother country. In a report of
the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations in 1772
are words which show that it was the intention of the
government to confine 'the western extent of settlements
to such a distance from the seaboard as that those
settlements should lie within easy reach of the trade
and commerce of this kingdom,... and also of the exercise
of that authority and jurisdiction... necessary for the
preservation of the colonies in a due subordination to,
and dependence upon, the mother country... It does appear
to us that the extension of the fur trade depends entirely
upon the Indians being undisturbed in the possession of
their hunting-grounds... Let the savages enjoy their
deserts in quiet. Were they driven from their forests
the peltry trade would decrease, and it is not impossible
that worse savages would take refuge in them.'
Much has been written about the stamp tax and the tea
tax as causes of the American revolution, but this
determination to confine the colonies to the Atlantic
seaboard 'rendered the revolution inevitable.' [Footnote:
Roosevelt's _The Winning of the West_, part i, p. 57.]
In 1778, three years after the sword was drawn, when an
American force under George Rogers Clark invaded the
Indian country, England's weakly garrisoned posts, then
by the Quebec Act under the government of Canada, were
easily captured; and, when accounts came to be settled
after the war, the entire hinterland south of the Great
Lakes, from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, passed
to the United States.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The main source of information regarding the siege of
Detroit is the 'Pontiac Manuscript.' This work has been
translated several times, the best and most recent
translation being that by R. Clyde Ford for the Journal
of _Pontiac's Conspiracy, 1763_, edited by C. M. Burton.
Unfortunately, the manuscript abruptly ends in the middle
of the description of the fight at Bloody Run.
The following works will be found of great assistance to
the student: Rogers's _Journals_; Cass's _Discourse before
the Michigan Historical Society_; Henry's _Travels and
Adventures in Canada and the Indian Territories_; Parkman's
_Conspiracy of Pontiac_ (the fullest and best treatment
of the subject); Ellis's _Life of Pontiac, the Conspirator_
(a digest of Parkman's work); _Historical Account of the
Expedition against the Ohio Indians, 1764_ (authorship
doubtful, but probably written by Dr William Smith of
Philadelphia); Stone's _The Life and Times of Sir William
Johnson_; Drake's _Indians of North America_; _Handbook
of American Indians North of Mexico_ and _Handbook of
Indians of Canada_; Ogg's _The Opening of the Mississippi_;
Roosevelt's _The Winning of the West_; Carter's _The
Illinois Country_; Beer's _British Colonial Policy,
1754-1765_; Adair's _The History of the American Indians_;
the _Annual Register_ for the years 1763, 1764, and 1774;
Harper's _Encyclopedia of United States History_; Pownall's
_The Administration of the Colonies_; Bancroft's _History
of the United States_; Kingsford's _History of Canada_;
Winsor's _Narrative and Critical History of America_ and
his _Mississippi Basin_; Gordon's _History of Pennsylvania_;
Lucas's _A History of Canada, 1763-1812_; Gayarre's
_History of Louisiana_; and McMaster's _History of the
People of the United States_.
In 1766 there was published in London a somewhat remarkable
drama entitled _Ponteach: or the Savages of America_. A
part of this will be found in the appendices to Parkman's
_Conspiracy of Pontiac_. Parkman suggests that Robert
Rogers may have had a hand in the composition of this
drama.
END