Pontiac – 8

Today’s installment concludes Pontiac’s Uprising,
our selection by E.O. Randall.

If you have journeyed through all of the installments of this series, just one more to go and you will have completed a selection from the great works of eight thousand words. Congratulations!

Previously in Pontiac’s Uprising.

Time: 1763
Place: Detroit

In October (1764) Bouquet, with an army of fifteen hundred troops, defiled out of Fort Pitt and, taking the Indian trail westward, boldly entered the wilderness, “which no army had ever before sought to penetrate.” It was a novel sight, this regiment of regulars, picking its way through the woods and over the streams to the center of the Ohio country. Striking the Tuscarawas River he followed down its banks, halting at short intervals to confer with delegations of Indians until October 25th, when he encamped on the Muskingum, near the forks of that river formed by the confluence of the Tuscarawas and Walhonding rivers. Here with much display of the pomp and circumstance of war on the part of Bouquet, to impress and over-awe the savages, he held conferences with the chiefs of the various tribes. They agreed to lay down their arms and live for the future in friendship with the white invaders. All prisoners heretofore taken and then held by the Indians were to be surrendered to Bouquet. Over two hundred of these, captives, including women and children, were delivered up and with these Bouquet, with his successful soldiery, retraced his course to Fort Pitt, arriving there on November 28th. It was one of the most memorable expeditions in the pre-State history of Ohio.

The sudden and surprising victories of Pontiac were being rapidly undone. The great Ottawa chief saw his partially accomplished scheme withering into ignominious failure. Sullen, disappointed, consumed with humiliation and revenge, he withdrew from active prominence to his forest wigwam. He sought the banks of the Maumee, the scene of his birth and the location of the villages of many tribes who were his sympathetic adherents. He did not participate in any of the councils held by Bradstreet and the chiefs. “His vengeance was unslaked and his purpose unshaken.” But his glory was growing dim and his power was withering into dust. From the scenes of his promising but short-lived triumphs, he retired into the country of the Illinois and the Mississippi. He tried to arouse the aid of the French. He gathered a band of four hundred warriors on the Maumee and with these faithful followers revisited the Western tribes, in hopes of creating another confederation. [1] Not even would the southern tribes, however, respond to his appeals. All was lost. His allies were falling off; his followers, discouraged, were deserting him. Again and again he went back to his chosen haunts and former faithful followers on the Maumee. But his day had passed.

[1: Pontiac sought the aid of the Kickapoos, Piankishaws, Sacs, Foxes, Dakotas, Missouris and other tribes on the Mississippi and its head-waters.]

In the spring of 1766 Pontiac met Sir William Johnson [2] at Oswego. In his peace speech at that time he said: “I speak in the name of all the nations westward, of whom I am the master. It is the will of the Great Spirit that we should meet here to-day; and before him I now take you by the hand. I call him to witness that I speak from my heart; for since I took Colonel Croghan [3] by the hand last year, I have never let go my hold, for I see that the Great Spirit will have us friends.

“Moreover, when our great father, of France, was in this country, I held him fast by the hand. Now that he is gone, I take you, my English father, by the hand, in the name of all the nations and promise to keep this covenant as long as I shall live.”

[2: Sir William Johnson was at this time superintendent of Indian affairs in the North (of the colonies) by appointment from the King. Johnson was a great favorite with the Indians and exerted great power over them, especially among the Six Nations. He married a sister of Brant, the Mohawk chief; he was, moreover, adopted into the Mohawk tribe and made a sachem.]

[3: George Croghan was a deputy Indian agent under Sir William Johnson. In 1765, at the instance of Johnson, Croghan proceeded from Fort Pitt down the Ohio to the mouth of the Wabash, up which he journeyed and thence across the country to Detroit, treating with the Indians as he passed. On this journey Croghan met Pontiac, who made promises of peace and friendship.]

But he did not speak from the heart; on the contrary, only from the head. Leaving the Oswego conference, “his canoe laden with the gifts of his enemy,” Pontiac steered homeward for the Maumee; and in that vicinity he spent the following winter. From now on for some two years the great Ottawa chief disappeared as if lost in the forest depths.

In April, 1769, he is found at Fort St. Louis, on the west side of the Mississippi, where he gave himself mainly to the temporary oblivion of “fire-water,” the dread destroyer of his race. He was wont to cross the “Father of Waters” to the fort on the British side at Cahokia, where he would revel with the friendly creoles. In one of these visits, in the early morning, after drinking deeply, he strode with uncertain step into the adjacent forest. He was arrayed in the uniform of a French officer, which apparel had been given him many years before by the Marquis of Montcalm. His footsteps were stealthily dogged by a Kaskaskia Indian, who in the silence and seclusion of the forest, at an opportune moment, buried the blade of a tomahawk in the brain of the Ottawa conqueror, the champion of his race.

The murderer had been bribed to the heinous act by a British trader named Williamson, who thought to thus rid his country (England) of a dangerous foe. The unholy price of the assassination was a barrel of liquor. It was supposed that the Illinois, Kaskaskia, Peoria and Cahokia Indians were more or less guilty as accomplices in the horrible deed. That an Illinois Indian was guilty of the act was sufficient. The Sacs and Foxes and other Western tribes friendly to Pontiac and his cause were aroused to furious revenge. They went upon the warpath against the Illinois Indians. A relentless war ensued and, says Parkman, “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.”

The body of the murdered chief was borne across the river and buried near Fort St. Louis. No monument ever marked the resting-place of the great hero and defender of his people.

This ends our series of passages on Pontiac’s Uprising by E.O. Randall. This blog features short and lengthy pieces on all aspects of our shared past. Here are selections from the great historians who may be forgotten (and whose work have fallen into public domain) as well as links to the most up-to-date developments in the field of history and of course, original material from yours truly, Jack Le Moine. – A little bit of everything historical is here.

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