USA > Mississippi > The pioneers, preachers and people of the Mississippi Valley > Part 10
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The spring arrives ; and in all the long range of
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English forts, from Michilimackinac and Sault Ste. Ma- rie, to the northwestward, to Fort Niagara, and all along the line of lake forts, Detroit, Sandusky and Presqu' Isle, and south by Venango and Fort Pitt to the frontier posts in the west of Virginia, all is safe and secure. Here and there have been heard or seen indistinct signs of irritation or disturbance among the savages ; and in one instance-at Fort Miami-the commander had even heard of the war-belt, held a council with the Indians about it, reproved them, and sent the news, and their cunning disclaimers, to Ma- jor Gladwyn, at Detroit, and he to Sir Jeffrey Am- herst, at New York. But none dreams of anything worse than a temporary state of uneasiness among the tribes ; and the English forces in his majesty's colonies in North America remain dispersed and fee- ble, and all the royal posts careless and almost unre- strainedly open to the Indians.
Pontiac himself determined to commence the war by attacking Fort Detroit, the strongest of all the English posts in the Indian country, except Fort Pitt. After the Indian fashion, he at first tried stratagem. Having unsuspectedly made a satisfactory reconnois- sance of the interior of the post, he entered it some days afterward, on pretence of a council, with three hundred chosen warriors, all armed for war, and with their guns cut short and hidden under their blankets. But Major Gladwyn, the English commander, a cool
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and brave man, had been put on his guard only the night before by his Indian favorite, a beautiful Ojibwa girl named Catharine. Making all the ne- cessary preparations, therefore, he deliberately ad- mitted this savage host. They saw with dismay the military array of the garrison, and only after uneasy delay would they seat themselves and go through the deceitful ceremonies under cover of which they had intended to murder the commandant and his force, and to throw open the gates to the Indian army without. Pontiac made a speech, as usual on such occasions, professing friendship and peaceful inten- tions as if he had as heretofore come only for rum or for presents. IIe even raised his hand with the peace-belt of wampum, the giving of which was to have signalled the onset of his braves, but paused in speechless amazement when, at that very moment, in obedience to Gladwyn's command, the rattle and clash of weapons and the roll of the drum sounded from without the room. After a short and somewhat stern reply from Gladwyn, the Indi- ans departed in disappointment and anger, but yet quite sure that the English were either utterly ignorant of their scheme, or arrant cowards if not, for letting them escape alive. And accordingly, Pontiac visited Gladwyn with a few companions next day, to endea- vor to confirm him in a belief in their peaceful inten- tions, and one day afterward, tried to obtain admis
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sion into the fort with a large number of his warriors. Being now briefly and sternly refused, the savages, bursting at once into all the fiendish rage of Indian war- fare, murdered two English families who lived at a short distance, and the next day closely invested the fort ; a mixed and numerous swarm of four nations, Otta- was, Pottawatomies, Wyandots and Ojibwas, all under the command of the great Ottawa war-chief Pontiac.
And now all along the far-stretching frontier, the dark forests swarm with war-parties. All the
English posts west of the mountains were attacked. Traders, travellers and emigrants, the forlorn hope of the advancing invasion of the white settlements, were killed. Every secluded farm or lonely hamlet, of all those that fringed the interval between hunting-grounds and farms, was burned. Hundreds and hundreds of families were exterminated, 01 driven back within the area of the denser settle- ments scared and penniless, and too often with the loss of some of the beloved circle.
Such was the perfection of this gigantic project, and the secrecy of its thousands of confidants for months together, that the savage outbreak was nowhere expected except for those few hours of warning at Detroit-and even there it was many days before Gladwyn would believe it to be more than a temporary outbreak of anger, or that all the posts were assaulted so nearly together that none
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could assist any other. One after another, in rapid succession, eight of them fell. On the 16th of May, Fort Sandusky was surprised by a body of Indians, who gained admittance as friends, and murdered all but the commander and two or three of the garrison. On the 25th, St. Joseph's, at the south end of Lake Michigan, was seized in a similar manner, eleven men of the little garrison having been killed, the other four made prisoners, and the fort plundered; all within less than two minutes after the signal yell was given. Two days afterward, Fort Miami, on the Maumee, was surrendered to the savages, Ensign Holmes, the commander, having been enticed out and shot dead, and the sergeant taken prisoner. On the 1st of June, a similar stratagem made the Indians masters of Fort Ouatanon on the Wabash, the garri- son, however, being all preserved alive, and sent prisoners to the Illinois country. On the 4th, the Ojibwas, by means of a game of ball called bagga- tiway, surprised Fort Michilimackinac, massacred nearly all of the garrison, made prisoners of the rest, and seized the large quantities of liquor, stores and merchandise, public and private, accumulated in that important depot of the Indian trade. On the 15th, after a siege of twenty-four hours, eighteen of them of incessant furious attacks, with the aid of intrenchments and mines, and of desperate hardiliood in defence, Fort Presqu' Isle was surrendered, and
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the garrison, despite a capitulation providing that they might retire to the nearest post, were sent prisoners to the camp of Pontiac at Detroit. On the 18th, Fort Le Bœuf, a few miles south of Presqu' Isle, on a branch of the Alleghany, was attacked toward nightfall by a large body of Indians, and set on fire by fire-arrows; but the commander and his little squad of thirteen men, desperate with their horrible peril, cut a way out through the rear of the blockhouse while the Indians were waiting to see them driven out through the door by the flames, and fled away to Fort Pitt; six of them, utterly exhausted, being left behind in the woods. And lastly, Fort Venango, still further south, at the junction of the same stream with the Alleghany, was about the same time surprised by a large force of Senecas, who, admitted as friends, murdered all the garrison except the commander, tortured him for several nights over a slow fire until he died, burnt down the works, and departed. Fort Pitt, Fort Ligonier, some distance southwest of it, and Fort Augusta, on the Susquehanna, were also attacked, but the Indians were repulsed.
And now the English held not one fortified post west of Fort Pitt, save Detroit alone, where the undismayed Gladwyn still maintained himself, though closely beleaguered by the great confederate host under Pontiac. The vigor and constaney of
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this siege are without precedent or parallel in Indian history. From the beginning of May until the end of October did the power and influence of their indomitable leader hold the savage host in watchful array against the fort; wearying the seanty garrison with a fire of musketry that left them no rest day or night; contriving plan after plan to destroy the two small vessels which remained under the protection of the works, and served to guard the water-front; to rake the north and south sides of the walls, and to make an occasional attack upon the enemy's camp.
No other Indian chieftain-at least none of pure blood, for an exception must be made in favor of General Alexander McGillivray, the chief of the Creeks-ever showed such breadth and quickness of mind in comprehending and practising the arts of civilized life, a characteristic not less indieative of the lofty rank of his intellect, than was that vast mag- netic power which enabled him so long to concen- trate and wield the forces of those flitting and unstable warriors of the woods. Unable to read or write, he employed one secretary to write letters and another to interpret those received, and with diplo- matic shrewdness, kept each ignorant of the business of the other. To satisfy until he could pay them, the French Canadians from whose live stock he was forced to support his army, he issued securities, of
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the nature of notes of hand, drawn on birch bark and signed with his totem, the otter, which were all punctually redeemed. He organized a regular com- missariat department, gathering into one stock the provisions thus collected, and which he levied after a fixed rate from the Canadians in the neighborhood, and distributing them again to his forces; rigidly protecting the farms from depredation, and even making his followers avoid trampling on growing сгорs.
Not less remarkable were the bravery and versa- tile skill employed in the operations for attack. All the slender means of Indian warfare were exhausted in assaulting the palisades of the fort. Repeated attempts were made to burn the two vessels, by fire-rafts sent down the river. A detachment of nearly a hundred men, sent to relieve the fort, was surprised by a party of Wyandots when within thirty miles of their destination, sixty of them taken or slain, and the rest driven back to the eastward in but two of their eighteen boats ; and the ample stock of provisions and ammunition intended for the besieged, all fell into the hands of the Indians. The schooner Gladwyn, one of the two vessels attached to the fort, was fiercely attacked by the Indians while in the river below, on her way up with a small reinforcement, and was driven back to the lake, though a second attempt carried her up to the fortress in safety, with
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her men and supplies. Captain Dalzell, a com- panion in arms of General Putnam, arrived at the fort toward the end of July, with a second rein- forcement of nearly three hundred men, and obtained with difficulty from the cautions Gladwyn, permis- sion to lead a party to endeavor to surprise Pontiac's camp. But the wary chief, informed by some Canadians of the intended attack, ambuscaded them on their way, and they were only able to return to the fort by the exercise of great skill and coolness in manœnvring, and with the loss of fifty-nine killed and wounded. One of the English schooners was attacked again, while returning from Niagara, and in spite of cannon and small-arms, and a most heroic defence by her little crew of twelve men, would have been taken, had not the Indians been scared at the sudden order of the mate to blow up the schooner, and all jumped overboard to escape.
But the obstinate resolution of Major Gladwyn ; the reinforcements from the east; the weariness of this long siege, now severely felt by the Indian host ; the failure of their ammunition ; the receipt of a letter which the French commander at Fort Chartres had reluctantly dispatched at the demand of Sir Jeffrey Amherst, and which informed Pontiac that the French were at peace with the English, and that he could expect no aid from them; and the approach of winter, when the Indians must of necessity scatter
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themselves abroad in the forests to keep themselves alive by hunting-all these causes conspired to dis- appoint this central portion of the great design of Pontiac. The Wyandots and Pottawatomies had made a peace during July, which, however, they afterward broke; but in October they sought, together with the Ojibwas, to make a regular treaty. Gladwyn consented to a truce, and instantly taking advantage of the opportunity, soon had his garrison provisioned for the whole winter. And Pontiac, cruelly enraged and disappointed, with no forces left but his own Ottawas, and now at last giving up his hopes of French aid, left Detroit, and departing to what is now the northwest part of Ohio, set about stirring up the Indians of that region; intending to resume the siege of Detroit in the spring.
The brief sequel of his war and end of his life are soon told. In the spring of 1764, the English govern- ment resolved upon a judicious scheme for the organization of trade and intercourse with the Indians.
As a necessary preliminary, however, they sent two armies, one under Col. Bradstreet, along the lakes, and another under Col. Bouquet, through Pennsylvania into the heart of the Indian country, to bring the tribes to submission. Of this latter commander and this expedition, it is fit that some account should bere be given.
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Col. Henry Bouquet was a native of the Swiss can- ton of Berne, was a soldier from his boyhood, and had served under Sardinia and Holland, before he became lieutenant-colonel of the Royal Americans, a corps raised in America, chiefly of Germans, and officered by foreigners. It is now the 60th Rifles. In this command, Bouquet had already gained a high reputation in Pennsylvania, as a noble and ac- complished man and soldier. During the previous year, while in charge of a small force and a convoy for the relief of forts Bedford, Ligonier and Pitt, he had commanded at the desperate battle of Bushy Run, one of the hardest fought fields ever contested between whites and Indians. This was on August 5th, 1763, when Bouquet's little army, of only about five hundred men, many of them invalids from the unhealthy service in the West Indies, was suddenly attacked while on the march, about twenty-five miles from Fort Pitt, by a force of Indians about as numerous as the English, but having the great advantages of complete knowledge of the forest and its warfare. Bouquet, with ready skill, formed his men into a circle round his horses and baggage, and from one o'clock until eight sustained a furious and in- cessant attack. The yelling savages, with a boldness very rare in their system of fighting, rushed against the slender line of English, with a close and heavy fire ; and then, when the Highlanders, after one sharp vol-
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ley, charged with the bayonet, they leaped back out of reach, and a moment afterward dashed at another portion of the ring. At nightfall they drew off, having lost very few, while 60 of the soldiers, besides offi- cers, were killed or disabled. Bouquet made his men encamp in their order of battle, upon their arms, mak- ing every preparation against a night attack ; and thus, in momentary expectation of the foe, weary and thirsty -for the hill on which they were afforded no water, and none dared seek it-and without fire, lest the light should guide the forest marksmen, the belcagured lit- tle army awaited daylight, the wounded being depo- sited within a sort of little breastwork of flour-bags. At early dawn next morning the Indians resumed the battle in the same manner, attacking furiously, firing, and vanishing into the forest whenever the English. charged forward from their narrow ring. Thus they fought until about ten o'clock, suffering actual agonies of thirst, their little force gradually thinning under the fire of the Indian rifles ; and now the weary ranks began to lose strength and courage. Perseverance in their cunning tactics must infallibly have given the savages the victory ; but at the moment when this became evident, the cool and shrewd Bouquet snatched it from them by a well-planned stratagem. He caused two companies to withdraw from the line of defence, as if retreating, toward the centre of the circle. The Indians, perceiving this, charged with
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redoubled fury upon the weakened line, and were on the point of breaking through, when the two compa- nies, who had taken advantage of some low and wooded ground for their manœuvre, and had passed out of the circle and made a short circuit in the forest, burst upon the flank of the Indians, and delivered a heavy and deadly volley. The savages, though taken entirely by surprise, faced about and intrepidly re- turned the fire ; but fled, when these new opponents charged violently with fixed bayonets. Two other companies, placed in ambush for the purpose, as the routed savages fled across their front, rose and gave them another destructive volley, and then all the four charging again together, the savage foe fled, routed and entirely broken and discouraged, leaving about sixty of their number dead on the ground-an enor- mous loss for them. The command, setting out again next day, reached Fort Pitt in safety ; and Col. Bou- quet received for his courage and conduct in this im- portant battle, the thanks of the Pennsylvania Assem bly, and of the king.
Col. Bouquet was thus naturally selected to head the southern of the two expeditions of 1764 against the Indians, as he had proved his judgment and skill upon the very ground now to be traversed again ; and accordingly, a force of about eighteen hundred men, regulars, Pennsylvania provincials, and Virginia rifle- men, having been mustered at Carlisle on the 5th of
9
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August, Bouquet assumed the command, after the troops had been addressed by Governor Penn, and in a few days the army marched for Fort Loudon. Their commander, well aware of the danger of the enterprise, used every precaution that experience and foresight could suggest. He established the strictest discipline, shooting a couple of deserters at Fort Lou- don before he could enforce it to his mind ; allowed not one woman to accompany the army except one to cach corps, and two nurses ; and arranged a care- ful and well-protected order of marching, in open or- der, in a parallelogram, the baggage and cattle in the centre, and with many outlying parties and scouts in the woods in advance. When he reached Fort Loudon, three hundred of the Pennsylvanians had deserted, and he remained here some weeks to re- cruit. Bradstreet, commanding the northern expedi- tion, had now reached Presqu' Isle on Lake Erie, where a pretended Indian embassy met him and fooled him into negotiations, intending on their part merely to prevent his advance, while all the time their warriors were murdering and burning on the frontier. But Bouquet disregarded the peace thus made, and Gage annulled it.
Setting forward again from Fort Loudon, Bouquet reached Fort Pitt in September, and there delayed again until October 3d, when, leaving the fort, he plunged into the untraversed forest, marching to
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ward the Indian towns on the pleasant banks of the Muskingum. In the same careful order, ready at any moment to form in a defensive ring around the baggage if attacked, and filling the woods far in ad- vance and on the flanks with the Virginia scouts, he proceeded, unable to advance more than from five to twelve miles a day; until after ten days' difficult pro- gress, he fixed himself in the heart of the Indian country, and within striking distance of all their vil- lages except the Shawanee towns on the Scioto.
HIere the fierce tribes, dismayed at the presence of what was to them a mighty host, and conscious that they could offer no adequate resistance to Bouquet and Bradstreet, met the former; and after some nego- tiations, in the course of which their mortification and sullen pride, mingled with an evident fear almost ab- ject, rendered their speeches, usually so figurative and vivid, even dull, spiritless, and common-place, the Indians complied with Bouquet's demands, deli- vered up more than two hundred prisoners, and faith- fully promised to send in the rest in the spring. Af- ter deposing a contumacious Delaware chief, and causing a successor to be appointed, exacting hostages for good behavior, and prescribing the immediate sending of a deputation to Sir William Johnson to agree upon terms of peace, Bouquet, who had hitherto treated the terrified savages with chilling and over- awing sternness, relaxed his demeanor, and held an-
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other council, in which he treated them in a friendly manner.
Many accounts have been given of the extraordi- nary scenes at the delivery of the Indian prisoners. Numbers of the frontiersmen who had accompanied the expedition, had done so in the hope of regaining wives, children, or relatives, in captivity in the wild- erness. The whole annals of human history could scarcely furnish a record of another scene so moving and so wonderful as this for the exhibition of varied and violent human passions. Day by day the lost white people came back in troops, many of them, power- fully held by the strange love of the wilderness, com- ing with reluctance, and even bound as prisoners to prevent them from fleeing back into the forest. Wo- men, even, would fain have remained in the cabins of the dusky husbands of their captivity, to train their young half-breeds in forest nurture. In truth, the strangest feature of the scene was the comparative in- difference of the rescued captives, contrasting so strongly with the overwhelming agitation of the friends who sought them. Husbands sought wives, and pa- rents children, trembling and weeping, doubtful of them when found, changed as they were by the growth of years and the exposures of forest life; and the strange magnetism of human passion, seizing upon all around, even infected the rudest of the sol- diers, who sympathized in the sorrows or the joys of
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the occasion ; many of them not even able to refrain from tears.
One of the most affecting occurrences of the ocea- sion was the recognition by an aged mother of her daughter, who, carried away nine years before, was among the captives. The eyes of the parent, sharp- ened by natural affection, discerned the features of her lost child in those of a swarthy and sunburnt young female ; but her long captivity had deprived the girl of almost every word of the English which she had acquired at the early age when she was stolen, and she quite failed to recognize her old mo- ther, who lamented with rude, affecting sorrow, that the daughter whom she had so often sung to sleep, had so utterly forgotten her. Bouquet, a man of kind feelings as well as ready intellect, seized the hint which the sorrowing mother did not perceive, and told her to try the experiment of singing the song with which she had put her child to sleep. She did so; and the long-forgotten, simple strain unsealed the daughter's memory and awoke her affections at once ; and weeping and rejoicing, she fell upon her mother's neck.
But the wondrous magic of the wilderness, the in- nate savagery that is somewhere hidden in almost er- ery heart, were singularly proved by the actions of some of the captives this day redeemed. Of all the white women who had taken Indian husbands, not one,
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even though her children came with her, returned willingly to civilized life ; and several of them after- ward actually escaped back to their red lords, their wigwams, and the forest.
The business of the expedition thus prosperously accomplished, Bouquet and his little army returned upon their footsteps, and safely regained the settle- ments. The successful leader received a vote of thanks, most flatteringly worded, from the Pennsyl- vania Assembly, and another from that of Virginia ; and also a more substantial token of the appreciation of his services, in his appointment by the king to the rank of brigadier-general, with the command of the southern department in North America. Col. Bou- quet did not, however, long survive to fulfill the hopes inspired by his remarkable excellences and success ; for he was carried off by a fever at Pensa- cola, only three years afterward.
Colonel Bradstreet, permitting himself to be de- luded by the Indians as I have stated, accomplished but a small part of his intended purposes ; but he effectually relieved Detroit, which had now been be- sieged more or less closely for fifteen months-for Pontiac had recommenced the siege in the spring.
Shut out from hopes of success elsewhere, Pontiac now passed into the Illinois country, whither the Eng- lish forces had not yet penetrated, and with untiring activity began to organize a new league of those
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tribes that inhabited Illinois and dwelt along the banks of the Mississippi River. His design was to keep closed to the English the rich country of the Illinois, by guarding the two approaches to it, by the Mississippi and by the Ohio. But although two attempts to ascend the Mississippi with detachments of British troops were unsuccessful, this last plan of the great Indian leader was frustrated by the negotia- tion of an English envoy, the fur-trader George Crog- han, who moved westward to prepare a path for the troops which Gage, Amherst's successor, proposed to send to take possession of the ancient French strong- hold of Fort Chartres. Finding himself deserted by one discouraged tribe after another, and failing to ob- tain any aid from the French, either in Illinois or at New Orleans, he at last resolved to seek peace with the English ; and meeting Croghan at Fort Ouatanon on the Wabash, he concluded an alliance with him, which he confirmed at a great council of the northern tribes held a short time afterward at Detroit; ending his speech as any other Indian would, by begging for rum.
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