The armament consisted of a number of small cannon mounted on the bastions.  A gate and drawbridge on the east side gave access to the area within, which was surrounded by barracks for the soldiers, officers’ quarters, the lodgings of the commandant, a guardhouse, and a storehouse, all built partly of logs and partly of boards.  There were no casemates, and the place was commanded by a high woody hill beyond the Monongahela.  The forest had been cleared away to the distance of more than a musket shot from the ramparts, and the stumps were hacked level with the ground.  Here, just outside the ditch, bark cabins had been built for such of the troops and Canadians as could not find room within; and the rest of the open space was covered with Indian corn and other crops.[214]

[Footnote 214:  M’Kinney’s Description of Fort Duquesne, 1756, in Hazard’s Pennsylvania Register, VIII. 318. Letters of Robert Stobo, Hostage at Fort Duquesne, 1754, in Colonial Records of Pa. VI. 141, 161.  Stobo’s Plan of Fort Duquesne, 1754.  Journal of Thomas Forbes, 1755.  Letter of Captain Haslet, 1758, in Olden Time, I. 184. Plan of Fort Duquesne in Public Record Office.]

The garrison consisted of a few companies of the regular troops stationed permanently in the colony, and to these were added a considerable number of Canadians.  Contrecoeur still held the command.[215] Under him were three other captains, Beaujeu, Dumas, and Ligneris.  Besides the troops and Canadians, eight hundred Indian warriors, mustered from far and near, had built their wigwams and camp-sheds on the open ground, or under the edge of the neighboring woods,—­very little to the advantage of the young corn.  Some were baptized savages settled in Canada,—­Caughnawagas from Saut St. Louis, Abenakis from St. Francis, and Hurons from Lorette, whose chief bore the name of Anastase, in honor of that Father of the Church.  The rest were unmitigated heathen,—­Pottawattamies and Ojibwas from the northern lakes under Charles Langlade, the same bold partisan who had led them, three years before, to attack the Miamis at Pickawillany; Shawanoes and Mingoes from the Ohio; and Ottawas from Detroit, commanded, it is said, by that most redoubtable of savages, Pontiac.  The law of the survival of the fittest had wrought on this heterogeneous crew through countless generations; and with the primitive Indian, the fittest was the hardiest, fiercest, most adroit, and most wily.  Baptized and heathen alike they had just enjoyed a diversion greatly to their taste.  A young Pennsylvanian named James Smith, a spirited and intelligent boy of eighteen, had been waylaid by three Indians on the western borders of the province and led captive to the fort.  When the party came to the edge of the clearing, his captors, who had shot and scalped his companion, raised the scalp-yell; whereupon a din of responsive whoops and firing of guns rose from all the Indian camps, and