Sinister tidings came thick from the West.  Raymond, commandant at the French fort on the Maumee, close to the centre of intrigue, wrote:  “My people are leaving me for Detroit.  Nobody wants to stay here and have his throat cut.  All the tribes who go to the English at Pickawillany come back loaded with gifts.  I am too weak to meet the danger.  Instead of twenty men, I need five hundred....  We have made peace with the English, yet they try continually to make war on us by means of the Indians; they intend to be masters of all this upper country.  The tribes here are leaguing together to kill all the French, that they may have nobody on their lands but their English brothers.  This I am told by Coldfoot, a great Miami chief, whom I think an honest man, if there is any such thing among Indians....  If the English stay in this country we are lost.  We must attack, and drive them out.”  And he tells of war-belts sent from tribe to tribe, and rumors of plots and conspiracies far and near.

Without doubt, the English traders spared no pains to gain over the Indians by fair means or foul; sold them goods at low rates, made ample gifts, and gave gunpowder for the asking.  Saint-Ange, who commanded at Vincennes, wrote that a storm would soon burst on the heads of the French.  Joncaire reported that all the Ohio Indians sided with the English.  Longueuil informed the Minister that the Miamis had scalped two soldiers; that the Piankishaws had killed seven Frenchmen; and that a squaw who had lived with one of the slain declared that the tribes of the Wabash and Illinois were leaguing with the Osages for a combined insurrection.  Every letter brought news of murder.  Small-pox had broken out at Detroit.  “It is to be wished,” says Longueuil, “that it would spread among our rebels; it would be fully as good as an army....  We are menaced with a general outbreak, and even Toronto is in danger....  Before long the English on the Miami will gain over all the surrounding tribes, get possession of Fort Chartres, and cut our communications with Louisiana."[61]

[Footnote 61:  Depeches de Longueuil; Lettres de Raymond; Benoit de Saint-Clere a la Jonquiere, Oct. 1751.]

The moving spirit of disaffection was the chief called Old Britain, or the Demoiselle, and its focus was his town of Pickawillany, on the Miami.  At this place it is said that English traders sometimes mustered to the number of fifty or more.  “It is they,” wrote Longueuil, “who are the instigators of revolt and the source of all our woes."[62] Whereupon the Colonial Minister reiterated his instructions to drive them off and plunder them, which he thought would “effectually disgust them,” and bring all trouble to an end.[63]

[Footnote 62:  Longueuil au Ministre, 21 Avril, 1752.]

[Footnote 63:  Le Ministre a la Jonquiere, 1752.  Le Ministre a Duquesne, 9 Juillet, 1752.]