“Pontiac’s own particular task was the taking of Detroit.  The attack was to be made on the 7th of May.  But the commander of the fort was warned of their intentions by an Indian girl, and in consequence when Pontiac and his warriors arrived on the scene they found the garrison prepared to receive them.  Yet on the 12th he surrounded the fort with his Indians, but was not able to keep a close siege, and the garrison was provided with food by the Canadian settlers.”

“They supplied the Indians also, did they not, my dear?” asked Violet.

“Yes,” replied the captain, “receiving in return promissory notes drawn on birch bark and signed with the figure of an otter, and it is said that all of them were afterward redeemed by Pontiac, who had issued them.”

“That speaks well for the honesty of the Indians if they were savage and cruel,” remarked Walter; “and in fact they were hardly more cruel than some of the whites have been to them, and to other whites with whom they were at war.”

“Quite true,” said the captain.

“But didn’t the rest of the English try to help those folks in that fort at Detroit, papa?” asked Elsie.

“Yes; supplies and reinforcements were sent in schooners, by way of Lake Erie, but they were captured by the Indians, who then compelled their prisoners to row them to Detroit, concealed in the bottom of the boat, hoping in that way to take the fort by stratagem; but, fortunately for the besieged, they were discovered before they could land.

“Afterward another schooner, filled with supplies and ammunition, succeeded in reaching the fort, though the Indians repeatedly tried to destroy it by fire-rafts.

“Now the English thought themselves strong enough to attack the Indians, and in the night of July 31 two hundred and fifty men set out for that purpose.

“But the Canadians had learned their intention and told the Indians; so Pontiac was ready and waiting to make an attack, which he did as soon as the English were far enough from their fort for him to do so with advantage, firing upon them from all sides and killing and wounding fifty-nine of them.  That fight is known as the fight of ‘Bloody Bridge.’

“On the 12th of the next October the siege was raised, and the chiefs of the hostile tribes, with the exception of Pontiac, sued for pardon and peace.  Pontiac was not conquered and retired to the country of the Illinois.  In 1769 he was murdered in Cahokia, a village on the Mississippi, near St. Louis.  The deed was done by an Indian, who had been bribed to do it by an English trader.”

“Papa, you have not told us yet what happened at Mackinaw,” said Lucilla.

“It, as well as many other forts, was taken by Pontiac’s Indians and all the inhabitants of the island were massacred,” replied the captain.  “There is a cave shown in a hill-side some little distance out from the village in which the French sought refuge, and where they were smoked to death, the Indians kindling fires at its mouth.”