Heroes of the Middle West Part 10

Through the entire summer Pontiac was successful in everything except the taking of Detroit. He besieged it from May until October. With autumn his hopes began to dwindle. He had asked the French to help him, and refused to believe that their king had made a treaty at Paris, giving up to the English all French claims in the New World east of the Mississippi. His cause was lost. He could band unstable warriors together for a common good, but he could not control politics in Europe, nor defend a people given up by their sovereign, against the solidly advancing English race.

[Ill.u.s.tration: North America at Close of French Wars, 1763.]

But he was unwilling to own himself defeated while the French flag waved over a foot of American ground. This clever Indian, needing supplies to carry on his war, used civilized methods to get them on credit. He gave promissory notes written on birch bark, signed with his own totem, or tribe-mark--a picture of the otter. These notes were faithfully paid.

When he saw his struggle becoming hopeless eastward, he drew off to the Illinois settlements to fight back the English from taking possession of Fort Chartres, the last French post. They might come up the Mississippi from New Orleans, or they might come down the Ohio. The Iroquois had always called the Mississippi the Ohio, considering that river which rose near their own country the great river, and the northern branch merely a tributary.

Pontiac ordered the Illinois Indians to take up arms and stand by him.

"Hesitate not," he said, "or I will destroy you as fire does the prairie gra.s.s! These are the words of Pontiac."

They obeyed him. He sent more messengers down as far as New Orleans, keeping the tribes stirred against the English. He camped with his forces around Fort Chartres, cherishing it and urging the last French commandant, St. Ange de Bellerive, to take up arms with him, until that poor captain, tormented by the savage mob, and only holding the place until its English owners received it, was ready to march out with his few soldiers and abandon it.

It is told that while Pontiac was leading his forlorn hope, he made his conquerors ridiculous. Major Loftus with a detachment of troops came up the Mississippi to take possession according to treaty. Pontiac turned him back. Captain Pittman came up the river. Pontiac turned him back.

Captain Morris started from Detroit, and Pontiac squatted defiantly in his way. Lieutenant Frazer descended the Ohio. Pontiac caught him and shipped him to New Orleans by canoe. Captain Croghan was also stopped near Detroit. Both French and Spanish people roared with laughter at the many failures of the coming race to seize what had so easily been obtained by treaty.

Two years and a half pa.s.sed between Pontiac's attack on Detroit and the formal surrender of Fort Chartres. The great war chief's heart, with a gradual breaking, finally yielded before the steadily advancing and all-conquering people that were to dominate this continent.

The second day of winter, late in the afternoon, Pontiac went into the fort unattended by any warrior, and without a word sat down near St. Ange de Bellerive in the officers' quarters. Both veteran soldier and old chief knew that Major Farmar, with a large body of troops, was almost in sight of Fort Chartres, coming from New Orleans. Perhaps before the low winter sun was out of sight, cannon mounted on one of the bastions would have to salute the new commandant. Sentinels on the mound of Fort Chartres could see a frosty valley, reaching to the Mississippi, glinting in the distance. That alluvial stretch was, in the course of years, to be eaten away by the river even to the bastions.

The fort itself, built at such expense, would soon be abandoned by its conquerors, to sink, piecemeal, a n.o.ble and ma.s.sive ruin. The dome-shaped powder house and stone quarters would be put to ign.o.ble uses, and forest trees, spreading the spice of walnut fragrance, or the dense shadow of oaks, would grow through the very room where St. Ange and Pontiac sat. Indians, pa.s.sing by, would camp in the old place, forgetting how the last hope of their race had clung to it.

The Frenchman partly foresaw these changes, and it was a bitter hour to him. He wanted to have it over and to cross the Mississippi, to a town recently founded northward on the west sh.o.r.e, where many French settlers had collected, called St. Louis. This was then considered Spanish ground. But if the French king deserted his American colonies, why should not his American colonists desert him?

"Father," spoke out Pontiac, with the usual Indian term of respect, "I have always loved the French. We have often smoked the calumet together, and we have fought battles together against misguided Indians and the English dogs."

St. Ange de Bellerive looked at the dejected chief and thought of Le Moyne de Bienville, now an old man living in France, who was said to have wept and implored King Louis on his knees not to give up to the English that rich western domain which Marquette and Jolliet and La Salle and Tonty and many another Frenchman had suffered to gain, and to secure which he himself had given his best years.

"The chief must now bury the hatchet," he answered quietly.

"I have buried it," said Pontiac. "I shall lift it no more."

"The English are willing to make peace with him, if he recalls all his wampum belts of war."

Pontiac grinned. "The belts are more than one man can carry."

"Where does the chief intend to go when he leaves this post?"

Pontiac lifted his hand and pointed east, west, north, south.

He would have no settled abode. It was a sign that he relinquished the inheritance of his fathers to an invader he hated. His race could not live under the civilization of the Anglo-Saxon. He would have struck out to the remotest wilderness, had he foreseen to what a burial place his continual clinging to the French would bring him. For Pontiac was a.s.sa.s.sinated by an Illinois Indian, whom an English trader had bribed, and his body lies somewhere to-day under the pavements of St. Louis, English-speaking men treading constantly over him. But if the dead chief's ears could hear, he would catch also the sound of the beloved French tongue lingering there.

A cannon thundered from one of the bastions. St. Ange stood up, and Pontiac stood up with him.

"The English are in sight," said St. Ange de Bellerive. "That salute is the signal for the flag of France to be lowered on Fort Chartres."