The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War after the Conquest of Canada Part 9

But now, when every condition was satisfied, such inexorable rigor was no longer demanded; and, having convoked the chiefs in the sylvan council-house, Bouquet signified his willingness to receive their offers of peace.

"Brother," began the Indian orator, "with this belt of wampum I dispel the black cloud that has hung so long over our heads, that the sunshine of peace may once more descend to warm and gladden us. I wipe the tears from your eyes, and condole with you on the loss of your brethren who have perished in this war. I gather their bones together, and cover them deep in the earth, that the sight of them may no longer bring sorrow to your hearts; and I scatter dry leaves over the spot, that it may depart for ever from memory.

"The path of peace, which once ran between your dwellings and mine, has of late been choked with thorns and briers, so that no one could pa.s.s that way; and we have both almost forgotten that such a path had ever been. I now clear away all such obstructions, and make a broad, smooth road, so that you and I may freely visit each other, as our fathers used to do. I kindle a great council-fire, whose smoke shall rise to heaven, in view of all the nations; while you and I sit together and smoke the peace-pipe at its blaze."[439]

In this strain, the orator of each tribe, in turn, expressed the purpose of his people to lay down their arms, and live for the future in friendship with the English. Every deputation received a separate audience, and the successive conferences were thus extended through several days. To each and all, Bouquet made a similar reply, in words to the following effect:-- "By your full compliance with the conditions which I imposed, you have satisfied me of your sincerity, and I now receive you once more as brethren. The King, my master, has commissioned me, not to make treaties for him, but to fight his battles; and though I now offer you peace, it is not in my power to settle its precise terms and conditions. For this, I refer you to Sir William Johnson, his Majesty's agent and superintendent for Indian affairs, who will settle with you the articles of peace, and determine every thing in relation to trade. Two things, however, I shall insist on. And, first, you are to give hostages, as security that you will preserve good faith, and send, without delay, a deputation of your chiefs to Sir William Johnson. In the next place, these chiefs are to be fully empowered to treat in behalf of your nation; and you will bind yourselves to adhere strictly to every thing they shall agree upon in your behalf."

These demands were readily complied with. Hostages were given, and chiefs appointed for the emba.s.sy; and now, for the first time, Bouquet, to the great relief of the Indians,--for they doubted his intentions,--extended to them the hand of friendship, which he had so long withheld. A prominent chief of the Delawares, too proud to sue for peace, had refused to attend the council; on which Bouquet ordered him to be deposed, and a successor, of a less obdurate spirit, installed in his place. The Shawanoes were the last of the tribes admitted to a hearing; and the demeanor of their orator clearly evinced the haughty reluctance with which he stooped to ask peace of his mortal enemies.

"When you came among us," such were his concluding words, "you came with a hatchet raised to strike us. We now take it from your hand, and throw it up to the Great Spirit, that he may do with it what shall seem good in his sight. We hope that you, who are warriors, will take hold of the chain of friendship which we now extend to you. We, who are also warriors, will take hold as you do; and we will think no more of war, in pity for our women, children, and old men."[440]

On this occasion, the Shawanoe chiefs, expressing a hope for a renewal of the friendship which in former years had subsisted between their people and the English, displayed the dilapidated parchments of several treaties made between their ancestors and the descendants of William Penn,--doc.u.ments, some of which had been preserved among them for more than half a century, with the scrupulous respect they are p.r.o.ne to exhibit for such ancestral records. They were told that, since they had not delivered all their prisoners, they could scarcely expect to meet the same indulgence which had been extended to their brethren; but that, nevertheless, in full belief of their sincerity, the English would grant them peace, on condition of their promising to surrender the remaining captives early in the following spring, and giving up six of their chiefs as hostages. These conditions were agreed to; and it may be added that, at the appointed time, all the prisoners who had been left in their hands, to the number of a hundred, were brought in to Fort Pitt, and delivered up to the commanding officer.[441]

From the hard formalities and rigid self-control of an Indian council-house, where the struggles of fear, rage, and hatred were deep buried beneath a surface of iron immobility, we turn to scenes of a widely different nature; an exhibition of mingled and contrasted pa.s.sions, more worthy the pen of the dramatist than that of the historian; who, restricted to the meagre outline of recorded authority, can reflect but a feeble image of the truth. In the ranks of the Pennsylvania troops, and among the Virginia riflemen, were the fathers, brothers, and husbands of those whose rescue from captivity was a chief object of the march. Ignorant what had befallen them, and doubtful whether they were yet among the living, these men had joined the army, in the feverish hope of winning them back to home and civilization. Perhaps those whom they sought had perished by the slow torments of the stake; perhaps by the more merciful hatchet; or perhaps they still dragged out a wretched life in the midst of a savage horde. There were instances in which whole families had been carried off at once. The old, the sick, or the despairing, had been tomahawked, as useless enc.u.mbrances; while the rest, pitilessly forced asunder, were scattered through every quarter of the wilderness. It was a strange and moving sight, when troop after troop of prisoners arrived in succession--the meeting of husbands with wives, and fathers with children, the reunion of broken families, long separated in a disastrous captivity; and, on the other hand, the agonies of those who learned tidings of death and horror, or groaned under the torture of protracted suspense. Women, frantic between hope and fear, were rushing hither and thither, in search of those whose tender limbs had, perhaps, long since fattened the cubs of the she-wolf; or were pausing, in an agony of doubt, before some sunburnt young savage, who, startled at the haggard apparition, shrank from his forgotten parent, and clung to the tawny breast of his adopted mother. Others were divided between delight and anguish: on the one hand, the joy of an unexpected recognition; and, on the other, the misery of realized fears, or the more intolerable pangs of doubts not yet resolved. Of all the spectators of this tragic drama, few were obdurate enough to stand unmoved. The roughest soldiers felt the contagious sympathy, and softened into unwonted tenderness.

Among the children brought in for surrender, there were some, who, captured several years before, as early, perhaps, as the French war, had lost every recollection of friends and home. Terrified by the novel sights around them, the flash and glitter of arms, and the strange complexion of the pale-faced warriors, they screamed and struggled l.u.s.tily when consigned to the hands of their relatives. There were young women, too, who had become the partners of Indian husbands; and who now, with all their hybrid offspring, were led reluctantly into the presence of fathers or brothers whose images were almost blotted from their memory. They stood agitated and bewildered; the revival of old affections, and the rush of dormant memories, painfully contending with more recent attachments, and the shame of their real or fancied disgrace; while their Indian lords looked on, scarcely less moved than they, yet hardening themselves with savage stoicism, and standing in the midst of their enemies, imperturbable as statues of bronze. These women were compelled to return with their children to the settlements; yet they all did so with reluctance, and several afterwards made their escape, eagerly hastening back to their warrior husbands, and the toils and vicissitudes of an Indian wigwam.[442]

Day after day brought renewals of these scenes, deepening in interest as they drew towards their close. A few individual incidents have been recorded. A young Virginian, robbed of his wife but a few months before, had volunteered in the expedition with the faint hope of recovering her; and, after long suspense, had recognized her among a troop of prisoners, bearing in her arms a child born during her captivity. But the joy of the meeting was bitterly alloyed by the loss of a former child, not two years old, captured with the mother, but soon taken from her, and carried, she could not tell whither. Days pa.s.sed on; they could learn no tidings of its fate, and the mother, harrowed with terrible imaginations, was almost driven to despair; when, at length, she discovered her child in the arms of an Indian warrior, and s.n.a.t.c.hed it with an irrepressible cry of transport.

When the army, on its homeward march, reached the town of Carlisle, those who had been unable to follow the expedition came thither in numbers, to inquire for the friends they had lost. Among the rest was an old woman, whose daughter had been carried off nine years before. In the crowd of female captives, she discovered one in whose wild and swarthy features she discerned the altered lineaments of her child; but the girl, who had almost forgotten her native tongue, returned no sign of recognition to her eager words, and the old woman bitterly complained that the daughter, whom she had so often sung to sleep on her knee, had forgotten her in her old age. Bouquet suggested an expedient which proves him a man of feeling and perception. "Sing the song that you used to sing to her when a child." The old woman obeyed; and a sudden start, a look of bewilderment, and a pa.s.sionate flood of tears, removed every doubt, and restored the long-lost daughter to her mother's arms.[443]

The tender affections by no means form a salient feature in the Indian character. They hold them in contempt, and scorn every manifestation of them; yet, on this occasion, they would not be repressed, and the human heart betrayed itself, though throbbing under a breastplate of ice. None of the ordinary signs of emotion, neither tears, words, nor looks, declared how greatly they were moved. It was by their kindness and solicitude, by their attention to the wants of the captives, by their offers of furs, garments, the choicest articles of food, and every thing which in their eyes seemed luxury, that they displayed their sorrow at parting from their adopted relatives and friends.[444] Some among them went much farther, and asked permission to follow the army on its homeward march, that they might hunt for the captives, and supply them with better food than the military stores could furnish. A young Seneca warrior had become deeply enamoured of a Virginian girl. At great risk of his life, he accompanied the troops far within the limits of the settlements; and, at every night's encampment, approaching the quarters of the captives as closely as the sentinels would permit, he sat watching, with patient vigilance, to catch a glimpse of his lost mistress.

The Indian women, whom no idea of honor compels to wear an iron mask, were far from emulating the frigid demeanor of their lords. All day they ran wailing through the camp; and, when night came, the hills and woods resounded with their dreary lamentations.[445]

The word prisoner, as applied to captives taken by the Indians, is a misnomer, and conveys a wholly false impression of their situation and treatment. When the vengeance of the conquerors is sated; when they have shot, stabbed, burned, or beaten to death, enough to satisfy the shades of their departed relatives, they usually treat those who survive their wrath with moderation and humanity; often adopting them to supply the place of lost brothers, husbands, or children, whose names are given to the successors thus subst.i.tuted in their place. By a formal ceremony, the white blood is washed from their veins; and they are regarded thenceforth as members of the tribe, faring equally with the rest in prosperity or adversity, in famine or abundance. When children are adopted in this manner by Indian women, they nurture them with the same tenderness and indulgence which they extend, in a remarkable degree, to their own offspring; and such young women as will not marry an Indian husband are treated with a singular forbearance, in which superst.i.tion, natural temperament, and a sense of right and justice may all claim a share.[446] The captive, unless he excites suspicion by his conduct, or exhibits peculiar contumacy, is left with no other restraint than his own free will. The warrior who captured him, or to whom he was a.s.signed in the division of the spoil, sometimes claims, it is true, a certain right of property in him, to the exclusion of others; but this claim is soon forgotten, and is seldom exercised to the inconvenience of the captive, who has no other prison than the earth, the air, and the forest.[447] Five hundred miles of wilderness, beset with difficulty and danger, are the sole bars to his escape, should he desire to effect it; but, strange as it may appear, this wish is apt to expire in his heart, and he often remains to the end of his life a contented denizen of the woods.

Among the captives brought in for delivery were some bound fast to prevent their escape; and many others, who, amid the general tumult of joy and sorrow, sat sullen and scowling, angry that they were forced to abandon the wild license of the forest for the irksome restraints of society.[448] Thus to look back with a fond longing to inhospitable deserts, where men, beasts, and Nature herself, seem arrayed in arms, and where ease, security, and all that civilization reckons among the goods of life, are alike cut off, may appear to argue some strange perversity or moral malformation. Yet such has been the experience of many a sound and healthful mind. To him who has once tasted the reckless independence, the haughty self-reliance, the sense of irresponsible freedom, which the forest life engenders, civilization thenceforth seems flat and stale. Its pleasures are insipid, its pursuits wearisome, its conventionalities, duties, and mutual dependence alike tedious and disgusting. The entrapped wanderer grows fierce and restless, and pants for breathing-room. His path, it is true, was choked with difficulties, but his body and soul were hardened to meet them; it was beset with dangers, but these were the very spice of his life, gladdening his heart with exulting self-confidence, and sending the blood through his veins with a livelier current. The wilderness, rough, harsh, and inexorable, has charms more potent in their seductive influence than all the lures of luxury and sloth. And often he on whom it has cast its magic finds no heart to dissolve the spell, and remains a wanderer and an Ishmaelite to the hour of his death.[449]

There is a chord, in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of most men, prompt to answer loudly or faintly, as the case may be, to such rude appeals. But there is influence of another sort, strongest with minds of the finest texture, yet sometimes holding a controlling power over those who neither acknowledge nor suspect its workings. There are few so imbruted by vice, so perverted by art and luxury, as to dwell in the closest presence of Nature, deaf to her voice of melody and power, untouched by the enn.o.bling influences which mould and penetrate the heart that has not hardened itself against them. Into the spirit of such an one the mountain wind breathes its own freshness, and the midsummer tempest, as it rends the forest, pours its own fierce energy. His thoughts flow with the placid stream of the broad, deep river, or dance in light with the sparkling current of the mountain brook. No pa.s.sing mood or fancy of his mind but has its image and its echo in the wild world around him. There is softness in the mellow air, the warm sunshine, and the budding leaves of spring; and in the forest flower, which, more delicate than the pampered offspring of gardens, lifts its tender head through the refuse and decay of the wilderness. But it is the grand and heroic in the hearts of men which finds its worthiest symbol and n.o.blest inspiration amid these desert realms,--in the mountain, rearing its savage head through clouds and sleet, or basking its majestic strength in the radiance of the sinking sun; in the interminable forest, the thunder booming over its lonely waste, the whirlwind tearing through its inmost depths, or the sun at length setting in gorgeous majesty beyond its waves of verdure. To the sick, the wearied, or the sated spirit, nature opens a theatre of boundless life, and holds forth a cup br.i.m.m.i.n.g with redundant pleasure. In the other joys of existence, fear is balanced against hope, and satiety against delight; but here one may fearlessly drink, gaining, with every draught, new vigor and a heightened zest, and finding no dregs of bitterness at the bottom.

Having accomplished its work, the army left the Muskingum, and, retracing its former course, arrived at Fort Pitt on the twenty-eighth of November. The recovered captives were sent to their respective homes in Pennsylvania or Virginia; and the provincial troops disbanded, not without warm praises for the hardihood and steadiness with which they had met the difficulties of the campaign. The happy issue of the expedition spread joy throughout the country. At the next session of the Pennsylvania a.s.sembly, one of its first acts was to pa.s.s a vote of thanks to Colonel Bouquet, expressing in earnest terms its sense of his services and personal merits, and conveying its acknowledgments for the regard which he had constantly shown to the civil rights of the inhabitants.[450] The a.s.sembly of Virginia pa.s.sed a similar vote; and both houses concurred in recommending Bouquet to the King for promotion.

Nevertheless, his position was far from being an easy or a pleasant one. It may be remembered that the desertion of his newly levied soldiers had forced him to ask Colonel Lewis to raise for him one or two companies of Virginian volunteers. Virginia, which had profited by the campaign, though contributing nothing to it, refused to pay these troops; and its agents tried to throw the burden upon Bouquet in person. The a.s.sembly of Pennsylvania, with a justice and a generosity which went far to redeem the past, came to his relief and a.s.sumed the debt, though not till he had suffered the most serious annoyance. Certain recent military regulations contributed at the same time to increase his vexation and his difficulties. He had asked in vain, the year before, to be relieved from his command. He now asked again, and the request was granted; on which he wrote to Gage: "The disgust I have conceived from the ill-nature and ingrat.i.tude of those individuals (the Virginian officials) makes me accept with great satisfaction your obliging offer to discharge me of this department, in which I never desire to serve again, nor, indeed, to be commanding officer in any other, since the new regulations you were pleased to communicate to me; being sensible of my inability to carry on the service upon the terms prescribed."[451]

He was preparing to return to Europe, when he received the announcement of his promotion to the rank of Brigadier General. He was taken completely by surprise; for he had supposed that the rigid prescriptions of the service had closed the path of advancement against him, as a foreigner. "I had, to-day," he wrote to Gage, "the honor of your Excellency's letter of the fifteenth instant. The unexpected honor, which his Majesty has condescended to confer upon me, fills my heart with the utmost grat.i.tude. Permit me, sir, to express my sincere acknowledgments of my great obligation to you.... The flattering prospect of preferment, open to the other foreign officers by the removal of that dreadful barrier, gives me the highest satisfaction, being convinced that his Majesty has no subjects more devoted to his service."[452]

Among the letters of congratulation which he received from officers serving under him is the following, from Captain George Etherington, of the first battalion of the Royal American regiment, who commanded at Michillimackinac when it was captured:-- "Lancaster, Pa., 19 April, 1765.

"Sir: "Though I almost despair of this reaching you before you sail for Europe, yet I cannot deny myself the pleasure of giving you joy on your promotion, and can with truth tell you that it gives great joy to all the gentlemen of the battalion, for two reasons: first, on your account; and, secondly, on our own, as by that means we may hope for the pleasure of continuing under your command.

"You can hardly imagine how this place rings with the news of your promotion, for the townsmen and boors (i.e., German farmers) stop us in the streets to ask if it is true that the King has made Colonel Bouquet a general; and, when they are told it is true, they march off with great joy; so you see the old proverb wrong for once, which says, he that prospers is envied; for sure I am that all the people here are more pleased with the news of your promotion than they would be if the government would take off the stamp duty....

"GEO. ETHERINGTON.

"BRIGADIER GENERAL HENRY BOUQUET."

"And," concludes Dr. William Smith, the chronicler of the campaign, "as he is rendered as dear by his private virtues to those who have the honor of his more intimate acquaintance, as he is by his military services to the public, it is hoped he may long continue among us, where his experienced abilities will enable him, and his love of the English const.i.tution ent.i.tle him, to fill any future trust to which his Majesty may be pleased to call him." This hope was not destined to fulfilment. Bouquet was a.s.signed to the command of the southern military department; and, within three years after his return from the Muskingum, he was attacked with a fever at Pensacola, which closed the career of a gallant soldier and a generous man.

The Delawares and Shawanoes, mindful of their engagement and of the hostages which they had given to keep it, sent their deputies, within the appointed time, to Sir William Johnson, who concluded a treaty with them; stipulating, among the other terms, that they should grant free pa.s.sage through their country to English troops and travellers; that they should make full rest.i.tution for the goods taken from the traders at the breaking out of the war; and that they should aid their triumphant enemies in the difficult task which yet remained to be accomplished,--that of taking possession of the Illinois, and occupying its posts and settlements with British troops.[453]

CHAPTER XXVIII.

1764.

THE ILLINOIS.

We turn to a region of which, as yet, we have caught but transient glimpses; a region which to our forefathers seemed remote and strange, as to us the mountain strongholds of the Apaches, or the wastes of farthest Oregon. The country of the Illinois was chiefly embraced within the boundaries of the state which now retains the name. Thitherward, from the east, the west, and the north, three mighty rivers rolled their tributary waters; while countless smaller streams--small only in comparison--traversed the land with a watery network, impregnating the warm soil with exuberant fecundity. From the eastward, the Ohio--La Belle Riviere--pursued its windings for more than a thousand miles. The Mississippi descended from the distant north; while from its fountains in the west, three thousand miles away, the Missouri poured its torrent towards the same common centre. Born among mountains, trackless even now, except by the adventurous footstep of the trapper,--nurtured amid the howling of beasts and the war-cries of savages, never silent in that wilderness,--it holds its angry course through sun-scorched deserts, among towers and palaces, the architecture of no human hand, among lodges of barbarian hordes, and herds of bison blackening the prairie to the horizon. Fierce, reckless, headstrong, exulting in its tumultuous force, it plays a thousand freaks of wanton power; bearing away forests from its sh.o.r.es, and planting them, with roots uppermost, in its quicksands; sweeping off islands, and rebuilding them; frothing and raging in foam and whirlpool, and, again, gliding with dwindled current along its sandy channel. At length, dark with uncurbed fury, it pours its muddy tide into the reluctant Mississippi. That majestic river, drawing life from the pure fountains of the north, wandering among emerald prairies and wood-crowned bluffs, loses all its earlier charm with this unhallowed union. At first, it shrinks as with repugnance; and along the same channel the two streams flow side by side, with unmingled waters. But the disturbing power prevails at length; and the united torrent bears onward in its might, boiling up from the bottom, whirling in many a vortex, flooding its sh.o.r.es with a malign deluge fraught with pestilence and fever, and burying forests in its depths, to insnare the heedless voyager. Mightiest among rivers, it is the connecting link of adverse climates and contrasted races; and, while at its northern source the fur-clad Indian shivers in the cold, where it mingles with the ocean, the growth of the tropics springs along its banks, and the panting negro cools his limbs in its refreshing waters.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Plan of the several +Villages+ in the +Illinois Country+, with Part of the +River Mississippi+ &c.]

To these great rivers and their tributary streams the country of the Illinois owed its wealth, its gra.s.sy prairies, and the stately woods that flourished on its deep, rich soil. This prolific land teemed with life. It was a hunter's paradise. Deer grazed on its meadows. The elk trooped in herds, like squadrons of cavalry. In the still morning, one might hear the clatter of their antlers for half a mile over the dewy prairie. Countless bison roamed the plains, filing in grave procession to drink at the rivers, plunging and snorting among the rapids and quicksands, rolling their huge bulk on the gra.s.s, rushing upon each other in hot encounter, like champions under shield. The wildcat glared from the thicket; the racc.o.o.n thrust his furry countenance from the hollow tree, and the opossum swung, head downwards, from the overhanging bough.

With the opening spring, when the forests are budding into leaf, and the prairies gemmed with flowers; when a warm, faint haze rests upon the landscape,--then heart and senses are inthralled with luxurious beauty. The shrubs and wild fruit-trees, flushed with pale red blossoms, and the small cl.u.s.tering flowers of grape-vines, which choke the gigantic trees with Laoc.o.o.n writhings, fill the forest with their rich perfume. A few days later, and a cloud of verdure overshadows the land; while birds innumerable sing beneath its canopy, and brighten its shades with their glancing hues.

Yet this western paradise is not free from the primal curse. The beneficent sun, which kindles into life so many forms of loveliness and beauty, fails not to engender venom and death from the rank slime of pestilential swamp and marsh. In some stagnant pool, buried in the jungle-like depths of the forest, where the hot and lifeless water reeks with exhalations, the water-snake basks by the margin, or winds his checkered length of loathsome beauty across the sleepy surface. From beneath the rotten carca.s.s of some fallen tree, the moccason thrusts out his broad flat head, ready to dart on the intruder. On the dry, sun-scorched prairie, the rattlesnake, a more generous enemy, reposes in his spiral coil. He scorns to shun the eye of day, as if conscious of the honor accorded to his name by the warlike race, who, jointly with him, claim lordship over the land.[454] But some intrusive footstep awakes him from his slumbers. His neck is arched; the white fangs gleam in his distended jaws; his small eyes dart rays of unutterable fierceness; and his rattles, invisible with their quick vibration, ring the sharp warning which no man will dare to contemn.

The land thus prodigal of good and evil, so remote from the sea, so primitive in its aspect, might well be deemed an undiscovered region, ignorant of European arts; yet it may boast a colonization as old as that of many a spot to which are accorded the scanty honors of an American antiquity. The earliest settlement of Pennsylvania was made in 1681; the first occupation of the Illinois took place in the previous year. La Salle may be called the father of the colony. That remarkable man entered the country with a handful of followers, bent on his grand scheme of Mississippi discovery. A legion of enemies rose in his path; but neither delay, disappointment, sickness, famine, open force, nor secret conspiracy, could bend his soul of iron. Disasters acc.u.mulated upon him. He flung them off, and still pressed forward to his object. His victorious energy bore all before it; but the success on which he had staked his life served only to entail fresh calamity, and an untimely death; and his best reward is, that his name stands forth in history an imperishable monument of heroic constancy. When on his way to the Mississippi, in the year 1680, La Salle built a fort in the country of the Illinois; and, on his return from the mouth of the great river, some of his followers remained, and established themselves near the spot. Heroes of another stamp took up the work which the daring Norman had begun. Jesuit missionaries, among the best and purest of their order, burning with zeal for the salvation of souls, and the gaining of an immortal crown, here toiled and suffered, with a self-sacrificing devotion which extorts a tribute of admiration even from sectarian bigotry. While the colder apostles of Protestantism labored upon the outskirts of heathendom, these champions of the cross, the forlorn hope of the army of Rome, pierced to the heart of its dark and dreary domain, confronting death at every step, and well repaid for all, could they but sprinkle a few drops of water on the forehead of a dying child, or hang a gilded crucifix round the neck of some warrior, pleased with the glittering trinket. With the beginning of the eighteenth century, the black robe of the Jesuit was known in every village of the Illinois. Defying the wiles of Satan and the malice of his emissaries, the Indian sorcerers; exposed to the rage of the elements, and every casualty of forest life, they followed their wandering proselytes to war and to the chase; now wading through mora.s.ses, now dragging canoes over rapids and sandbars; now scorched with heat on the sweltering prairie, and now shivering houseless in the blasts of January. At Kaskaskia and Cahokia they established missions, and built frail churches from the bark of trees, fit emblems of their own transient and futile labors. Morning and evening, the savage worshippers sang praises to the Virgin, and knelt in supplication before the shrine of St. Joseph.[455]

Soldiers and fur-traders followed where these pioneers of the church had led the way. Forts were built here and there throughout the country, and the cabins of settlers cl.u.s.tered about the mission-houses. The new colonists, emigrants from Canada or disbanded soldiers of French regiments, bore a close resemblance to the settlers of Detroit, or the primitive people of Acadia; whose simple life poetry has chosen as an appropriate theme, but who, nevertheless, are best contemplated from a distance. The Creole of the Illinois, contented, light-hearted, and thriftless, by no means fulfilled the injunction to increase and multiply; and the colony languished in spite of the fertile soil. The people labored long enough to gain a bare subsistence for each pa.s.sing day, and spent the rest of their time in dancing and merry-making, smoking, gossiping, and hunting. Their native gayety was irrepressible, and they found means to stimulate it with wine made from the fruit of the wild grape-vines. Thus they pa.s.sed their days, at peace with themselves, hand and glove with their Indian neighbors, and ignorant of all the world beside. Money was scarcely known among them. Skins and furs were the prevailing currency, and in every village a great portion of the land was held in common. The military commandant, whose station was at Fort Chartres, on the Mississippi, ruled the colony with a sway absolute as that of the Pacha of Egypt, and judged civil and criminal cases without right of appeal. Yet his power was exercised in a patriarchal spirit, and he usually commanded the respect and confidence of the people. Many years later, when, after the War of the Revolution, the Illinois came under the jurisdiction of the United States, the perplexed inhabitants, totally at a loss to understand the complicated machinery of republicanism, begged to be delivered from the intolerable burden of self-government, and to be once more subjected to a military commandant.[456]

The Creole is as unchanging in his nature and habits as the Indian himself. Even at this day, one may see, along the banks of the Mississippi, the same low-browed cottages, with their broad eaves and picturesque verandas, which, a century ago, were cl.u.s.tered around the mission-house at Kaskaskia; and, entering, one finds the inmate the same lively, story-telling, and pipe-smoking being that his ancestor was before him. Yet, with all his genial traits, the rough world deals hardly with him. He lives a mere drone in the busy hive of an American population. The living tide encroaches on his rest, as the muddy torrent of the great river chafes away the farm and homestead of his fathers. Yet he contrives to be happy, though looking back regretfully to the better days of old.

At the date of this history, the population of the colony, exclusive of negroes, who, in that simple community, were treated rather as humble friends than as slaves, did not exceed two thousand souls, distributed in several small settlements. There were about eighty houses at Kaskaskia, forty or fifty at Cahokia, a few at Vincennes and Fort Chartres, and a few more scattered in small cl.u.s.ters upon the various streams. The agricultural portion of the colonists were, as we have described them, marked with many weaknesses, and many amiable virtues; but their morals were not improved by a large admixture of fur-traders,--reckless, harebrained adventurers, who, happily for the peace of their relatives, were absent on their wandering vocation during the greater part of the year.[457]

Swarms of vagabond Indians infested the settlements; and, to people of any other character, they would have proved an intolerable annoyance. But the easy-tempered Creoles made friends and comrades of them; ate, drank, smoked, and often married with them. They were a debauched and drunken rabble, the remnants of that branch of the Algonquin stock known among the French as the Illinois, a people once numerous and powerful, but now miserably enfeebled, and corrupted by foreign wars, domestic dissensions, and their own licentious manners. They comprised the broken fragments of five tribes,--the Kaskaskias, Cahokias, Peorias, Mitchigamias, and Tamaronas. Some of their villages were in the close vicinity of the Creole settlements. On a hot summer morning, they might be seen lounging about the trading-house, basking in the sun, begging for a dram of whiskey, or chaffering with the hard-featured trader for beads, tobacco, gunpowder, and red paint.

About the Wabash and its branches, to the eastward of the Illinois, dwelt tribes of similar lineage, but more warlike in character, and less corrupt in manners. These were the Miamis, in their three divisions, their near kindred, the Piankishaws, and a portion of the Kickapoos. There was another settlement of the Miamis upon the River Maumee, still farther to the east; and it was here that Bradstreet's amba.s.sador, Captain Morris, had met so rough a welcome. The strength of these combined tribes was very considerable; and, one and all, they looked with wrath and abhorrence on the threatened advent of the English.

CHAPTER XXIX.

1763-1765.

PONTIAC RALLIES THE WESTERN TRIBES.

When, by the treaty of Paris, in 1763, France ceded to England her territories east of the Mississippi, the Illinois was of course included in the cession. Scarcely were the articles signed, when France, as if eager to rob herself, at one stroke, of all her western domain, threw away upon Spain the vast and indefinite regions beyond the Mississippi, destined at a later day to return to her hands, and finally to swell the growing empire of the United States. This transfer to Spain was for some time kept secret; but orders were immediately sent to the officers commanding at the French posts within the territory ceded to England, to evacuate the country whenever British troops should appear to occupy it. These orders reached the Illinois towards the close of 1763. Some time, however, must necessarily elapse before the English could take possession; for the Indian war was then at its height, and the country was protected from access by a broad barrier of savage tribes, in the hottest ferment of hostility.

The colonists, hating the English with a more than national hatred, deeply imbittered by years of disastrous war, received the news of the treaty with disgust and execration. Many of them left the country, loath to dwell under the shadow of the British flag. Of these, some crossed the Mississippi to the little hamlet of St. Genevieve, on the western bank; others followed the commandant, Neyon de Villiers, to New Orleans; while others, taking with them all their possessions, even to the frames and clapboarding of their houses, pa.s.sed the river a little above Cahokia, and established themselves at a beautiful spot on the opposite sh.o.r.e, where a settlement was just then on the point of commencement. Here a line of richly wooded bluffs rose with easy ascent from the margin of the water; while from their summits extended a wide plateau of fertile prairie, bordered by a framework of forest. In the shadow of the trees, which fringed the edge of the declivity, stood a newly-built storehouse, with a few slight cabins and works of defence, belonging to a company of fur-traders. At their head was Pierre Laclede, who had left New Orleans with his followers in August, 1763; and, after toiling for three months against the impetuous stream of the Mississippi, had reached the Illinois in November, and selected the spot alluded to as the site of his first establishment. To this he gave the name of St. Louis.[458] Side by side with Laclede, in his adventurous enterprise, was a young man, slight in person, but endowed with a vigor and elasticity of frame which could resist heat or cold, fatigue, hunger, or the wasting hand of time. Not all the magic of a dream, nor the enchantments of an Arabian tale, could outmatch the waking realities which were to rise upon the vision of Pierre Chouteau. Where, in his youth, he had climbed the woody bluff, and looked abroad on prairies dotted with bison, he saw, with the dim eye of his old age, the land darkened for many a furlong with the cl.u.s.tered roofs of the western metropolis. For the silence of the wilderness, he heard the clang and turmoil of human labor, the din of congregated thousands; and where the great river rolled down through the forest, in lonely grandeur, he saw the waters lashed into foam beneath the prows of panting steamboats, flocking to the broad levee.[459]

In the summer of 1764, the military commandant, Neyon, had abandoned the country in disgust, and gone down to New Orleans, followed by many of the inhabitants; a circ.u.mstance already mentioned. St. Ange de Bellerive remained behind to succeed him. St. Ange was a veteran Canadian officer, the same who, more than forty years before, had escorted Father Charlevoix through the country, and who is spoken of with high commendation by the Jesuit traveller and historian. He took command of about forty men, the remnant of the garrison of Fort Chartres; which, remote as it was, was then esteemed one of the best constructed military works in America. Its ramparts of stone, garnished with twenty cannon, scowled across the encroaching Mississippi, destined, before many years, to ingulf curtain and bastion in its ravenous abyss.

St. Ange's position was by no means an enviable one. He had a critical part to play. On the one hand, he had been advised of the cession to the English, and ordered to yield up the country whenever they should arrive to claim it. On the other, he was beset by emba.s.sies from Pontiac, from the Shawanoes, and from the Miamis, and plagued day and night by an importunate mob of Illinois Indians, demanding arms, ammunition, and a.s.sistance against the common enemy. Perhaps, in his secret heart, St. Ange would have rejoiced to see the scalps of all the Englishmen in the backwoods fluttering in the wind over the Illinois wigwams; but his situation forbade him to comply with the solicitations of his intrusive pet.i.tioners, and it is to be hoped that some sense of honor and humanity enforced the dictates of prudence. Accordingly, he cajoled them with flatteries and promises, and from time to time distributed a few presents to stay their importunity, still praying daily that the English might appear and relieve him from his uneasy dilemma.[460]

While Laclede was founding St. Louis, while the discontented settlers of the Illinois were deserting their homes, and while St. Ange was laboring to pacify his Indian neighbors, all the tribes from the Maumee to the Mississippi were in a turmoil of excitement. Pontiac was among them, furious as a wild beast at bay. By the double campaign of 1764, his best hopes had been crushed to the earth; but he stood unshaken amidst the ruin, and still struggled with desperate energy to retrieve his broken cause. On the side of the northern lakes, the movements of Bradstreet had put down the insurrection of the tribes, and wrested back the military posts which cunning and treachery had placed within their grasp. In the south, Bouquet had forced to abject submission the warlike Delawares and Shawanoes, the warriors on whose courage and obstinacy Pontiac had grounded his strongest confidence. On every hand defeat and disaster were closing around him. One sanctuary alone remained, the country of the Illinois. Here the flag of France still floated on the banks of the Mississippi, and here no English foot had dared to penetrate. He resolved to invoke all his resources, and bend all his energies to defend this last citadel.[461]

He was not left to contend unaided. The fur-trading French, living at the settlements on the Mississippi, scattered about the forts of Ouatanon, Vincennes, and Miami, or domesticated among the Indians of the Rivers Illinois and Wabash, dreaded the English as dangerous compet.i.tors in their vocation, and were eager to bar them from the country. They lavished abuse and calumny on the objects of their jealousy, and spared no falsehood which ingenious malice and self-interest could suggest. They gave out that the English were bent on the ruin of the tribes, and to that end were stirring them up to mutual hostility. They insisted that, though the armies of France had been delayed so long, they were nevertheless on their way, and that the bayonets of the white-coated warriors would soon glitter among the forests of the Mississippi. Forged letters were sent to Pontiac, signed by the King of France, exhorting him to stand his ground but a few weeks longer, and all would then be well. To give the better coloring to their falsehoods, some of these incendiaries a.s.sumed the uniform of French officers, and palmed themselves off upon their credulous auditors as amba.s.sadors from the king. Many of the princ.i.p.al traders distributed among the warriors supplies of arms and ammunition, in some instances given gratuitously, and in others sold on credit, with the understanding that payment should be made from the plunder of the English.[462]

Now that the insurrection in the east was quelled, and the Delawares and Shawanoes were beaten into submission, it was thought that the English would lose no time in taking full possession of the country, which, by the peace of 1763, had been transferred into their hands. Two princ.i.p.al routes would give access to the Illinois. Troops might advance from the south up the great natural highway of the Mississippi, or they might descend from the east by way of Fort Pitt and the Ohio. In either case, to meet and repel them was the determined purpose of Pontiac.

In the spring, or early summer, he had come to the Illinois and visited the commandant, Neyon, who was then still at his post. Neyon's greeting was inauspicious. He told his visitor that he hoped he had returned at last to his senses. Pontiac laid before him a large belt of wampum. "My Father," he said, "I come to invite you and all your allies to go with me to war against the English." Neyon asked if he had not received his message of the last autumn, in which he told him that the French and English were thenceforth one people; but Pontiac persisted, and still urged him to take up the hatchet. Neyon at length grew angry, kicked away the wampum belt, and demanded if he could not hear what was said to him. Thus repulsed, Pontiac asked for a keg of rum. Which being given him, he caused to be carried to a neighboring Illinois village; and, with the help of this potent auxiliary, made the a.s.sembled warriors join him in the war-song.[463]

It does not appear that, on this occasion, he had any farther success in firing the hearts of the Illinois. He presently returned to his camp on the Maumee, where, by a succession of ill-tidings, he learned the humiliation of his allies, and the triumph of his enemies. Towards the close of autumn, he again left the Maumee; and, followed by four hundred warriors, journeyed westward, to visit in succession the different tribes, and gain their co-operation in his plans of final defence. Crossing over to the Wabash, he pa.s.sed from village to village, among the Kickapoos, the Piankishaws, and the three tribes of the Miamis, rousing them by his imperious eloquence, and breathing into them his own fierce spirit of resistance. Thence, by rapid marches through forests and over prairies, he reached the banks of the Mississippi, and summoned the four tribes of the Illinois to a general meeting. But these degenerate savages, beaten by the surrounding tribes for many a generation past, had lost their warlike spirit; and, though abundantly noisy and boastful, showed no zeal for fight, and entered with no zest into the schemes of the Ottawa war-chief. Pontiac had his own way of dealing with such spirits. "If you hesitate," he exclaimed, frowning on the cowering a.s.sembly, "I will consume your tribes as the fire consumes the dry gra.s.s on the prairie." The doubts of the Illinois vanished like the mist, and with marvellous alacrity they declared their concurrence in the views of the orator. Having secured these allies, such as they were, Pontiac departed, and hastened to Fort Chartres. St. Ange, so long tormented with emba.s.sy after emba.s.sy, and mob after mob, thought that the crowning evil was come at last, when he saw the arch-demon Pontiac enter at the gate, with four hundred warriors at his back. Arrived at the council-house, Pontiac addressed the commandant in a tone of great courtesy: "Father, we have long wished to see you, to shake hands with you, and, whilst smoking the calumet of peace, to recall the battles in which we fought together against the misguided Indians and the English dogs. I love the French, and I have come hither with my warriors to avenge their wrongs."[464] Then followed a demand for arms, ammunition, and troops, to act in concert with the Indian warriors. St. Ange was forced to decline rendering the expected aid; but he sweetened his denial with soothing compliments, and added a few gifts, to remove any lingering bitterness. Pontiac would not be appeased. He angrily complained of such lukewarm friendship, where he had looked for ready sympathy and support. His warriors pitched their lodges about the fort, and threatening symptoms of an approaching rupture began to alarm the French.

In the mean time, Pontiac had caused his squaws to construct a belt of wampum of extraordinary size, six feet in length, and four inches wide. It was wrought from end to end with the symbols of the various tribes and villages, forty-seven in number, still leagued together in his alliance.[465] He consigned it to an emba.s.sy of chosen warriors, directing them to carry it down the Mississippi, displaying it, in turn, at every Indian village along its banks; and exhorting the inhabitants, in his name, to watch the movements of the English, and repel any attempt they might make to ascend the river. This done, they were to repair to New Orleans, and demand from the governor, M. D'Abbadie, the aid which St. Ange had refused. The bark canoes of the emba.s.sy put out from the sh.o.r.e, and whirled down the current like floating leaves in autumn.

Soon after their departure, tidings came to Fort Chartres, which caused a joyous excitement among the Indians, and relieved the French garrison from any danger of an immediate rupture. In our own day, the vast distance between the great city of New Orleans and the populous state of Illinois has dwindled into insignificance beneath the magic of science; but at the date of this history, three or four months were often consumed in the upward pa.s.sage, and the settlers of the lonely forest colony were sometimes cut off from all communication with the world for half a year together. The above-mentioned tidings, interesting as they were, had occupied no less time in their pa.s.sage. Their import was as follows:-- Very early in the preceding spring, an English officer, Major Loftus, having arrived at New Orleans with four hundred regulars, had attempted to ascend the Mississippi, to take possession of Fort Chartres and its dependent posts. His troops were embarked in large and heavy boats. Their progress was slow; and they had reached a point not more than eighty leagues above New Orleans, when, one morning, their ears were greeted with the crack of rifles from the thickets of the western sh.o.r.e; and a soldier in the foremost boat fell, with a mortal wound. The troops, in dismay, sheered over towards the eastern sh.o.r.e; but, when fairly within gunshot, a score of rifles obscured the forest edge with smoke, and filled the nearest boat with dead and wounded men. On this, they steered for the middle of the river, where they remained for a time, exposed to a dropping fire from either bank, too distant to take effect.

The river was high, and the sh.o.r.es so flooded, that nothing but an Indian could hope to find foothold in the miry labyrinth. Loftus was terrified; the troops were discouraged, and a council of officers determined that to advance was impossible. Accordingly, with their best despatch, they steered back for New Orleans, where they arrived without farther accident; and where the French, in great glee at their discomfiture, spared no ridicule at their expense. They alleged, and with much appearance of truth, that the English had been repulsed by no more than thirty warriors. Loftus charged D'Abbadie with having occasioned his disaster by stirring up the Indians to attack him. The governor called Heaven to witness his innocence; and, in truth, there is not the smallest reason to believe him guilty of such villany.[466] Loftus, who had not yet recovered from his fears, conceived an idea that the Indians below New Orleans were preparing an ambuscade to attack him on his way back to his station at Pensacola; and he pet.i.tioned D'Abbadie to interfere in his behalf. The latter, with an ill-dissembled sneer, offered to give him and his troops an escort of French soldiers to protect them. Loftus rejected the humiliating proposal, and declared that he only wished for a French interpreter, to confer with any Indians whom he might meet by the way. The interpreter was furnished; and Loftus returned in safety to Pensacola, his detachment not a little reduced by the few whom the Indians had shot, and by numbers who, disgusted by his overbearing treatment, had deserted to the French.[467]

The futile attempt of Loftus to ascend the Mississippi was followed, a few months after, by another equally abortive. Captain Pittman came to New Orleans with the design of proceeding to the Illinois, but was deterred by the reports which reached him concerning the temper of the Indians. The latter, elated beyond measure by their success against Loftus, and excited, moreover, by the messages and war-belt of Pontiac, were in a state of angry commotion, which made the pa.s.sage too hazardous to be attempted. Pittman bethought himself of a.s.suming the disguise of a Frenchman, joining a party of Creole traders, and thus reaching his destination by stealth; but, weighing the risk of detection, he abandoned this design also, and returned to Mobile.[468] Between the Illinois and the settlements around New Orleans, the Mississippi extended its enormous length through solitudes of marsh and forest, broken here and there by a squalid Indian village; or, at vast intervals, by one or two military posts, erected by the French, and forming the resting-places of the voyager. After the failure of Pittman, more than a year elapsed before an English detachment could succeed in pa.s.sing this great thoroughfare of the wilderness, and running the gauntlet of the savage tribes who guarded its sh.o.r.es. It was not till the second of December, 1765, that Major Farmar, at the head of a strong body of troops, arrived, after an uninterrupted voyage, at Fort Chartres, where the flag of his country had already supplanted the standard of France.[469]

To return to our immediate theme. The amba.s.sadors, whom Pontiac had sent from Fort Chartres in the autumn of 1764, faithfully acquitted themselves of their trust. They visited the Indian villages along the river banks, kindling the thirst for blood and ma.s.sacre in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the inmates. They pushed their sanguinary mission even to the farthest tribes of Southern Louisiana, to whom the great name of Pontiac had long been known, and of late made familiar by repeated messages and emba.s.sies.[470] This portion of their task accomplished, they repaired to New Orleans, and demanded an audience of the governor.

New Orleans was then a town of about seven thousand white inhabitants, guarded from the river floods by a levee extending for fifty miles along the banks. The small brick houses, one story in height, were arranged with geometrical symmetry, like the squares of a chess-board. Each house had its yard and garden, and the town was enlivened with the verdure of trees and gra.s.s. In front, a public square, or parade ground, opened upon the river, enclosed on three sides by the dilapidated church of St. Louis, a prison, a convent, government buildings, and a range of barracks. The place was surrounded by a defence of palisades strong enough to repel an attack of Indians, or insurgent slaves.[471]

When Pontiac's amba.s.sadors entered New Orleans, they found the town in a state of confusion. It had long been known that the regions east of the Mississippi had been surrendered to England; a cession from which, however, New Orleans and its suburbs had been excepted by a special provision. But it was only within a few weeks that the dismayed inhabitants had learned that their mother country had transferred her remaining American possessions to the crown of Spain, whose government and people they cordially detested. With every day they might expect the arrival of a Spanish governor and garrison. The French officials, whose hour was drawing to its close, were making the best of their short-lived authority by every species of corruption and peculation; and the inhabitants were awaiting, in anger and repugnance, the approaching change, which was to place over their heads masters whom they hated. The governor, D'Abbadie, an ardent soldier and a zealous patriot, was so deeply chagrined at what he conceived to be the disgrace of his country, that his feeble health gave way, and he betrayed all the symptoms of a rapid decline.

Haggard with illness, and bowed down with shame, the dying governor received the Indian envoys in the council-hall of the province, where he was never again to a.s.sume his seat of office. Besides the French officials in attendance, several English officers, who chanced to be in the town, had been invited to the meeting, with the view of soothing the jealousy with which they regarded all intercourse between the French and the Indians. A Shawanoe chief, the orator of the emba.s.sy, displayed the great war-belt, and opened the council. "These red dogs," he said, alluding to the color of the British uniform, "have crowded upon us more and more; and when we ask them by what right they come, they tell us that you, our French fathers, have given them our lands. We know that they lie. These lands are neither yours nor theirs, and no man shall give or sell them without our consent. Fathers, we have always been your faithful children; and we now have come to ask that you will give us guns, powder, and lead, to aid us in this war."

D'Abbadie replied in a feeble voice, endeavoring to allay their vindictive jealousy of the English, and promising to give them all that should be necessary to supply their immediate wants. The council then adjourned until the following day; but, in the mean time, the wasted strength of the governor gave way beneath a renewed attack of his disorder; and, before the appointed hour arrived, he had breathed his last, hurried to a premature death by the anguish of mortified pride and patriotism. M. Aubry, his successor, presided in his place, and received the savage emba.s.sy. The orator, after the solemn custom of his people, addressed him in a speech of condolence, expressing his deep regret for D'Abbadie's untimely fate.[472] A chief of the Miamis then rose to speak, with a scowling brow, and words of bitterness and reproach. "Since we last sat on these seats, our ears have heard strange words. When the English told us that they had conquered you, we always thought that they lied; but now we have learned that they spoke the truth. We have learned that you, whom we have loved and served so well, have given the lands that we dwell upon to your enemies and ours. We have learned that the English have forbidden you to send traders to our villages to supply our wants; and that you, whom we thought so great and brave, have obeyed their commands like women, leaving us to starve and die in misery. We now tell you, once for all, that our lands are our own; and we tell you, moreover, that we can live without your aid, and hunt, and fish, and fight, as our fathers did before us. All that we ask of you is this: that you give us back the guns, the powder, the hatchets, and the knives which we have worn out in fighting your battles. As for you," he exclaimed, turning to the English officers, who were present as on the preceding day,--"as for you, our hearts burn with rage when we think of the ruin you have brought on us." Aubry returned but a weak answer to the cutting attack of the Indian speaker. He a.s.sured the amba.s.sadors that the French still retained their former love for the Indians, that the English meant them no harm, and that, as all the world were now at peace, it behooved them also to take hold of the chain of friendship. A few presents were then distributed, but with no apparent effect. The features of the Indians still retained their sullen scowl; and on the morrow their canoes were ascending the Mississippi on their homeward voyage.[473]

CHAPTER x.x.x.

1765.

RUIN OF THE INDIAN CAUSE.

The repulse of Loftus, and rumors of the fierce temper of the Indians who guarded the Mississippi, convinced the commander-in-chief that to reach the Illinois by the southern route was an enterprise of no easy accomplishment. Yet, at the same time, he felt the strong necessity of a speedy military occupation of the country; since, while the fleur de lis floated over a single garrison in the ceded territory, it would be impossible to disabuse the Indians of the phantom hope of French a.s.sistance, to which they clung with infatuated tenacity. The embers of the Indian war would never be quenched until England had enforced all her claims over her defeated rival. Gage determined to despatch a force from the eastward, by way of Fort Pitt and the Ohio; a route now laid open by the late success of Bouquet, and the submission of the Delawares and Shawanoes.

To prepare a way for the pa.s.sage of the troops, Sir William Johnson's deputy, George Croghan, was ordered to proceed in advance, to reason with the Indians as far as they were capable of reasoning; to soften their antipathy to the English, to expose the falsehoods of the French, and to distribute presents among the tribes by way of propitiation.[474] The mission was a critical one; but, so far as regarded the Indians, Croghan was well fitted to discharge it. He had been for years a trader among the western tribes, over whom he had gained much influence by a certain vigor of character, joined to a wary and sagacious policy, concealed beneath a bluff demeanor. Lieutenant Fraser, a young officer of education and intelligence, was a.s.sociated with him. He spoke French, and, in other respects also, supplied qualifications in which his rugged colleague was wanting. They set out for Fort Pitt in February, 1765; and after traversing inhospitable mountains, and valleys clogged with snow, reached their destination at about the same time that Pontiac's amba.s.sadors were entering New Orleans, to hold their council with the French.

A few days later, an incident occurred, which afterwards, through the carousals of many a winter evening, supplied an absorbing topic of anecdote and boast to the braggadocio heroes of the border. A train of pack-horses, bearing the gifts which Croghan was to bestow upon the Indians, followed him towards Fort Pitt, a few days' journey in the rear of his party. Under the same escort came several companies of traders, who, believing that the long suspended commerce with the Indians was about to be reopened, were hastening to Fort Pitt with a great quant.i.ty of goods, eager to throw them into the market the moment the prohibition should be removed. There is reason to believe that Croghan had an interest in these goods, and that, under pretence of giving presents, he meant to open a clandestine trade.[475] The Paxton men, and their kindred spirits of the border, saw the proceeding with sinister eyes. In their view, the traders were about to make a barter of the blood of the people; to place in the hands of murdering savages the means of renewing the devastation to which the reeking frontier bore frightful witness. Once possessed with this idea, they troubled themselves with no more inquiries; and, having tried remonstrances in vain, they adopted a summary mode of doing themselves justice. At the head of the enterprise was a man whose name had been connected with more praiseworthy exploits, James Smith, already mentioned as leading a party of independent riflemen, for the defence of the borders, during the b.l.o.o.d.y autumn of 1763. He now mustered his old a.s.sociates, made them resume their Indian disguise, and led them to their work with characteristic energy and address.

The government agents and traders were in the act of pa.s.sing the verge of the frontiers. Their united trains amounted to seventy pack-horses, carrying goods to the value of more than four thousand pounds; while others, to the value of eleven thousand, were waiting transportation at Fort Loudon. Advancing deeper among the mountains, they began to descend the valley at the foot of Sidling Hill. The laden horses plodded knee-deep in snow. The mountains towered above the wayfarers in gray desolation; and the leafless forest, a mighty aeolian harp, howled dreary music to the wind of March. Suddenly, fr