chap. VII.} 1763. May. |
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you utterly, and you shall all die.’1 ‘The Master of
Life himself,’ said the Pottawatamies, ‘has stirred us, up to this war.’
The plot was discovered in March by the officer in command at Miami;2 and the Bloody Belt, which was then in the village and was to be sent forward to the tribes on the Wabash,3 was with great difficulty, ‘after a long and troublesome’ interview, obtained from an assembly of the chiefs of the Miamis.4
On receiving the news, Amherst, who had not much alertness or sagacity, while he prepared reinforcements, pleased himself with calling the acts of the Indians ‘unwarrantable;’ hoped they would be ‘too sensible of their own interest’ to conspire against the English; and declared that if they did, he wished them to know that, in his eyes, they would make ‘a contemptible figure.’
Yes, he repeated, ‘a contemptible figure.’
The mischief would recoil on themselves, and end in their destruction.5
But Pontiac, the colossal chief of the North West, ‘the king and lord of all that country;’6 a Catawba7 prisoner, as is said, adopted into the clan of the Ottawas, and elected their chief;8 respected, and in a manner adored, by all the nations around
1 M. de Neyon à M. de Kerlerec, au Fort de Chartres, le ler Decembre, 1763.
2 Ensign Holmes, commanding officer at Miamis, to Major Gladwin, lated Fort Miamis, 30 March, 1763.
3 Speech of the Miamis Chief, 30 March, 1763.
4 Holmes to Gladwin, 30 March, 1763.
5 Letter of Amherst to Major Gladwin, May, 1763.
6 Rogers: Account of North America.
7 William Smith to H. Gates, 22 November, 1763. Gladwin speaks of the Ottawa Nation as Pontiac's Nation. A less authority than that of Smith might not deserve to be regarded; but Smith is one of the accurate.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1860.
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