Pontiac
Of this Pontiac you have read, no doubt, in various books of travels and anecdotes of Indian chiefs. But it is one thing to read of these events by an English fireside, where the features of the scene—the forest wilds echoing to the war-whoop—the painted warriors—the very words scalping, tomahawking, bring no definite meaning to the mind, only a vague horror;—and quite another thing to recall them here on the spot, arrayed in all their dread yet picturesque reality. Pontiac is the hero par excellence of all these regions; and in all the histories of Detroit, when Detroit becomes a great capital of the west, he will figure like Caractacus or Arminius in the Roman history. The English contemporaries call him king and emperor of the Indians; but there is absolutely no sovereignty among these people. Pontiac was merely a war chief, chosen in the usual way, but exercising a more than usual influence, not by mere bravery—the universal savage virtue—but by talents of a rarer kind; a power of reflection and combination rarely met with in the character of the red warrior. Pontiac was a man of genius, and would have ruled his fellow-men under any circumstances, and in any country. He formed a project similar to that which Tecumseh entertained fifty years later. He united all the north-western tribes of Ottawas, Chippewas, and Pottowottomies, in one great confederacy against the British, “the dogs in red coats;” and had very nearly caused the overthrow, at least the temporary overthrow of our power. He had planned a simultaneous attack on all the trading posts in the possession of the English, and so far succeeded that ten of these forts were surprised about the same time, and all the English soldiers and traders massacred, while the French were spared. Before any tidings of these horrors and outrages could reach Detroit, Pontiac was here in friendly guise, and all his measures admirably arranged for taking this fort also by stratagem, and murdering every Englishman within it. All had been lost, if a poor Indian woman, who had received much kindness from the family of the commandant (Major Gladwyn), had not revealed the danger. I do not yet quite understand why Major Gladwyn, on the discovery of Pontiac’s treachery, and having him in his power, did not make him and his whole band prisoners; such a stroke would have ended, or rather it would have prevented, the war. But it must be remembered that Major Gladwyn was ignorant of the systematic plan of extermination adopted by Pontiac; the news of the massacres at the upper forts had not reached him; he knew of nothing but the attempt on himself, and from motives of humanity or magnanimity he suffered them to leave the fort and go free. No sooner were they on the outside of the palisades, than they set up the war-yell “like so many devils,” as a bystander expressed it, and turned and discharged their rifles on the garrison. The war, thus savagely declared, was accompanied by all those atrocious barbarities, and turns of fate, and traits of heroism, and hair-breadth escapes, which render these Indian conflicts so exciting, so terrific, so picturesque.
Detroit was in a state of siege by the Indians for twelve months, and gallantly and successfully defended by Major Gladwyn, till relieved by General Bradstreet.
The first time I was able to go out, my good-natured landlord drove me himself in his waggon (Anglicè, gig), with as much attention and care for my comfort, as if I had been his near relation. The evening was glorious; the sky perfectly Italian—a genuine Claude Lorraine sky, that beautiful intense amber light reaching to the very zenith, while the purity and transparent loveliness of the atmospheric effects carried me back to Italy and times long past. I felt it all, as people feel things after a sharp fit of indisposition, when the nervous system, languid at once and sensitive, thrills and trembles to every breath of air. As we drove slowly and silently along, we came to a sluggish, melancholy looking rivulet, to which the man pointed with his whip. “I expect,” said he, “you know all about the battle of Bloody Run?”
I was obliged to confess my ignorance, not without a slight shudder at the hateful, ominous name which sounded in my ear like an epitome of all imaginable horrors.
This was the scene of a night attack made by three hundred British upon the camp of the Indians, who were then besieging Detroit. The Indians had notice of their intention, and prepared an ambush to receive them. They had just reached the bank of this rivulet, when the Indian foe fell upon them suddenly. They fought hand to hand, bayonet and tomahawk, in the darkness of the night. Before the English could extricate themselves, seventy men and most of the officers fell and were scalped on the spot. “Them Indians,” said my informant, “fought like brutes and devils” (as most men do, I thought, who fight for revenge and existence), “and they say the creek here, when morning came, ran red with blood; and so they call it the Bloody Run.”
There certainly is much in a name, whatever Juliet may say, and how much in fame! There is the brook Sanguinetto, which flows into Lake Thrasymene,—the meaning and the derivation are the same, but what a difference in sound! The Sanguinetto! ’tis a word one might set to music.—The Bloody Run! pah! the very utterance pollutes one’s fancy!
And in associations, too, how different, though the circumstances were not unlike! This Indian Fabius, this Pontiac, wary and brave, and unbroken by defeat, fighting for his own land against a swarm of invaders, has had no poet, no historian to immortalise him, else all this ground over which I now tread had been as classical as the shores of Thrasymene.
As they have called Tecumseh the Indian Napoleon, they might style Pontiac the Indian Alexander—I do not mean him of Russia, but the Greek. Here, for instance, is a touch of magnanimity quite in the Alexander-the-great style. Pontiac, before the commencement of the war, had provided for the safety of a British officer, Major Rogers by name, who was afterwards employed to relieve Detroit, when besieged by the Indians. On this occasion he sent Pontiac a present of a bottle of brandy, to show he had not forgotten his former obligations to him. Those who were around the Indian warrior when the present arrived, particularly some Frenchmen, warned him not to taste it, as it might be poisoned. Pontiac instantly took a draught from it, saying, as he put the bottle to his lips, that “it was not in the power of Major Rogers to hurt him who had so lately saved his life.” I think this story is no unworthy pendant to that of Alexander and his physician.
But what avails it all! who knows or cares about Pontiac and his Ottawas?
“Vain was the chief’s, the warrior’s pride!
He had no poet—and he died!”
If I dwell on these horrid and obscure conflicts, it is partly to amuse the languid idle hours of convalescence, partly to inspire you with some interest for the localities around me:—and I may as well, while the pen is in my hand, give you the conclusion of the story.
Pontiac carried on the war with so much talent, courage, and resources, that the British government found it necessary to send a considerable force against him. General Bradstreet came up here with three thousand men, wasting the lands of the Miami and Wyandot Indians, “burning their villages, and destroying their corn-fields;” and I pray you to observe that in all the accounts of our expeditions against the Indians, as well as those of the Americans under General Wayne and General Harrison, mention is made of the destruction of corn-fields (plantations of Indian corn) to a great extent, which show that some attention must have been paid to agriculture, even by these wild hunting tribes. I find mention also of a very interesting and beautiful tradition connected with these regions. To the east of the Detroit territory, there was settled from ancient times a band of Wyandots or Hurons, who were called the neutral nation; they never took part in the wars and conflicts of the other tribes. They had two principal villages, which were like the cities of refuge among the Israelites; whoever fled there from an enemy found a secure and inviolable sanctuary. If two enemies from tribes long at deadly variance met there, they were friends while standing on that consecrated ground. To what circumstances this extraordinary institution owed its existence is not known. It was destroyed after the arrival of the French in the country—not by them, but by some national and internal feud.
But to return to Pontiac. With all his talents, he could not maintain a standing or permanent army, such a thing being contrary to all the Indian usages, and quite incompatible with their mode of life. His warriors fell away from him every season, and departed to their hunting grounds to provide food for their families. The British pressed forward, took possession of their whole country, and the tribes were obliged to beg for peace. Pontiac disdained to take any part in these negotiations, and retired to the Illinois, where he was murdered, from some motive of private animosity, by a Peoria Indian. The Ottawas, Chippewas, and Pottowottomies, who had been allied under his command, thought it incumbent on them to avenge his death, and nearly exterminated the whole nation of the Peorias—and this was the life and the fall of Pontiac.
The name of this great chief is commemorated in that of a flourishing village, or rising town, about twenty miles west of Detroit, which is called Pontiac, as one of the townships in Upper Canada is styled Tecumseh: thus literally illustrating those beautiful lines in Mrs. Sigourney’s poem on Indian names:—
“Their memory liveth on your hills,
Their baptism on your shore;
Your everlasting rivers speak
Their dialect of yore!”
For rivers, bearing their old Indian names, we have here the Miami, the Huron, the Sandusky: but most of the points of land, rivers, islands, &c., bear the French appellations, as Point Pelée, River au Glaize, River des Canards, Gros-Isle, &c.
The mélange of proper names in this immediate neighbourhood is sufficiently curious. Here we have Pontiac, Romeo, Ypsilanti, and Byron, all within no great distance of each other.
Long after the time of Pontiac, Detroit and all the country round it became the scene of even more horrid and unnatural conflicts between the Americans and British, during the war of the revolution, in which the Indians were engaged against the Americans. When peace was proclaimed, and the independence of the United States recognised by Great Britain, this savage war on the frontiers still continued, and mutual aggressions and injuries have left bitter feelings rankling on both sides. Let us hope that in another generation they may be effaced. For myself, I cannot contemplate the possibility of another war between the English and Americans without a mingled disgust and terror, as something cruel, unnatural, fratricidal. Have we not the same ancestry, the same father-land, the same language? “Though to drain our blood from out their being were an aim,” they cannot do it! The ruffian refuse of the two nations—the most ignorant, common-minded, and vulgar among them, may hate each other, and give each other nicknames—but every year diminishes the number of such; and while the two governments are shaking hands across the Atlantic, it were indeed supremely ridiculous if they were to go to cuffs across the Detroit and Niagara!