The whole story of Alexander Henry's adventures, before he escaped and returned safely to Canada, is a wonderful chapter in western history.
The Indians were not guilty of all the cruelties practiced in this war. Bounties were offered for savage scalps. One renegade Englishman, named David Owen, came back from adoption and marriage into a tribe, bringing the scalps of his squaw wife and her friends.
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.
[Illustration: 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 grass! 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.