[Footnote: Various stratagems were employed to accomplish their designs. At Maumee, a squaw lured forth the commander by imploring aid for an Indian woman dying outside the fort. Once without, he was at the mercy of the ambushed savages. At Mackinaw, hundreds of Indians had gathered. Commencing a game at ball, one party drove the other, as if by accident, toward the fort. The soldiers were attracted to watch the game. At length the ball was thrown over the pickets, and the Indians jumping after it, began the terrible butchery. The commander, Major Henry, writing in his room, heard the war-cry and the shrieks of the victims, and rushing to his window beheld the savage work of the tomahawk and the scalping-knife. Amid untold perils he himself escaped. At Detroit, the plot was betrayed by a squaw, and when the chiefs were admitted to their proposed council for "brightening the chain of friendship," they found themselves surrounded by an armed garrison. Pontiac was allowed to escape. Two days after he commenced a siege which lasted several months. In payment of the supplies for his army, he issued birch-bark notes signed with the figure of an otter. These primitive "government bonds" were promptly paid when due.] Thousands of persons fled from their homes to avoid the scalping-knife. At last the Indians, disagreeing among themselves, deserted the alliance, and a treaty was signed. Pontiac, still revengeful, fled to the hunting-grounds of the Illinois. There he was murdered by a Peorian Indian, while endeavoring to incite another attack. EFFECTS OF THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR.--In this war the colonists spent $16,000,000, and England repaid only $5,000,000. The Americans lost thirty thousand men, and suffered the untold horrors of Indian barbarity. The taxes sometimes equaled two-thirds the income of the tax-payer; yet they were levied by their own representatives, and they did not murmur. The men of different colonies and diverse ideas fought shoulder to shoulder, and many sectional jealousies were allayed. They learned to think and act independently of the mother country, and thus came to know their strength. Democratic ideas had taken root, legislative bodies had been called, troops raised and supplies voted, not by England, but by themselves. They had become fond of liberty. They knew their rights and dared maintain them. When they voted money they kept the purse in their own hands. The treatment of the British officers helped also to unite the colonists. They made sport of the awkward provincial soldiers. The best American officers were often thrust aside to make place for young British subalterns. But, in spite of sneers, Washington, Gates, Montgomery, Stark, Arnold, Morgan, Putnam, all received their training, and learned how, when the time came, to fight even British regulars. * * * * * CONDITION OF THE COLONIES. [Footnote: Read Dames's Popular History of the United States, Chap 4, Colonial Life.]