Throughout 1761 and 1762 the discontent of the Indians increased; they saw the English officers and soldiers in their midst in strength and pride; they listened to the tales of the French voyageurs; they remembered French friendship and address, and contrasted it with the grasping rudeness of the English trader or colonist; a native prophet rose up to call the red men back to savagery, as the one road to salvation; and influenced at once by superstition and by the present fear of losing their lands, the tribes of the West made ready to fight. [Sidenote: The fort at Detroit.] [Sidenote: Major Gladwin.] For months the call to war had secretly been passing from tribe to tribe, and from village to village; and on the 27th of April, 1763, Pontiac held a council of Indians at the little river Ecorces some miles to the south of Detroit, at which it was determined to attack the fort. Fort Detroit stood on the western side of the Detroit river, which runs from Lake St. Clair to Lake Erie, at about five miles distance from the former lake and a little over twenty miles from Lake Erie. The river is at its narrowest point more than half a mile wide, and, as already stated, Canadian settlement fringed both banks. The fort, which stood a little back from the bank of the river, consisted of a square enclosure surrounded by a wooden palisade, with bastions and block-houses also of wood, and within the palisade was a small town with barracks, council house, and church. The garrison consisted of about 120 soldiers belonging to the 39th Regiment; and, in addition to the ordinary Canadian residents within the town, there were some 40 fur-traders present at the time, most of whom were French. The commander was a determined man, Major Gladwin, who, under Braddock on the Monongahela river, had seen the worst of Indian fighting. Before April ended Gladwin reported to Amherst that there was danger of an Indian outbreak; and, when the crisis came, warned either by Indians or by Canadians, he was prepared for it. For some, at any rate, of the Canadians at Detroit, though they had no love for the English, and though Pontiac was moving in the name of the French king, were men of substance and had something to lose. They were therefore not inclined to side with the red men against the white, or to lend themselves to extermination of the English garrison. [Sidenote: Pontiac’s attempt to surprise the garrison.] [Sidenote: The fort openly attacked.]