To Pontiac and his men Fort Pitt bade defiance. After some weeks' delay Colonel Bouquet was sent out to reinforce it. Bouquet met and defeated the Delaware and Shawanoe tribes, and gave them so sound a beating that the tide against the English began to turn. The misguided chiefs slowly came to see that the power of England was greater than they had supposed, and that of France extinguished for ever. In the following year several Indian tribes were defeated, and Pontiac, now deserted by many of his allies, was obliged to fall back farther into the west. Two years later the mighty chief's power was broken, and he was forced to submit. So ended the great conspiracy. The hundreds of prisoners whom Pontiac and his Indians had captured in their raids were at last restored to families which had, not without reason, supposed them to be dead. Parties of rescuers found that some of the young English girls had actually fallen in love with their savage captors and had wedded them in Indian fashion. Children had forgotten their parents. One girl only remembered her childhood when the strains of a lullaby fell from the lips of her rejoicing mother, whose face was strange to her. Pontiac himself vanished with ignominy from history. Fallen from his high estate, defeated in his ambitious hopes, he engaged in a drunken bout with {237} a warrior of the Illinois nation. From words the pair proceeded to blows, tomahawks flashed in the air, and the once powerful chieftain was laid low. Such was the ending to the career of a savage enemy whose name had caused the people in the English colonies to tremble for so long. But Pontiac and his conspiracy had taught the new conquerors a lesson. Justice and forbearance not only towards the French Canadians but towards the red-men was thenceforward the policy of English Canada. All seemed now fair sailing for all the colonies under the rule of King George. But war-clouds were already mounting above the horizon which would gather in size and intensity as the years ran on. More blood would be spilt in Canada and on the great continent of which Canada forms so important a part. {238} CHAPTER XVI THE COMING OF THE LOYALISTS