While the English and French, Protestant and Catholic, wrangle for power in Quebec there rages on the frontier one of the most devastating Indian wars known to American history. Not for nothing had Pontiac drawn himself to his full height and defied Major Rogers down on Lake Erie. From tribe to tribe the lithe coureurs ran, naked but for the breechcloth, painted as for war, carrying in one hand the tomahawk dipped in blood, in the other the wampum belt of purple, typifying war. The French had deeded away the Indian lands to the English! The news ran like wildfire, ran by moccasin telegram from Montreal up Ottawa River to Michilimackinac, from Niagara westward to Detroit, and southward to Presqu' Isle and all that chain of forts leading southwestward to the Mississippi. Was it a "Conspiracy of Pontiac," as it has been called? Hardly. It was more one of those general movements of unrest, of discontent, of misunderstanding, that but awaits the appearance of {282} a brave leader to become a torrent of destruction. Pontiac, the Ottawa chief, was such a leader, and to his standard rallied Indians from Virginia, from the Mississippi, from Lake Superior. Of the universal unrest among the Indians the English were not ignorant, but they failed to realize its significance; failed, too, to realize that the French fur traders, cast out of the western forts and now roaming the wilds, fanned the flame, gave presents of gunpowder and firearms to the savages, and egged the hostiles on against the new possessors of Canada, in order to divert the fur trade to French traders still in Louisiana. Down at Miami, southwest of Lake Erie, Ensign Holmes hears in March of 1763 that the war belt has been carried to the Illinois. Up at Detroit, in May, Pontiac is camped on the east side of the river with eight hundred hunters. Daily the French farmers, who supply the fort with provisions, carry word to Major Gladwin that the Indians are acting strangely, holding long and secret powwow, borrowing files to saw off the barrels of their muskets short. A French woman, who has visited the Indians across the river for a supply of maple sugar, comes to Gladwin on May 5 with the same story. From eight hundred, the Indians increase to two thousand. Old Catherine, a toothless squaw, comes shaking as with the palsy to the fort, and with mumbling words warns Gladwin to "Beware, beware!" So does a young girl whose fine eyes have caught the fancy of Gladwin himself. Breaking out with bitter weeping, she covers her head with her shawl and bids her white lover have a care how he meets Pontiac in council. Gladwin himself was a seasoned campaigner, who had escaped the hurricane of death with Braddock and had also served under Amherst at Montreal. In his fort are one hundred and twenty soldiers and forty traders. At the wharf lie the two armed schooners, _Beaver_ and _Gladwin_. When Pontiac comes with his sixty warriors Gladwin is ready for him.