It was the great distinction of De Bellerive that he was the friend of Pontiac, the Ottawa chieftain, and about the time of the departure of the Spaniards, Pontiac arrived at St. Louis. He represented all the poetry and nobility, the grandeur and genius of the Indian character. After Red Jacket, he was the greatest Indian the New World had known. Dreaming of driving the English into the sea he had confederated the tribes between the Allegheny and the Mississippi, the Ohio and the Lakes into a league against them. He had been known and beloved by the gallant but unfortunate Montcalm at Quebec. He had participated in the ambuscade in which Braddock with his life had paid the penalty of narrow-mindedness, and had planned the massacre of Michilimackinack, in which more than two thousand of the English had lost their lives. The French "loved him for the enemies he had made," and he was "fêted and caressed," says an early chronicler, "by many of the principal inhabitants of the village." St. Ange de Bellerive entertained the warrior at the house of Madame Chouteau, but Pontiac was now a broken man. His dream of driving back the English beyond the Cumberland had faded. His allies had been seduced from his support by presents and by firewater. He, too, had made the acquaintance of the fiery liquor, and drink was then such a passion with him that De Bellerive and his friends not only endeavored to prevent the sale thereof to him in the village, but tried to dissuade him from crossing the river to Cahokia in response to the invitations of certain of his friends there. Not to be dissuaded, Pontiac crossed the river in the uniform of a French officer, which had been given him by Montcalm. Wandering on the outskirts of the village of Cahokia, he was tomahawked by a Kaskaskia Indian, who had been given a barrel of whiskey to do the deed by an English trader named Williamson. His friend De Bellerive had the chief's remains brought to St. Louis, and they were buried somewhere in the vicinity of the site of the present Southern Hotel, in the corridor of which was placed, in 1901, a handsome tablet to the unfortunate warrior's memory. Whether Pontiac was assassinated in accordance with official English instructions, or met his death in consequence of a private grudge, was long a matter of dispute, but there is no doubt that the passionate and sympathetic Frenchmen believed for many long years that the chief was killed to relieve the English of the danger of his presence and a possible utilization of his undoubted abilities by the Power in possession of the west bank of the Mississippi. Pontiac's death, however, was promptly avenged upon the Illinois Indians by members of the tribes with which he had been in alliance.