"The plan of operation," says Thatcher, "adopted by Pontiac evinces an extraordinary genius, as well as courage and energy of the highest order. This was a sudden and contemporaneous attack upon all the British posts on the lakes--at St. Joseph, Ouiatenon, Green Bay, Michillimackinac, Detroit, the Maumee and the Sandusky--and also upon the forts at Niagara, Presque Isle, Le Boeuf, Verango and Fort Pitt. Most of the fortifications at these places were slight, being rather commercial depots than military establishments. Still, against the Indians they were strongholds, and the positions had been so judiciously selected by the French that to this day they command the great avenues of communication to the world of woods and waters in the remote North and West. It was manifest to Pontiac, familiar as he was with the geography of this vast tract of country, and with the practical, if not the technical, maxims of war, that the possession or the destruction of these posts--saying nothing of their garrisons--would be emphatically 'shutting up the way.' If the surprise could be simultaneous, so that every English banner which waved upon a line of thousands of miles should be prostrated at the same moment, the garrisons would be unable to exchange assistance, while, on the other hand, the failure of one Indian detachment would have no effect to discourage another. Certainly, some might succeed. Probably the war might begin and be terminated with the same single blow; and then Pontiac would again be Lord and King of the broad land of his ancestors." {Illustration: Montcalm trying to stop the massacre at Quebec.} But it was necessary, first of all, to form a belligerent combination of the tribes, and the more extensive the better. To this end, toward the close of 1762, dark mysterious messengers from this Napoleon of the Indians, each bearing a war belt of wampum, broad and long as the importance of the occasion demanded, threaded their ways through the forest to the farthest shores of Lake Superior, and the distant delta of the Mississippi. On the arrival of these ambassadors to a tribe, the chief warriors would assemble in the council house. Then the orator, flinging down the red-stained tomahawk before his audience, would deliver, with energetic emphasis and action the message from his lord. The keynote was _war!_ On a certain day in May, after so many moons, the Indians, from lakes to gulf, were to take the war-path simultaneously, destroy the English fort nearest, and then throw themselves on the unprotected frontier.