"The bugle call of such a mighty leader as Pontiac," as Mason says, "roused the remotest tribes. Everywhere they joined the conspiracy, and sent lofty messages to Pontiac of the deeds they would perform. The ordinary pursuits of life were given up. The warriors danced the war-dance for weeks at a time. Squaws were set to sharpening knives, moulding bullets and mixing war paint. Children caught the fever, and practiced incessantly with bows and arrows. For the one time in their history, a hundred wild and restless tribes were animated by a single inspiration and purpose. That which was incapable of union, united. Conjurors practiced their arts. Magicians consulted their oracles. Prophets avowed revelations from the most High. Warriors withdrew to caves and fastnesses, where, with fasting and self-torture, they wrought themselves into more fearful excitement and mania. Young men sought to raise their courage by eating raw flesh and drinking hot blood. Tall chieftains, crowned with nodding plumes, harangued their followers nightly, striking every chord of revenge, glory, avarice, pride, patriotism and love, which trembled in the savage breast. "As the orator approached his climax he would leap into the air, brandishing his hatchet as if rushing upon an enemy, yelling the war-whoop, throwing himself in a thousand postures, his eyes aflame, his muscles strained and knotted, his face a thunderstorm of passion, as if in the actual struggle. At last, with a triumphant shout, he brandishes aloft the scalp of the imaginary victim. His eloquence is irresistible. His audience is convulsed with passionate interest, and sways like trees tossed in the tempest. At last, the whole assembly, fired with uncontrollable frenzy, rush together in the ring, leaping, stamping, yelling, brandishing knives and hatchets in the firelight, hacking and stabbing the air, until the lonely midnight forest is transformed into a howling pandemonium of devils, from whose fearful uproar the startled animals, miles away, flee frightened into remote lairs." The time for the bursting of the storm drew near. Yet at only one place on the frontier was there the least suspicion of Indian disturbance. The garrisons of the exposed forts reposed in fancied security. The arch conspirator, Pontiac, had breathed the breath of life into a vast conspiracy, whose ramifications spread their network over a region of country of which the northwestern and southeastern extremities were nearly two thousand miles apart. Yet the traders, hunters, scouts and trappers who were right among the Indians, and were versed in the signs of approaching trouble, suspected nothing wrong. Colossal conspiracy! Stupendous deceit!