Autumn approached, and, as the crops were poor, several of the tribes withdrew for the winter, but Pontiac, untiring in his efforts to harass his enemies, remained, sending messages in the meantime to several of the French posts, asking their help. In November he received word from the commandant of Fort Chartres on the Mississippi telling him that it was impossible for the French to give any help as they had signed a treaty with the English; and later similar messages reached him from other points. Still he did not give up. His allies had captured eight forts, and if he could take Detroit success would undoubtedly follow. In the spring the tribes returned to renew the attack upon the wellnigh exhausted garrison, keeping up their fiendish tortures, capturing vessels sent with supplies and reinforcements, and bringing the handful of brave men within the palisades to the verge of despair. As summer advanced the anxious watchers, hearing the sunset gun thunder out across the water, thought that each night might be their last; but off in the East, General Bradstreet and his large force were starting to the rescue, and by midsummer they had crushed the hopes, if not the proud spirit of Pontiac. Sending one of his officers to this chief with terms of peace, his advances were received with the coldest disdain. Captain Morris, who was the ambassador, was met beyond the Indian camp by Pontiac himself, but the chief refused to extend his hand, and bending his glittering eyes upon the officer said, with a voice full of bitterness and hatred, "The English are liars!" All attempts at conciliation were made in vain. Pontiac, taking with him four hundred warriors, went away, revisiting all the tribes, sending the wampum belt and hatchet stained with vermilion far and wide, and exhorting the Indians to unite in the common cause, threatening, if they refused, to consume them "as the fire consumes the dry grass of the prairie." He failed to rouse them, however, and was forced at last to return to Detroit and accept peace. The feelings that surged in his savage heart, when he found himself thus defeated, can only be guessed. Chagrined and disappointed, he retired to Illinois, and there perished by the hand of an assassin. No stone marks his burial-place, "and the race whom he hated with such burning rancor trample with unceasing footsteps over his forgotten grave."