This island appears to have been occupied by the Indians, from an early period. Human bones have been discovered at more than one point, in the cavernous structure of the island; but no place has been so much celebrated for disclosures of this kind, as the SKULL CAVE. This cave has a prominent entrance, shaded by a few trees, and appears to have been once devoted to the offices of a charnel-house by the Indians. It is not mentioned at all, however, by writers, till 1763, in the month of June of which year the fort of old Mackinac on the peninsula, was trea-cherously taken by the Sac and Chippewa Indians. An extensive and threatening confederation of the western Indians had then been matured, and a large body of armed warriors was then encamped around the walls of Detroit, under the leadership of Pontiac, who held the garrison in close siege day and night. The surrender of Canada to Great Britain, which had followed the victory of General Wolfe at Quebec, was distasteful to these Indians, and they attempted the mad project of driving back beyond the Alleghanies the English race; making a simultaneous assault upon all the military posts west of that great line of demarcation, and preaching and dealing out vengeance to all who had English blood in their veins. Alexander Henry, a native of Albany,[25] was one of those enterprising men who had pushed his fortunes West, with an adventure of merchandise, on the first exchange of posts, and he was singled out for destruction, as soon as the fort was taken. He had taken refuge in the house of a Frenchman named Longlade, where he was concealed in a garret by a Pawnee slave, and where he hid himself under a heap of birch-bark buckets, such as are employed in the Indian country, in the spring season, in carrying the sap of the sugar-maple. But this temporary reprieve from the Indian knife seemed only the prelude to a series of hairbreadth escapes, which impressed him as the direct interposition of Providence. At length, when the scenes of blood and intoxication began to abate a little, an old Indian friend of his, called Wawetum, who had once pledged his friendship, but who had been absent during the massacre, sought him out, and having reclaimed him by presents, in a formal council, took him into his canoe and conducted the spared witness of these atrocities three leagues across the waters of Lake Huron in safety to this island. [25] _Vide_ Henry's Travels, New York, 1809, 1 vol. 8vo.