important tribe of Algonquian lineage, together with the Wyandot, Seneca, Winnebago, and some of those to the southward. (_Parkman, 5._) Only the genius of a Pontiac could have molded into a working unit such an aggregation of diverse elements of savagery. His executive ability is sufficiently proven by his creation of a regular commissary department based on promissory notes—hieroglyphics graven on birchbark and signed with the otter, the totem of his tribe; his diplomatic bent appeared in his employment of two secretaries to attend to this unique correspondence, each of whom he managed to keep in ignorance of the business transacted by the other (_Parkman, 6_); while his military capacity was soon to be evinced in the carefully laid plan which enabled his warriors to strike simultaneously a crushing blow at every British post scattered throughout the 500 miles of wilderness from Pittsburg to the straits of Mackinaw. The history of this war, so eloquently told by Parkman, reads like some old knightly romance. The warning of the Indian girl; the concerted attack on the garrisons; the ball play at Mackinac on the king’s birthday, and the massacre that followed; the siege of Fort Pitt and the heroic defense of Detroit; the bloody battle of Bushy run, where the painted savage recoiled before the kilted Highlander, as brave and almost as wild; Bouquet’s march into the forests of the Ohio, and the submission of the vanquished tribes—all these things must be passed over here. They have already been told by a master of language. But the contest of savagery against civilization has but one ending, and the scene closes with the death of Pontiac, a broken-spirited wanderer, cut down at last by a hired assassin of his own race, for whose crime the blood of whole tribes was poured out in atonement. (_Parkman, 7._) +Chapter III+ TENSKWATAWA THE SHAWANO PROPHET I told all the redskins that the way they were in was not good, and that they ought to abandon it.—_Tenskwatawa._ A very shrewd and influential man, but circumstances have destroyed him.—_Catlin._ [Illustration: +Fig. 56+—Tenskwatawa the Shawano prophet, 1808 and 1831.] EXPLANATION OF FIGURE 56 The first portrait is taken from one given in Lossing’s American Revolution and War of 1812, +III+ (1875), page 189, and thus described: “The portrait of the Prophet is from a pencil sketch made by Pierre Le Dru, a young French trader, at Vincennes, in 1808. He made a sketch of Tecumtha at about the same time, both of which I found in possession of his son at Quebec in 1848, and by whom I was kindly permitted to copy them.” The other is a copy of the picture painted by Catlin in 1881, after the tribe had removed to Kansas. The artist describes him as blind in his left (?) eye, and painted him holding his medicine fire in his right hand and his sacred string of beans in the other.