_When Quebec was captured from the French by the English under General Wolfe, the commanders on both sides were killed. General Montcalm was in command of the French forces. From the painting by Benjamin West._] Four years earlier the French took their chance to defeat an army and kill a British general. Somebody has said that it was a hard fate for a brave military officer to go down to history known only through “Braddock’s Defeat.” The trouble with Braddock was that he was an Englishman, bigoted, obstinate, know-it-all, but brave to his heart’s core; and his march up through the wild country was managed with great skill. Braddock was a good officer; for on that fateful day he recognized and gave responsibility to a better officer, young George Washington. The French had been on the point of fleeing from Fort Duquesne, and as a last desperate chance came out, faced the invader, and defeated him. [Illustration: BRADDOCK’S MARCH _General Braddock marched his army through the wilderness as though he were on a parade ground in Europe. To this lack of caution was due in great measure his defeat._] THE INDIAN’S FATE “If the pitcher fall on the rock, the pitcher shall be broken; and if the rock fall on the pitcher, the pitcher shall be broken.” So runs the Eastern proverb, and it applies to the fate of the Indian throughout the wars of the French and English. Every time an Indian tribe fought with either side it was sharpening an arrow that would be directed against itself. [Illustration: Copyright, 1908, by E. K. Weller. BRADDOCK’S GRAVE _Near Uniontown, Pennsylvania, one mile east of Chalk Hill, beside the National Pike, lie the remains of General Edward Braddock. They are said to have been reinterred at this place in 1824._] [Illustration: PONTIAC _The chief of the Ottawas. In April, 1769, he was murdered, when drunk, at Cahokie (nearly opposite St. Louis) by a Kaskaskia Indian, bribed by an English trader. He was buried near the St. Louis fort._] For a long time the Indian astutely played off one foreign nation against the other; but after the French were excluded the only Great Father left to the poor Indian was his Majesty King George III--God bless him! The French loved the Indians, in both a flowery and an actual way; but the English would neither protect them nor marry them. Hence the outbreak under Pontiac, after the Northwest had been turned over to England. He was one of the greatest of his race. He might have said, as one of his brethren did say to an Anglo Saxon potentate, “I am a man; and you are another.” This was one of the few attempts in America to combine the Indian tribes and to attack the whites all along the line. When Pontiac failed there was nothing for it but to yield.