Fancy the surprise of the Indians, then, when little parties of redcoat soldiers came into the West, and, with quiet insolence, took possession of the French forts and of the Indian's land! And the French moved neither hand nor foot to oppose them, though through so many years they had boasted their prowess, and though ten Wyandots could have done so successfully. Detroit was surrendered to a mere corporal's guard, and the lesser forts to a sentry's watch each. It remained for the newcomers to inform the Indians of the events which led to the changing of the flags on these inland fortresses--to tell them that the French armies had been utterly overwhelmed, and the French capital captured, and French rule in America at an end. But these explanations, given glibly, no doubt, by arrogant English officers, were repeated over and over by the Indians, and slowly, before a hundred, yea, a thousand dim fires in the forests. We can believe it was not all plain to them, this sudden conquest of a country where hardly a battle had been fought for eight years, and that battle the greatest victory ever achieved by the red man. Perhaps messengers were sent back to the forts to gain, casually, additional information concerning this marvelous conquest by proxy. French traders, as ignorant, or feigning to be, as the Indians, were implored to explain the sudden forgetfulness of the French "Father" of the Indians. It was inexplicable. The news spread rapidly: "The French have surrendered our land to the English." Fierce Shawanese around their fires at Chillicothe on the Scioto heard the news, and sullenly passed it on westward to the Miamis, and eastward to the angered Delawares on the Muskingum, who had now forgotten Frederick Post. The Senecas on the upper Allegheny heard the news. The Ottawas and Wyandots on both sides of the Detroit River heard it--and before the fires of each of these fierce French-loving Indian nations there was much silence while chieftains pondered, and the few words uttered were stern and cruel. Cruel words grew to angry threats. By what right, the chieftains asked, could the French surrender the Black Forest to the English? When did the French come to own the land, after all? They were the guests, the friends of the Indian--not his conquerors. The French built forts, it is true, but they were for the Indian as well as for the French, and were forts in name only, and the more of them the merrier! But now a conqueror had come, telling the Indian the land was no longer his, but belonged to the British king.