Threats soon grew into visible form. Where it started is not surely known--some say from the Senecas on the upper Allegheny--but soon a fearful Bloody Belt went on a journey with its terrible summons to war. It passed to the Delawares and to the Shawanese and Miamis and Wyandots, and where it went the death halloo sounded through the forests. The call was to the Indians of the Black Forest to rise and cast out the English from the land. If the French could not have it, certainly no one else should. The dogs of war were loosened. The young warriors of the Allegheny and Muskingum and Scioto and Miami and Detroit danced wildly before the fires, and the old men sang their half-forgotten war chants. The terrible war which in 1763 burst over the West has never been paralleled by savages the world over in point of swift success. This may be attributed to the fact that a leader was found in Pontiac, a chieftain in the Ottawa nation, who for daring and intelligence was never matched by a man of his race. He had the courage of sweeping and patriotic convictions. He saw in the English occupation of the land the doom of the red man. Indeed he must have seen it before, but if so he had not had an opportunity to put his convictions to a public test. The Indian was becoming a changed man. The implements and utensils of the white man were adopted by the red. The independent forest arts of their fathers were beginning to be forgotten. Kettles and blankets and powder and lead were taking the place of the wooden bowls and fur robes and swift flint heads. In another generation the art of making a living for himself in the forest would be forgotten by the Indian, and he would henceforth be absolutely dependent upon the foreigner. All this Pontiac saw. He felt commissioned to lead a return to nature. The arts of the white man must be discarded and the Indians must come back to their primitive mode of living in dependence upon their own skill and ingenuity. And so Pontiac waged a religious war. At a great convention of the savages he told them that a Delaware Indian had, while lost in the forests, been guided into a path which led to the home of the Great Spirit, and, on coming there, had been upbraided by the Master of Life himself for the degenerate state to which his race was falling. The forest arts of their fathers must be encouraged and relied upon. The utensils of the white man must be banished from the wigwams. Bows and arrows and tomahawks and stone hatchets should not be discarded. Otherwise the Great Spirit would take away their land from them and give it to others. And so, much of the fury which accompanied the war was a sort of religious frenzy. "The Master of Life himself has stirred us up," said the warriors.