Pontiac's plot--undoubtedly the most comprehensive military campaign ever conceived in redman's brain--was discovered by the British at Fort Miami, on the Maumee River, in March 1763, four years after the fall of Quebec. There the Bloody Belt was found and secured before it could be forwarded to the Wabash with its murderous message. By threats and warnings the untutored English officers thought to quell the disturbance. Amherst, his Majesty's commanding general in America, haughtily condemned the signs of revolution as "unwarranted." Moreover he gave his officers in the West authority to declare to the Indian chieftains that if they should conspire they would in his eyes, make "a contemptible figure!" Time passed and the garrisons breathed easily as quiet reigned. It was but the lull before the storm. On the seventh of May, Pontiac, who led his Ottawas at Braddock's defeat, appeared before Detroit, the metropolis of the northwest, with three hundred warriors. The watchfulness of the brave Major Gladwin, a well-trained pupil in that school on Braddock's Road, and the failure of Pontiac to capture the fort by strategy, though his warriors were admitted within its walls and had shortened guns concealed beneath their blankets, was the dramatic beginning of a reign of terror and a war of devastation all the way from Sault St. Marie to even beyond the crest of the Alleghenies. Pontiac immediately invested Detroit and throughout the Black Forest his faithful allies did their Ottawa chieftain's will. On the sixteenth of May, Fort Sandusky was surrounded by Indians seemingly friendly. The British commander permitted seven to enter. As they sat smoking, by the turn of a head the signal was given and the commander was a prisoner. As he was hurried out of the fort he saw, here one dead soldier, there another--victims of the massacre. Nine days later a band of Indians appeared before the fort at the mouth of the St. Joseph. "We are come to see our relatives," they said, "and wish the garrison good morning." Within two minutes after their entrance the commanding officer and three men were prisoners and eleven others were murdered. Two days later the commander of Fort Miami, on the Maumee River, came, at an Indian girl's pitiful plea, to the Indian village to bleed a sick child. He was shot in his tracks. Four days later the commander of Fort Ouatianon, on the Wabash, was inveigled into an Indian cabin and captured, the fort surrendering forthwith. Two days later Indians gathered at Fort Michilimackinac to engage in a game of lacrosse. At the height of the contest the ball was thrown near a gate of the fort. In the twinkling of an eye the commanding officer who stood watching the game was seized, and the Indians, snatching tomahawks from under the blankets of squaws who were standing in proper position, entered the fort and killed fifteen soldiers outright and took the remainder of the garrison prisoners.