When the two rival nations were using the Indians as allies, both had treated them with respect and endeavored to gain their friendship. Now the Indians began to realize that this friendship was no longer considered valuable, but that the English were insolently seizing more and more of their domain with the apparent intention of driving them out. Their chiefs were no longer treated with respect as they hung about the white men’s forts. Owing to a sudden policy of retrenchment the gifts, too, were cut down or withheld altogether, until the savages really suffered from want of supplies which the wise Frenchmen had seen the necessity of providing for them. The customary amount of powder was denied them, and the Indians feared lest their independence was threatened. The English fur trade was in lawless hands, and the traders abused and outraged the Indians while they cheated them out of their lawful dues. The discontent of the natives was encouraged and fostered by the French traders and settlers, who told their sullen audiences incredible tales of the further evil purposes of the English, and spread far and wide a rumor that the armies of the French were even now advancing up the St. Lawrence and Mississippi rivers to drive out these pretenders. Suddenly, in May, 1763, the Indians uprose. With characteristic secrecy and stealth the tribes had exchanged wampum belts, spreading the summons to war and signifying in return acquiescence in the plan, with hardly a suspicion on the part of their indifferent English neighbors. Occasionally in the last month a story was brought in that roused the anxiety of those who were wise in the ways of the Indians, but these were laughed to scorn. Looking backward, one marvels both at the secrecy with which the uprising was planned, and at the serene confidence of the scanty garrisons stationed at these isolated and dangerous outposts. From contemporary accounts it appears that at Presque Isle there were twenty-seven men; at Michilimackinac thirty-five men with their officers; at the foot of Lake Michigan, on the St. Joseph’s River, fifteen, and at Fort Miami ten, while the other posts were held by mere handfuls of soldiers; Detroit was the only station that was suitably manned. In their dealings with white men, the Indians had never before been banded together under a single leader. The tribes were restless and jealous of one another, but Pontiac restrained and humored them. He made his plans so well, and they were carried out so secretly and energetically, that within ten weeks of the time when the first blow was struck, not a single post remained in British hands west of Niagara, save only the fort of Detroit, where he himself conducted the siege in person.