Pontiac

pon'ti-ak (1720-1769), a chieftain of the Ottawa Indians. By reason of his prowess as a warrior he became leader of the Ottawas, the Ojibways, and the Pottawattomies. During the French and Indian War he supported the cause of the former. He contributed largely to the defeat of General Braddock, and is thought by some to have commanded in person. He bitterly resented the entrance of the British into his country. In 1762 he formed an alliance of Indians throughout the West, known as Pontiac's Conspiracy. It was arranged that each tribe of Indians should attack the British post in its vicinity on or about the same date. Pontiac conducted the attack on Detroit in person. He planned at first to take the fort by strategy. He asked the commandant for a conference, at which he appeared with a large number of his warriors wrapped in blankets. The commander, having been warned of intended treachery, however, had a company of troops with loaded rifles present in the council chamber. When Pontiac demanded the cause of such an unusual guard, the commander raised the blanket of the nearest warrior, revealing a rifle which had been filed off short so as to permit of concealment. Each warrior was armed likewise. His stratagem being thus discovered Pontiac and his allies rose grimly and walked out. The wily chieftain then proceeded to lay siege to the fort. Ships coming with provisions and reinforcements were waylaid. A considerable detachment of troops ventured out on a sally, fell into an ambuscade at Bloody Bridge, and were cut off. An account of the siege forms one of the most interesting chapters in Park-man's Conspiracy of Pontiac. It was prolonged for a considerable length of time before reinforcements arrived and the savages were forced to withdraw. Elsewhere the attacks were more successful. Of twelve posts attacked, eight fell into the hands of the savages. With the exception of Oswego, Niagara, Fort Pitt, and Detroit, the entire region of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley was reoccupied by the Indians. In the following year Colonel Bouquet made a successful expedition against the Indians of Ohio. Pontiac's allies, perceiving the contest to be vain, fell away from him and made peace with the British. Sir William Johnson, of Oswego, New York, persuaded the Indians of New York to make peace. Pontiac, however, haughtily refused to yield. He took refuge in Illinois, where it is said a British trader bribed a Peoria Indian to murder him, the compensation being a barrel of rum. The place of his death was Cahokia, an Indian village on the east bank of the Mississippi, a little below St. Louis. At the time of his death he wore a French uniform presented to him by General Montcalm. He was buried where the city of St. Louis now stands. He was, without doubt, one of the ablest red men with whom white settlers ever came in contact.

Neither mound nor tablet marked the burial-place of Pontiac. For a mausoleum, a city has risen above the forest here, and the race whom he hated with such burning rancor, trample with unceasing footsteps over his forgotten grave.--Parkman.