le-handed." With much bitterness of soul did Pontiac learn that the
forts he had taken with so much effort and loss of Indian blood, had
been retaken by the enemy; that the war spirit he had with so much labor
aroused had been put to sleep.

But his hopes were not easily dashed. There were the letters from the
French. The English said they were false, but the English were his
enemies. The French were his friends. Enemies might deceive each other,
but friends must trust each other.

His confidence in the French was encouraged by the fact that several of
the forts in the Illinois country were still occupied by French
garrisons.

Pontiac resolved to make another effort to rouse his people. He set his
squaws to work on a wampum war belt, broad and long, containing symbols
of the forty-seven tribes which belonged to his confederacy. When the
belt was done he sent a delegation of chiefs to the south with it. These
messengers were instructed to show the war belt and offer the hatchet to
all the tribes along the Mississippi River as far south as New Orleans.
They were then to visit the French Governor at New Orleans and invite
him to assist them in war against their common enemy.

Pontiac, in the meantime, went about among his old French friends asking
for their help, and among the Illinois Indians urging them with threats
and promises to join him in making war against the English. He met with
some success, but his dreams were rudely broken by the return of his
chiefs with the news that the Governor of New Orleans had indeed yielded
to the British, and by the arrival of a company of British from Fort
Pitt, offering terms of peace to the Illinois Indians. Daily Pontiac's
allies deserted him, and accepted the terms of the English.

Again the day had come when it seemed to Pontiac wise to let his hatred
of the English sleep. He sent his great peace-pipe to Sir William
Johnson and promised to go to Oswego in the spring to conclude a treaty
with him.

True to his promise, in the spring of 1766, Pontiac, greatest war chief
and sachem of the Ottawas, presented himself in the council chamber of
Sir William Johnson. There was nothing fawning in his attitude; he
conducted himself with the dignity of a fallen monarch. "When you speak
to me," he said, "it is as if you addressed all the nations of the
west." In making peace he submitted not to the will of the British but
to that of the Great Spirit, whose will it was that there should