uld return to the old customs. In that way only
could they regain their native hardihood and independence.

[Illustration: INDIAN WEAPON]

While Pontiac's hatred of the English grew more bitter daily, other
Indians were not indifferent. Through all the Algonquin tribes spread
this hatred for the English. The insolence of the garrisons at the forts
provoked it; the cheating, the bad faith, and the brutality of the
English trappers and traders increased it; the refusal of supplies, the
secret influence of the French, the encroachments of English settlers,
fanned it into fury. And when at last, in 1762, word came that the
English claimed the land of the Algonquins their rage could no longer be
restrained.

V. THE PLOT

The time was ripe for rebellion and Pontiac was ready. All over the land
should council fires be lighted. All over the land should the hatchet be
raised. By wile and treachery the forts should fall. By fire and
bloodshed the settlements should be laid waste and the Englishmen driven
into the sea. Thus spoke Pontiac, and thus spoke his messengers, who
with war belts of black and red wampum and hatchets smeared with blood
sought out the villages of the Algonquins. Far and wide this dark
company went its way through forests, across prairies, in spite of storm
or flooded stream, or mountain barrier. No camp was so secret, no
village so remote, that the messengers of war did not find it out.
Wherever they went the bloody plan found favor; the tokens of war were
accepted and pledges of warlike purpose sent to Pontiac.

Not far from the summering place where clustered the lodges of Pontiac
and his kinsmen rose the walls of Fort Detroit. There Pontiac had
suffered humiliation at the hands of the English, and upon it he planned
to visit his vengeance.

The little French military station planted on the west bank of the
Detroit River had reached half a century's growth. It had become a place
of some importance. Both banks of the river were studded with farmhouses
for miles above and below the "fort," as the walled village where the
soldiers lived was called.

The fort consisted of about one hundred small houses surrounded by a
palisade, or wall of heavy stakes, twenty-five feet high. Since gates
are easily broken down, over every gate a block house had been built,
from which soldiers could fire upon the approaching enemy. At the four
corners of the palisade were bastions, or fortified projections, from