was at last relieved, and the red cross of England
floated above the forts of Chartres and Vincennes, which were given up
by the French.

By the end of the autumn of 1765 France possessed only a few acres of
rock, constantly enveloped in fog, on the southern coast of
Newfoundland, of all the great dominion she once claimed in North
America. Pontiac now disappears from history, and is believed to have
been killed by an Indian warrior of the Illinois nation, after a
drunken bout at the village of Cahokia--an ignominious ending to the
career of a great chief whose name was for so many months a menace to
English authority in that wilderness region, which was declared in
later years by an imperial statute, the Quebec Act, to be a part of
Canada's illimitable domain.

While this Indian war was going on, George III., in the autumn of 1763,
issued a proclamation establishing four new governments in North
America; {275} Quebec, East Florida, West Florida, and Grenada. The
governors were empowered to summon general assemblies, and to make laws
and ordinances for good government with the consent of the councils.
and the representatives of the people, and to establish courts of
justice. Members elected to the proposed assemblies had to take the
oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and the declaration against
transubstantiation. No assembly, however, ever met, as the French
Canadian population were unwilling to take the test oath, and the
government of the province was carried on solely by the
Governor-General--General Murray--with the assistance of an executive
council, composed of certain officials and leading residents in the
colony. From 1763 to 1774 the province remained in a very unsettled
state, chiefly on account of the uncertainty that prevailed as to the
laws actually in force. The "new subjects," or French Canadians,
contended that justice, so far as they were concerned, should be
administered in accordance with their ancient customs and usages. On
the other hand, "the old," or English subjects, argued from the
proclamation of 1763, that it was His Majesty's intention at once to
abolish the old jurisprudence of the country, and to establish English
law in its place.

Not the least important part of the proclamation of 1763 was that
relating to the Indians, who were not to be disturbed in the possession
of their hunting grounds. Lands could be alienated by the Indians only
at some public meeting or assembly calle