gate was immediately closed, and the nine soldiers within
the fort made ready for resistance. With the Indians were
two Frenchmen, Jacques Godfroy, whom we have met before
as the ambassador to Pontiac in the opening days of the
siege of Detroit, and one Miny Chesne; [Footnote: This
is the only recorded instance, except at Detroit, in
which any French took part with the Indians in the capture
of a fort. And both Godfroy and Miny Chesne had married
Indian women.] and they had an English prisoner, a trader
named John Welsh, who had been captured and plundered at
the mouth of the Maumee while on his way to Detroit. The
Frenchmen called on the garrison to surrender, pointing
out how useless it would be to resist and how dreadful
would be their fate if they were to slay any Indians.
Without a leader, and surrounded as they were by a large
band of savages, the men of the garrison saw that resistance
would be of no avail. The gates were thrown open; the
soldiers marched forth, and were immediately seized and
bound; and the fort was looted. With Welsh the captives
were taken to the Ottawa village at Detroit, where they
arrived on June 4, and where Welsh and several of the
soldiers were tortured to death.

A few miles south of the present city of Lafayette, on
the south-east side of the Wabash, at the mouth of Wea
Creek, stood the little wooden fort of Ouiatanon. It was
connected with Fort Miami by a footpath through the
forest. It was the most westerly of the British forts in
the Ohio country, and might be said to be on the borderland
of the territory along the Mississippi, which was still
under the government of Louisiana. There was a considerable
French settlement, and near by was the principal village
of the Weas, a sub-tribe of the Miami nation. The fort
was guarded by the usual dozen of men, under the command
of Lieutenant Edward Jenkins. In March Jenkins had been
warned that an Indian rising was imminent and that soon
all the British in the hinterland would be prisoners.
The French and Indians in this region were under the
influence of the Mississippi officers and traders, who
were, in Jenkins's words, 'eternally telling lies to the
Indians,' leading them to believe that a great army would
soon arrive to recover the forts. Towards the end of May
ambassadors arrived at Ouiatanon, either from the Delawares
or from Pontiac, bringing war-belts and instructions to
the Weas to seize the fort. This, as usual, was achieved