ould be secure from the danger it detailed. It
was in substance as follows:

Wau-nan-gee, who had been absent for nearly a month in the immediate
theatre of war near Detroit, and heard rumors of an intended attack
upon Chicago, had hastened back with great expedition to announce
to his friends the approaching danger; but much to his surprise,
he found on his arrival that the news of that event had been known
in the camp several days previously through the agency of certain
emissaries who used every exertion to win the Pottowatomies over
to Tecumseh and the British cause. A council had been secretly held
before the return of Winnebeg with the despatch from General Hull,
and terms had been offered and proposals made on that occasion
which were variously received, according to the humor, interests,
and rapacity of the parties. By the majority of the chiefs, to
their honor be it said, the proposal of treachery to the Americans
was sternly rejected, but there was one of their number--Pee-to-tum--not
a full-blooded Pottowatomie, but a sort of mongrel Chippewa,
adopted in the tribe for his untamably fiendish disposition,
connected with certain other mere animal qualities, who was loud
in his invectives against the Americans for their asserted aggressions
on the Indian territory, and he, by pointing out the advantages
that would accrue to themselves by an alliance with England, won
upon almost all the young warriors to decide in abandoning the
American cause immediately. Thus, although there was no decided
treaty made, there was a tacit understanding that all possible
advantage was to be taken of circumstances, and whenever a favorable
opportunity presented itself, the mask was to be thrown off. In
vain Black Partridge, Kee-po-tah, Waubansee, and other Pottowatomie
chiefs declared they washed their hands of all wrong that might be
perpetrated. The young men, or the great majority of them, wanted
excitement, blood, plunder; and they sustained Pee-to-tum in all
that he advanced. Hoping, however, that the tumult would subside
with the absence of those who first incited it, the chiefs did not
like to alarm the commandant by a knowledge of what was going on
among themselves, but were contented with recommending, as has
already been seen, that he should remain in defence of his own post
rather than confide himself to the safe keeping of those on whom
he depended for an escort.

The night of the arrival of Wau-nan-gee he gleaned al