kill its inmates before their friends could reach them. An
interval of suspense followed, relieved at last by a French sentinel,
who called to Dubuisson that a crowd of Indians was in sight. The
commandant mounted to the top of a blockhouse, and, looking across the
meadows behind the fort, saw a throng of savages coming out of the
woods,--Pottawattamies, Sacs, Menominies, Illinois, Missouris, and other
tribes yet more remote, each band distinguished by a kind of ensign.
These were the six hundred warriors promised by the Huron messenger, and
with them, as it proved, came the Ottawa war-chief Saguina. Having heard
during the winter that the Outagamies and Mascoutins would go to Detroit
in the spring, these various tribes had combined to attack the common
enemy; and they now marched with great ostentation and some show of
order, not to the French fort, but to the fortified village of the
Hurons, who with their neighbors, the Ottawas, had arrived just before
them.

The Hurons were reputed leaders among the western tribes, and they hated
the Outagamies, not only by reason of bitter wrongs, but also through
jealousy of the growing importance which these fierce upstarts had won
by their sanguinary prowess. The Huron chiefs came to meet the motley
crew of warriors, and urged them to instant action. "You must not stop
to encamp," said the Huron spokesman; "we must all go this moment to the
fort of our fathers, the French, and fight for them." Then, turning to
the Ottawa war-chief: "Do you see that smoke, Saguina, rising from the
camp of our enemies? They are burning three women of your village, and
your wife is one of them." The Outagamies had, in fact, three Ottawa
squaws in their clutches; but the burning was an invention of the crafty
Huron. It answered its purpose, and wrought the hearers to fury. They
ran with yells and whoops towards the French fort, the Hurons and
Ottawas leading the way. A burst of answering yells rose from the camp
of the enemy, and about forty of their warriors ran out in bravado,
stripped naked and brandishing their weapons; but they soon fell back
within their defences before the approaching multitude.

Just before the arrival of the six hundred allies, Dubuisson, whose
orders were to keep the peace, if he could, among the western tribes,
had sent Vincennes to the Huron village with a proposal that they should
spare the lives of the Outagamies and Mascoutins, and rest content with
driving them awa