re still fighting Detroit, when on October 30, this
1763, there arrived, from the French commander on the lower
Mississippi, a peace belt and a messenger for Pontiac.

He had been told that peace had been declared between the French and
the English, but he had not believed. Now he was told again, by word
direct, that the king of France and the king of England had signed
peace papers; the country was English, his father the king of France
could not help him. He must stop his war, and "take the English by the
hand."

Weeks before this, the Indians to the south had withdrawn; his other
allies were fading into the forest. So, sullen and disappointed, he,
too, withdrew. His sun had set, but he tried to follow it
southwestward.

Before he gave his hand to the English he did attempt another war. The
tribes of the Illinois hesitated, in council.

"If you do not join my people," thundered Pontiac, "I will consume you
as the fire eats the dry grass of the prairies!"

The plot failed, but the Illinois did not forget his insulting words.
In April, 1769, while leaving a council with the Illinois beside the
Mississippi River, and wearing a blue-and-silver uniform coat given to
him years before by the brave General Montcalm of the French, he was
murdered by a Kaskaskia of the Illinois nation, in the forest which
became East St. Louis.

The Kaskaskia had been bribed by an English trader, with a barrel of
whiskey, to do the deed. There died Pontiac. He was buried, it is
said, on the site of the present Southern Hotel in St. Louis City.

The Illinois suffered from this foul crime. All of Pontiac's loyal
people--the Ottawas, the Potawatomis, the Sacs, the Foxes, the
Chippewas--rose against them and swept them from the face of the earth.

Now what of Catharine, who saved Detroit from Pontiac? She saved
Detroit, but Fort Detroit did not save _her_. Pontiac was no fool; he
very quickly had suspected her. He well knew that Major Gladwyn was
her friend, and that she had taken the moccasins in to him.

She was seized by the chief, beaten almost lifeless with a lacrosse
racquet, and condemned to the meanest of labor. After the siege, Major
Gladwyn made no effort to rescue her or reward her. At last, when an
old and miserable woman, she fell into a kettle of boiling maple sap,
and died.

CHAPTER VIII

LOGAN THE GREAT MINGO (1725-1774)

AND THE EVIL DAYS THAT CAME UPON HIM

During the French-and-Indian war with