ndians also, did they not, my dear?" asked Violet.

"Yes," replied the captain, "receiving in return promissory notes drawn on
birch bark and signed with the figure of an otter, and it is said that
all of them were afterward redeemed by Pontiac, who had issued them."

"That speaks well for the honesty of the Indians if they were savage and
cruel," remarked Walter; "and in fact they were hardly more cruel than
some of the whites have been to them, and to other whites with whom they
were at war."

"Quite true," said the captain.

"But didn't the rest of the English try to help those folks in that fort
at Detroit, papa?" asked Elsie.

"Yes; supplies and reinforcements were sent in schooners, by way of Lake
Erie, but they were captured by the Indians, who then compelled their
prisoners to row them to Detroit, concealed in the bottom of the boat,
hoping in that way to take the fort by stratagem; but, fortunately for the
besieged, they were discovered before they could land.

"Afterward another schooner, filled with supplies and ammunition,
succeeded in reaching the fort, though the Indians repeatedly tried to
destroy it by fire-rafts.

"Now the English thought themselves strong enough to attack the Indians,
and in the night of July 31 two hundred and fifty men set out for that
purpose.

"But the Canadians had learned their intention and told the Indians; so
Pontiac was ready and waiting to make an attack, which he did as soon as
the English were far enough from their fort for him to do so with
advantage, firing upon them from all sides and killing and wounding
fifty-nine of them. That fight is known as the fight of 'Bloody Bridge.'

"On the 12th of the next October the siege was raised, and the chiefs of
the hostile tribes, with the exception of Pontiac, sued for pardon and
peace. Pontiac was not conquered and retired to the country of the
Illinois. In 1769 he was murdered in Cahokia, a village on the
Mississippi, near St. Louis. The deed was done by an Indian, who had been
bribed to do it by an English trader."

"Papa, you have not told us yet what happened at Mackinaw," said Lucilla.

"It, as well as many other forts, was taken by Pontiac's Indians and all
the inhabitants of the island were massacred," replied the captain. "There
is a cave shown in a hill-side some little distance out from the village
in which the French sought refuge, and where they were smoked to death,
the Indians kindling fires at its mouth