Letters (24 page)

As they had expected, the fall of Fort Niagara inclined many Indian leaders, if not to the surly but victorious British, at least away from the French, toward neutrality. When New France surrender’d at Montreal in September 1760, and Lord Amherst claim’d for Britain a territory twelve times its size, my family began their counter-campaign. The British refusal to provide ammunition on credit for the hunting season, they explain’d to Pontiac, was the 1st step of a plan to exterminate the Indians altogether; only solidarity among the nations could withstand them. Pontiac agreed, but set forth his doubts: just as using the white man’s rifles & drinking his spirits had made the Indians less than Indians, so he fear’d that real political alliances & concerted military campaigns in the white man’s fashion, while they might be the only alternative to extinction, would if successful transform the Indians into red Englishmen. Very well to preach the taking up of firearms to fight firearms, to the end of returning to the noble bow & arrow: he could not seriously believe that, once taken up wholesale, they would ever be laid down, any more than he himself would ever again in his life be able to remain sober in the presence of alcohol.

Thus he brooded, here in this hall, a little drunk already on Baron Castine’s good Armagnac, on the night before setting out with the “Cuilleriers” for Detroit. And till the hour he lost consciousness (Andrée reported next morning to Andrew) he could not decide whether to lead his people away, westward, across the Mississippi, or to begin at Detroit the campaign of resistance about which he had such divided feelings. “Angélique” had recognized in these vague insights a rudimentary tragical vision and, much moved, had taken the rôle of another sort of angel: that of the Delaware Prophet’s vision. The red men, she had told Pontiac, were doom’d in any case to become other than they were. If, in order to preserve artificially their ancient ways, they retreated forever from the whites who multiplied and spread like a chancre on the earth, they would lose by the very strangeness of the land they retreated to; they would be themselves a kind of invader from the east—and their loss would be without effect upon the whites, who would press on in any case. If on the other hand they banded together, stood fast, and fought to the end, they would at worst die a little sooner, at best just possibly contain the white invasion for a few generations: if not east of the Alleghenies, at least east of the Mississippi. And if such resistance meant inescapably some “whitening” of the red men, as Pontiac wisely foresaw, this was a knife that cut both ways: their host, for example (Baron Henri Castine II), was not Madocawando of the Tarratines, but neither was he the old Baron of St. Castine in Gascony. More than once, Pontiac & his brothers had eaten brave captives to acquire their virtues; did he imagine that the whites could swallow whole nations of Indians without becoming in the process somewhat redden’d forever?

What ensued is more remarkable than clear. The
ménage
went west: the “Cuilleriers” to establish themselves at Detroit & befriend the just-arrived British garrison of that fort; Pontiac to preach the Delaware Prophet’s amended vision & to pass war-belts among the Shawnees, Ottawas, Potawatomis, Delawares, & disaffected Senecas. Andrew particularly befriended the young aide of Amherst’s who had brot the English garrison from Fort Pitt: Captain Robert Rogers, a New Hampshireman with whom one could discuss Shakespeare. “Angélique,” finding unapproachable the British commandant Major Gladwin, made a conquest of his close friend the fur trader James Sterling, and so kept Pontiac inform’d of the situation in the fort.

By 1763 the plan was ready: Pontiac’s people would take Fort Detroit early in May, and its fall would serve as both signal & encouragement for each tribe along the Allegheny & Ohio rivers to rise against the fort nearest it. From there the programme would be improvised: if all went well, the rest of the Iroquois might join the Senecas, take Fort Niagara, and sweep east across the Finger Lakes to the Hudson & south into Pennsylvania toward the Chesapeake, allying what was left of the once-fierce Susquehannas as they went. The Hurons would move with the displaced Algonkins up the west bank of the St. Lawrence, the Miamis & Shawnees & Illinois down the Mississippi Valley, whilst Pontiac & his Ottawas, in the heart of their beloved Lakes, laid down their rifles at last & took up their bows for peaceful hunting…

Henry, Henrietta: it might have workt, you know! Even nipt in the bud it came near to working! At this point Andrew & Andrée fall silent; I have only their son’s account, my father’s, for what happen’d, and (as shall be seen in another letter) it must be read with large allowance for his peculiar bias. And there is, of course, the historical record, already embellisht by romantical tradition. Pontiac’s conspiracy was betray’d, possibly by “Angélique Cuillerier” via her “lover” James Sterling; Major Gladwin forestall’d Pontiac’s surprise attack from within the fort by not admitting him, on the appointed day, to the conference he had requested; the “storm” turn’d into a desultory siege. Even so, the Potawatomis quickly took Fort St. Joseph to the west; the Senecas, Shawnees, Delawares, & Miamis, in less than one week, captured all three forts between Niagara & Fort Pitt: Presque Isle, Le Boeuf, Venango. As of the summer solstice, Lord Amherst still had only the dimmest idea of the scale of the uprising; ignorant of Indians in general & of the western nations in particular, he could not imagine that the troublesome Senecas were not at the bottom of it; that the Allegheny-Ohio rumblings were but an echo of Pontiac’s main thrust at Detroit; that what was threatening to delay his long-awaited relief from the American command & his return to England was not another drunken redskin riot, but a full-scale Indian War for Independence! All that remain’d,
all that remain’d
was to take Detroit by storm before the garrison was reinforced, then to move quickly & concertedly against Forts Pitt & Niagara. There the line might be held.

For—unknown to most white & all red Americans, unknown perhaps even to Jeffrey Amherst & George Washington (but not to canny Ben Franklin & the “Cuilleriers”)—Pontiac had a powerful, unsuspected ally: George III of England, whom my father call’d “wiser in his madness than most kings sane.” Even before the British conquest of Canada, the King & his ministers had foreseen, in unlimited westward colonization of America, two distinct threats to the mother country. In the short run, given the expense & difficulty of transporting goods over the mountains, manufacturing towns were bound to be establisht in the Ohio Valley & along the Great Lakes, in competition with British industry. In the long run, & in consequence, such unimaginably expanded colonies—20, 30 times larger than Britain, and anon more populous, richer, even more powerful—would not be content to remain colonies forever. Even before Pontiac, the newly-crown’d King had consider’d declaring the crest of the Appalachians to be the western limit of white settlement. A determined Indian stand from, say, Frontenac at the head of the St. Lawrence down to Fort Pitt at the head of the Ohio, even if it lasted only a few months, would be sufficient occasion for George to make such a proclamation as if in the interests of the colonials themselves.

My grandparents knew this. They also knew, as did Pontiac, that even after his initial surprise attack had been frustrated, his forces so outnumber’d Gladwin’s garrison that he could take the fort by storm at his pleasure before it was successfully reinforced from Niagara. That reinforcement could not be far off. The siege had been sustain’d for weeks, months; already several groups of Indians, unused to long campaigns & anxious to lay in meat for the coming winter, had left for their hunting grounds. Why did he not strike?

Most of the New-French
habitants
inside & around the fort, uncertain of the outcome, were at pains to maintain a precarious neutrality, but a few of the younger, such as one “Alexis Cuillerier” (then 17, & an idolizer of Pontiac) volunteer’d in July to raise additional troops from among the Illinois to storm the fort. Pontiac’s reply, as my father recorded it, echoes his dark misgivings at Castines Hundred: If he were “Angélique’s” friend Major Gladwin, Pontiac declar’d to his young admirer, or “Antoine’s” friend Captain Rogers, he would order is
troops
to storm the walls, knowing that many of his
troops
would die, but that his superior numbers would carry the day. But the red man was not a
troop;
he was a brother, and one did not expend a brother. Attack’d by surprise, the red man would fight to the death. To avenge an insult or measure up to a high example he would undergo any privation, sustain any amount of accidental, unforeseen loss—as witness the bravery of his brothers at Presque Isle, Le Boeuf, Venango. But to take a
calculated
loss: to make a move
certain
to cost the life of some of his brothers, however equally certain of victory—this was not in the red man’s nature. The siege was a mistake, almost surely doom’d to failure; but to storm the fort was out of the question. He was frankly improvising, perfectly aware that time was not on his side, that his authority diminisht day by day. Captain Rogers had already slipt thro with nearly 300 Rangers & 22 whaleboats of relief supplies for Gladwin; if any more got thro, the fort would be able to survive the winter, and the siege would have to be lifted. Perhaps the angel of the Delaware Prophet would revisit & readvise him? Meanwhile, here was Barbados rum taken by the Potawatomis from Fort St. Joseph…

The rest of the tale is not agreeable to tell. Pontiac’s angel never reappear’d. “Angélique” & “Antoine” had business back at Castines Hundred, and were not seen again in Detroit until 1767. By July, news reacht Lord Amherst in New York of the scope & seriousness of the war. Furious, he order’d that no Indian prisoners be taken; that women & children not be spared; that the race be extirpated. He put a thousand-pound bounty on Pontiac’s scalp. He commended the ingenious tactic of Captain Ecuyer at Fort Pitt, who made presents to the Delawares of infected blankets & handkerchiefs from the fort’s smallpox hospital—and he recommended (in a postscript to his letter of 7 July to Bouquet at that fort) much more extensive use of this novel weapon. He sympathized with Bouquet’s suggestion that the Indians be hunted down with dogs, and regretted that the distance from good English kennels made the plan unfeasible. When he learnt in September that Pontiac had destroy’d two relief expeditions en route to Detroit, he doubled the bounty, & fumed at the delay of his own relief. As autumn came on, one by one the Indian nations sued for peace; by October only Pontiac’s Ottawas held the siege. On 3 October, H.M.S.
Michigan
battled its way thro them to the fort with winter supplies. Two weeks later Pontiac order’d the siege abandon’d and, out of favor in his village, went off westward in November to the country of the Illinois, accompanied by young “Alexis Cuillerier.”

On 7 October George III actually issued his proclamation, but the settlers ignored it: the Indians’ front had weaken’d, and the British troops were too few & too busy to turn back the wagon-trains crowding over the mountains. On 17 November Amherst was relieved, by Major General Gage in Montreal, as Commander of British forces in America, and happily return’d to his English fields & kennels. Smallpox raged that winter among the tribes around Fort Pitt, in some villages killing one out of every three.

In the spring, “Alexis Cuillerier” show’d Pontiac a letter he claim’d to have taken from a French courier betwixt Detroit & Illinois: in the name of Louis XV, and despite the Peace of Paris, it warn’d the English to leave Detroit before they were destroy’d by the French army he was sending from Louisiana. It was my father’s 1st forged letter. I am loath to believe that Pontiac gave credence to its ancient fiction, or was meant to, tho he tried in turn to make use of it to rouse the Illinois & others to resume the war. But Colonel Bouquet’s counter-expedition that year, from Fort Pitt to Ohio, was Senecan in its ferocity: the English now scalpt, raped, tortured, took few prisoners, disemboweled the pregnant—even lifted
two
scalps from each woman, and impaled the nether one on their saddle horns, an atrocity that had not hitherto occurr’d to the Iroquois. The Delawares made peace; the Mingoes, the Shawnees, the Miamis, the Potawatomis, on what terms they could. On 25 July, 1766, the 7th anniversary of Sir William Johnson’s capture of Fort Niagara, Pontiac sign’d a treaty with that worthy at Oswego, officially ending his great Conspiracy, and retired to his ancestral home on the Maumee River, above Detroit, laden with gifts & very drunk.

That same year, my grandfather’s literate friend Captain Robert Rogers (now
Major
Rogers) publisht the 1st American play ever to deal with the Indians: a blank-verse tragedy in the Shakespearian manner called
Ponteach: or, The Savages of America.
I cannot prove that Andrew Cooke III wrote that play, but there are almost as many family touches in it as in
Sot-Weed Redivivus.
The unscrupulous trader M’Dole in Act I not only boasts to his associate:

but acknowledges candidly:

“Ponteach” declares to the English governor in Act I:

And in Act II:

Chief Bear laments of the English invaders:

Chief Wolf asserts:

A wily French priest repeats in Act III a perversion of the gospel of the “Delaware Prophet”: