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166 utterly overwhelmed, and the French capital captured, and French rule in America at an end.

But these explanations, given glibly, no doubt, by arrogant English officers, were repeated over and over by the Indians, and slowly, before a hundred, yea, a thousand dim fires in the forests. We can believe it was not all plain to them, this sudden conquest of a country where hardly a battle had been fought for eight years, and that battle the greatest victory ever achieved by the red man. Perhaps messengers were sent back to the forts to gain, casually, additional information concerning this marvelous conquest by proxy. French traders, as ignorant, or feigning to be, as the Indians, were implored to explain the sudden forgetfulness of the French "Father" of the Indians.

It was inexplicable. The news spread rapidly: "The French have surrendered our land to the English." Fierce Shawanese around their fires at Chillicothe on the Scioto heard the news, and sullenly passed it on westward to the Miamis, and eastward to the angered Delawares on the