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After this, Captain Howard with a strong detachment was sent to reoccupy Mackinaw, and English soldiers were once more seen at Green Bay and Sault Ste. Marie.

Major Robert Rogers was appointed commandant at Mackinaw, not long after the suppression of the Pontiac conspiracy. The son of an Irishman who had settled in New Hamphshire, bold, cunning, unscrupulous, and uneducated, yet bright and quick, he had entered the provincial service, in 1755, and as captain of a company of scouts, or rangers, had rendered efficient service, in the war against the French, in Canada. In 1760, he left Montreal with troops to take possession of Detroit and other posts, in the name of the King of Great Britain. After the defeat of Pontiac, he applied for the command, at Mackinaw, which was reluctantly granted in 1766, and General Gage wrote to Sir William Johnson, Superintendent of Indian Affairs, to be careful not to place large sums of money in his hands.

Soon after his arrival, he began to hold secret meetings with the Indians, to obtain therefrom grants of land. He also sent agents to trade with distant tribes, one of whom was Jonathan Carver, who visited the Sioux. In the spring of 1767, Nathaniel Potter, who had been two years at Mackinaw, was sent to trade, and confer with the Ojibways of Lake Superior. Upon his return therefrom, Rogers disclosed to him a plan he had devised to make the region around the lakes a separate province, with himself the Governor, and wished Potter to go to England in