Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/340

320 of the British king, that their land had become his, and that the forts in their old domain were to represent his Majesty's sovereignty. Even after the force of the conspiracy of the tribes for rooting out the English had been broken, Colonel Bradstreet, in his camp, in a preliminary council with some of the abettors of Pontiac, had the folly to require of them, as the first condition of peace, that they should submit themselves as subjects of the King of Great Britain and own his sovereignty of their domain. As the Indians were never subjects of their own chieftains, and never were in allegiance, it is not probable that they had any ideas answering to the import of those terms.

One other very important fact is to be taken into account in connection with that fiercest struggle with the savages and the English which took place on the continent on the cession of Canada and the Ohio Valley. Embittered and humiliated Frenchmen, traders, half-breeds, and a very busy and pestilent class of vagabonds and renegades in their interest, took pains to nerve the exasperated Indian tribes with rumors and positive assertions that their French Father had merely fallen asleep, but was awake again, and that fleets and armies were already on their way, with mighty resources, through the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, to crush the English interlopers, to protect and reinstate the natives in their rights, and to renew the now halting trade, under the suspense of which they were suffering. Miscreant deceivers were on the alert to rally the faltering vigor of the enraged savages all through the stages of their bloody work, by reiterating this falsehood. The delusion was ruinous to those who trusted in it. At no period in our Indian history, including that of the war of 1812 and those of recent years, has there been extended among the tribes such a wrathful spirit, such desperate resolve, such fired malignity of rage against the whites. The native chiefs, according to the measure of their intelligence, their forecast, and their wild and fervent patriotism, seem