Pontiac

“ Pontiac’s wrong-doings had brought it more profit than penalty, more praise than punishment: for, after five years in France in the care of the Little Chemist’s widow, Madelinette Lajeunesse had become the greatest singer of her day. But what had put the severest strain upon the modesty of Pontiac was the fact that, on the morrow of Madelinette’s first triumph in Paris, she had married M. Louis Racine, the new Seigneur of Pontiac. ”

“ The young man would spy upon the Indians and then go and tell the great English general of what he has seen. He is a snake in the grass, close to the trail of Pontiac and his followers."
"I am not a spy, Chief Pontiac. My father is a trader and I help him at his trading-post on the Ohio, that is all."
Pontiac waved his hand. "The wind can blow a lie away, but the truth is like a rock that the wind cannot stir. Pontiac's followers have watched the white youth, and he knows." ”

“ But before Pontiac was many years old he knew that the wigwam was the place for women and children, and that it was a shame for a man not to follow the deer through the forest, and go upon the warpath. He saw that if a man stayed at home and loved ease and comfort his squaw would scold him with a shrill tongue. ”

“ At the end of a few minutes he had succeeded in removing enough of the outer planking to show that the entire filling of the casing between the stanchions was composed of small boxes. Dragging out one of them with feverish eagerness to the light, the Lascar forced it open. In the rays of the bull's-eye, a wedged mass of discolored coins showed with a lurid glow. The story of the Pontiac was true—the treasure was there! ”

“ When he was upon the point of presenting the belt to Major Gladwyn, and all was breathless expectation, the drums at the door of the council house, suddenly rolled the charge, the guards leveled their pieces, and the British officers drew their swords from their scabbards. Pontiac was a brave man, constitutionally and habitually. He had fought in many a battle, and often led his warriors to victory. ”

“ You are angry because I seemed to think an Englishman was not fitted to be Seigneur of Pontiac. We French are a people of sentiments and ideas; we make idols of trifles, and we die for fancies. We dream, we have shrines for memories. These things you despise. You would give us justice and make us rich by what you call progress. Monsieur, that is not enough. We are not born to appreciate you. Our hearts are higher than our heads, and, under a flag that conquered us, they cling together. Was it strange that I should think Louis Racine better suited to be Seigneur at Pontiac? ”

“ The Seigneury of Pontiac came to him, and I married him."
"Evidently bent upon wrecking the chances of a great career," interrupted Fournel over the paper.
"Ah no. I also cared more for ideas than for the sordid things of life. It is in our blood, you see"—she was talking with less restraint now, for she saw he was listening, despite assumed indifference—"and Pontiac was dearer to me than all else in the world. Louis Racine belonged there. You—what sort of place would you, an Englishman, have occupied at the Seigneury of Pontiac! ”

“ Pale-face cannot deceive Pontiac. You see before you that great warrior. Pontiac likes the English pale-face not at all; for has he not found the pale-face tongue ever fair and false? Where are the lands of our fathers? Did they not reach from the ocean beyond the big river of the Mississippi? Pontiac’s tribe very great. His chiefs have ever been renowned in council and in war. Were not our braves as numerous as the leaves of the forest? Were not peace and plenty ours until the white man came among us? ”

“ The red man was naked to the waist and painted with rings and blotches of several colors. On his head he carried something of a crown of black feathers with brass ornaments dangling over each ear. As he came out, those around the fire set up a yell of welcome.
"Who is it?" questioned Dave, in a whisper.
"Pontiac, the great chief of the Ottawas," answered White Buffalo. And then he added hastily, as Pontiac threw up his arms and swept them around in a circle: "Let us go, let us not stay! It is not safe! Pontiac will make great magic! Let us go ere it is too late!" ”

“ Hope grew strong in Pontiac's heart as week after week his tribes and allies brought to his camp trophies of victory—guns, prisoners, scalps. But Detroit troubled him. The most violent attacks produced no effect. To starve the garrison seemed the only way to conquer it.
When, therefore, Pontiac's messengers had brought word that the schooner was approaching he bent his whole energy to prevent her reaching Detroit. Along the river where dense underwoods grew, hundreds of Indians lay concealed with their canoes, waiting for the schooner. ”

“ His first fright over, he was now fairly calm, and when Pontiac stopped and prepared to leave the village he pulled the others back to a place of safety.
"Pontiac will go away alone," he said. "White Buffalo follow on the trail.
Want his brothers Dave and Sam to come, too."
"Why?" asked the others, in a breath.
"Learn much. Maybe do the English great good. Pontiac is like a fox in wisdom. If the spell of magic is broken, Pontiac may fall as falls the mighty tree of the forest before the hurricane."
"I must say I don't quite follow ye, Buffalo," came from Barringford. ”

“ All over the land should council fires be lighted. All over the land should the hatchet be raised. By wile and treachery the forts should fall. By fire and bloodshed the settlements should be laid waste and the Englishmen driven into the sea. Thus spoke Pontiac, and thus spoke his messengers, who with war belts of black and red wampum and hatchets smeared with blood sought out the villages of the Algonquins. ”

“ And their children—pah! Who can deceive me? I will go to Pontiac, I will see to this tomfoolery. I’ll bring the rascal to the drumhead. Does he think there is no one? Pish! I will spit him at the first stroke. Here, here, Manette,” he cried to his grand-daughter; “fetch out my uniform, give it an airing, and see to the buttons. I will show this brag how one of the Old Guard looked at Saint Jean. Quick, Manette, my sabre polish; I’ll clean my musket, and to-morrow I will go to Pontiac. I’ll put the scamp through his facings—but yes! I am eighty, but I have an arm of thirty.” ”

“ Ange, so long tormented with embassy after embassy, and mob after mob, thought that the crowning evil was come at last, when he saw the arch-demon Pontiac enter at the gate, with four hundred warriors at his back. Arrived at the council-house, Pontiac addressed the commandant in a tone of great courtesy: “Father, we have long wished to see you, to shake hands with you, and, whilst smoking the calumet of peace, to recall the battles in which we fought together against the misguided Indians and the English dogs. I love the French, and I have come hither with my warriors to avenge their wrongs.” ”

“ He let his chin fall on his breast, and finally, when Pontiac dismissed him with an imperious gesture, the subdued young chief stalked away, heading straight for his wigwam.
"When he comes back he will bring the white girl," said Pontiac. "She shall go with the brave young boys who have sought her so far; and not a warrior will lift a hand to do them harm. More than this, because of what [331] you have done this night, you and your family are forever the friends of Pontiac. Danger and death will never come near your cabin while he lives. ”

“ Pontiac grinned. "The belts are more than one man can carry."
"Where does the chief intend to go when he leaves this post?"
Pontiac lifted his hand and pointed east, west, north, south. He would have no settled abode. It was a sign that he relinquished the inheritance of his fathers to an invader he hated. His race could not live under the civilization of the Anglo-Saxon. He would have struck out [141] to the remotest wilderness, had he foreseen to what a burial place his continual clinging to the French would bring him. ”

“ And Pontiac would rather starve than beg. So, as the winter went on, she starved in silence, and no one had more than sour milk and bread and a potato now and then. The Cure, the Avocat, and the Little Chemist fared no better than the habitants; for they gave all they had right and left, and themselves often went hungry to bed. And the truth is that few outside Pontiac knew of her suffering ”

“ All this Pontiac saw. He felt commissioned to lead a return to nature. The arts of the white man must be discarded and the Indians must come back to their primitive mode of living in dependence upon their own skill and ingenuity.
And so Pontiac waged a religious war. At a great convention of the savages he told them that a Delaware Indian had, while lost in the forests, been guided into a path which led to the home of the Great Spirit, and, on coming there, had been upbraided by the Master of Life himself for the degenerate state to which his race was falling. ”

“ It was a modest crown octavo, clad in sombre garb, and bearing the title "Pioneers of France in the [Pg 195] New World." The author's name was not familiar to me, but presently I remembered having seen it upon a stouter volume labelled "The Conspiracy of Pontiac," of which many copies used to stand in a row far back in the inner and dusky regions of the shop. This older book I had once taken down from its shelf, just to quiet a lazy doubt as to whether Pontiac might be the name of a man or a place. ”

“ The Curé and the Avocat, arriving in the nick of time, had both spoken against these resolutions; with the result that the new-born ardour in the minds of the simple habitants had died down, and the Seigneur had parted from the Curé and the Avocat in anger.
Once before Pontiac had been involved in an illegal demonstration. Valmond, the bizarre but popular Napoleonic pretender, had raised his standard there, the stones before the parish church had been stained with his blood, and he lay in the churchyard of St. Saviour's forgiven and unforgotten. How was it possible for Pontiac to forget him? ”

“ When he appeared on the veranda of the inn with the hot pennies, not a half-dozen people in the village had known aught of his presence in Pontiac. The children came first, to scorch their fingers and fill their pockets, and after them the idle young men, and the habitants in general.
The stranger having warmly shaken Parpon by the hand and again whispered in his ear, stepped forward. The last light of the setting sun was reflected from the red roof of the Little Chemist’s shop upon the quaint figure and eloquent face, which had in it something of the gentleman, something of the comedian. ”

“ This drinking-song, hummed just above his breath, touched some antique memory in Monsieur Garen the avocat, and he nodded kindly at the dwarf, though he refused the wine.
“Ah, M’sieu’ le Cure,” said Parpon, ducking his head to avoid the hand that Medallion would have laid on it, “we’re going to be somebody now in Pontiac, bless the Lord! We’re simple folk, but we’re not neglected. He wears a ribbon on his breast, M’sieu’ le Cure!” ”

“ Pontiac turned pale, and presented the calumet without the preconcerted signal.
“Major Gladstone then stepped up to one of the Indians, pulled aside his blanket, and revealed the gun cut short, just as the squaw had said. He accused Pontiac of treachery, but said that as he had promised them a safe audience, they might go out of the town unharmed.”
“Perhaps if he had kept them prisoners,” said Mrs. Lester, “he might have prevented the war that ensued.”
How beautiful the island looked in its commanding position! The high land in the center, with its lofty forests rising like a curve. ”

“ Pontiac had his own way of dealing with such spirits. “If you hesitate,” he exclaimed, frowning on the cowering assembly, “I will consume your tribes as the fire consumes the dry grass on the prairie.” The doubts of the Illinois vanished like the mist, and with marvellous alacrity they declared their concurrence in the views of the orator. Having secured these allies, such as they were, Pontiac departed, and hastened to Fort Chartres. ”

“ For the most part, they were tall, strong men, and all had a gait and bearing of peculiar stateliness.
As Pontiac entered, it is said that he started, and that a deep ejaculation half escaped from his breast. Well might his stoicism fail, for at a glance he read the ruin of his plot. On either hand, within the gateway, stood ranks of soldiers and hedges of glittering steel. The swarthy engagés of the fur-traders, armed to the teeth, stood in groups at the street corners, and the measured tap of a drum fell ominously on the ear. ”

“ About ten o'clock Pontiac and his chiefs crossed the river in birch canoes and stalked in Indian file, every man stepping in the tracks of the man before him, to the fort gates. The gates on the water side usually stood open until evening, for the English, contemptuously careless of savages, let squaws and warriors come and go at pleasure. ”

“ These were the scouts of Pontiac, without whose knowledge no man had left the gates of Detroit by day or night for more than a year. Out on the water was heard the muffled sound of oars from the two bateaux, each armed with a swivel gun that kept abreast of the troops close to the river bank.
Nearly two miles from the fort, Parent's creek, ever since that memorable night called "Bloody Run," crossed the road at right angles through a rough ravine, and entered the river a short distance below amid a rank growth of sedge and wild rice. ”

“ We're going to be gay in Pontiac. We'll come to you with our spoiled stomachs." He edged round the circle, and back to where the miller his master and the young Seigneur stood.
"Make more fine flour, old man," said he to the miller; "pates are the thing now." Then, to Monsieur De la Riviere: "There's nothing like hot pennies and wine to make the world love you. But it's too late, too late for my young Seigneur!" ”