garrison being small, it was not long before he located at Bushy Run, by the special favor and protection of Col. Bouquet, on a very desirable grant along the Forbes road. The letters, written during this interval of garrison duty, from Fort Pitt, Bedford, Lancaster, &c., to his lady friend in Philadelphia, show how irksome a life of inactivity was to this man of action and of thought, and how Bouquet felt isolated among the rude soldiers and uncouth frontiersmen with whom he came in daily contact. As one who knew him well has written, "He was a man of science and sense." He delighted to associate with people of intelligence and culture. He had no tastes for the vulgar pastimes and pursuits that usually occupy the time and attention of military men, when off duty, among a rude population.

Bouquet was always a welcome guest and visitor at Byerly Station, on Bushy Run, and here he seemed to unbend himself amid congenial social surroundings. His name and memory has always been cherished in the Byerly family as a precious heirloom-as a sacred legacy handed down with the benedictions of a pious and grateful ancestress.

PONTIAC'S CONSPIRACY.

The reign of peace and prosperity, which was causing the wilderness to rejoice and blossom as the rose, came to a sudden close in the spring of 1763. The French garrisons had been driven out of Canada and all their forts and posts along the St. Lawrence, the Lakes, the Ohio, the Illinois and the Mississippi had fallen into the hands of the English as a result of the capture of Fort Duquesne and Quebec. The Indians lamented the change and their spirit of discontent was fanned into a flame by disappointed French traders who led the credulous savages to believe that the great king of France would soon drive out the English and recover his lost dominion. Their easy social habits and greater tendency to enter into matrimonial relations always made the French special favorites with the red man and his daughters.

Pontiac, the great chief of the Ottawas on the shores of

Lake Michigan, became the powerful exponent and champion of the spirit of hostility against the English.

He was indeed a remarkable man. He originally belonged to the Catawba Indians. Having been captured when a child and adopted by the Ottawas, he became not only the war chief but also the Sachem, or civil ruler, of his tribe by force of superior courage and ability.

He led a band of Ottawas and bore a leading part in the defeat of Braddock in 1755, along with Charles Langlade and other Lake Indians. The conduct of the British troops on that occasion caused him to have great contempt for the red coats, and he fancied that with one bold push they might be driven east of the mountains, if not into the sea. With great craft and secrecy he laid his plans to surprise all the English forts and posts east of the mountains and massacre their Royal American garrisons. Pontiac was a born leader and had that magnetism and force of character that fitted him for the difficult and dangerous role that he resolved to play in order to restore the supremacy of the red men on the American continent. War belts had been sent among the different tribes and a general willingness manifested to unite in one mighty effort to exterminate the English. Kiashuta or Guyasutha, a head chief of the Senecas, marshalled a part of the Five Nations to unite with the Delawares and neighboring tribes in destroying the garrison at Fort Pitt and the smaller posts in Western Pennsylvania. But Pontiac was the leading spirit of the general movement. April 27, 1763, he held a great council on the banks of the river Ecores, near Detroit. With fierce gestures and loud, impassioned voice he denounced the English for their injustice, rapacity and arrogance. He compared and contrasted their conduct with that of the French who had always treated them as brothers. He exclaimed “the red coats have conquered the French but they have not conquered us. We are not slaves or squaws, and as long as the Great Spirit is ruler we will maintain our rights. These lakes and these woods were given us by our fathers, and we will part with them only with our lives." He assured the council that their great father, the King of France, would soon come to their aid to win back Canada, and wreak vengeance on his enemies.

"The Indians and their French brethren would fight once more side by side as they had always fought; they would strike the English as they had struck them many moons ago, when their great army marched down the Monongahela, and they had shot them from ambush like a flock of pigeons in the woods.'

The eloquence of Pontiac, backed by the harangues of other chiefs, carried everything before it. It was agreed that a deadly blow should be struck at all the forts in the following month. Eighteen nations, or leading Indian tribes, entered into the conspiracy of which Pontiac was the head centre. The adopted Catawba lad, far from his native haunts, had become the master spirit of his race. His bugle call rallied the dusky sons of the forest from the Mississippi to the Alleghanies in one fierce phalanx of savage hostility to the red-coated British. Different parts were assigned to different leaders. The general plan. was to surprise and capture the garrison and destroy the forts in the neighborhood of the respective tribes and then fall like a tornado upon the defenceless settlements with fire and tomahawk.

So well kept was the secret that the storm of war came like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. Nine forts and posts were captured by strategem or assault, and their garrisons for the most part massacred. Thus fared Le Bouff, Venango, Presque Isle on Lake Erie, Le Bay on Lake Michigan, St. Joseph's, Miami, Ouachtanon, Sandusky and Machinaw. These, with the larger and stronger forts of Detroit, Niagara and Fort Pitt, were all attacked at about the same time.

SIEGE OF DETROIT.

The most difficult task of all, the capture of Detroit, Pontiac took in hand himself. And, no doubt, he would have succeeded at once had not his plans been betrayed by an Indian maiden to Major Gladwyn, who was in command of that important stronghold. He was forced to the alternative of a regular siege, in which he displayed wonderful fertility of resources. Several parties sent to the

relief of the besieged garrison were surprised and cut off. Vessels were boarded by the savages from their canoes; immense fire rafts were floated down the river to destroy the ships of the English. The impetuous Dalzell, a friend of Putnam, and an aid of Amherst, heading a sortie or night attack upon the forces of Pontiac, was himself ambuscaded and slain with fifty-eight of his men. A thousand warriors surrounded the fort at Detroit, but Major Gladwyn had 300 good soldiers in the fort, and was protected by armed vessels at anchor on the river front. Pontiac's greatest difficulty was in securing provisions for such an immense horde of savages. A currency of birch bark with Pontiac's stamp was employed in obtaining supplies from neutral French settlers and neighboring tribes. To his lasting honor let it be recorded that Pontiac saw to it that every piece of birch bark that bore his signmanual was fully redeemed after the war. Not a few white individuals and communities are put to shame by the integrity, sacrifice and fidelity of the great Ottawa chieftain. He had the vices of his race, no doubt, to some extent, but their noblest virtues of courage, patience, fortitude, honesty and magnanimity were well illustrated in his character. Had he succeeded in reducing Detroit and precipitating his vast horde of besiegers upon Fort Pitt, there is little doubt but that it would have fallen and the English been driven to the sea.

Fortunately for the provinces, the great leader of the conspiracy was foiled and detained in his efforts to capture Detroit until Bouquet had routed his Eastern Confederates on the bloody field at Bushy Run, after the best contested Indian battle ever fought in the wilds of America.

SIEGE OF FORT PITT AND LIGONIER.

And now let us turn to this, the main object of our sketch. As intimated before, the Indian uprising of 1763 was a great surprise to the military and civic authorities of the land. It is true that there were signs of outbreak, but nobody dreamed that it would assume such vast proportions and be fraught with such direful consequences. The

traders, who are supposed to understand Indian character and intentions better than any other class, were mostly caught in the whirlwind of disaster and overwhelmed by the suddenness of the outbreak. It was stated in the journals of that day that over one hundred traders lost their lives, and that property lost by them among the Indians or taken at the capture of the interior posts amounted to about two and a-half millions of dollars. So great a loss seems hardly possible. Fort Pitt at this time was in charge of Captain Simeon Ecuyer, a brave and skillful Swiss officer, like Bouquet himself.

On the 4th of May, 1763, he wrote Bouquet that “Maj. Gladwyn writes to me that I am surrounded by rascals. He complains a great deal of the Delawares and Shawanoes. It is this canaille who stir up the rest to mischief." On the 27th a party of Indians encamped near the fort and offered to trade a great quantity of valuable furs for bullets, hatchets, gunpowder, &c. They were looked upon with suspicion. On the 29th of May Ecuyer wrote an important letter to Bouquet, which seems to have been about the last that got through before communication was cut off; for on the 17th of June Lieutenant Blane, commanding at Fort Ligonier wrote Bouquet that he had heard nothing from Fort Pitt since May 30. No further tidings were received until Bouquet cut his way through in August.

The following is Captain Ecuyer's letter in full, a copy of which, in the original French, as well as an English translation, has been kindly furnished the writer by Francis Parkman, the historian of Pontiac, &c.

FORT PITT, May 29, 1763. SIR.-A large party of Mingoes arrived at the beginning of the month and gave up to us ten horses of poor quality. They asked me for presents, but I refused everything they had to offer except eight merits of Indian corn, (i. e.: 24 bushels, C. C., ) which they planted opposite Crogans' house, where they have built a town. In the evening of the day before yesterday, Mr. McKee reported to me that the Mingoes and Delawares were in motion, and had sold in a great hurry skins to the value of £300., with which they bought as much powder and lead as they pleased. Yesterday I sent him to their towns to get information, but he