224 INDIAN CONSPIRACY AGAINST DETROIT. 



post, therefore, were generally a valuable protection to 

 the place. It is generally better policy to select them 

 from different tribes than from any one tribe, as expe- 

 rience shows that they then, partly through jealousy 

 and partly through distrust, keep each other in order. 

 They also keep their partners posted about what is 

 going on among the surrounding tribes, and thus the 

 whites were certain to hear through them, of any effer- 

 vescence or secret conspiracies among the Indians. 

 They were then able to take timely precautions which 

 has saved many a frontier post from destruction. There is 

 a romantic history attached to one of these cases which 

 we should wish to relate on account of the high political 

 importance which the circumstance assumed, which was 

 no less than the preservation of the important garrison 

 and frontier post of Detroit, during the great Indian 

 conspiracy organized by Pontiac, principal war chief 

 of the Ottawas, in May 1763. This movement was by 

 far the most widespread and serious of any of the 

 combinations made by the Indian tribes against the 

 pale-faces in the history of North America, and it 

 required the whole force of the British power in her 

 Canadian and other American possessions to subdue it. 

 Many detached forts and small garrisons did in fact 

 succumb, and their garrisons were in many cases ex- 

 terminated to the last man. Now Detroit was the most 

 important of them all and, like the city of Londonderry 

 in the Irish wars of 1688 90, it formed the key to the 

 whole position in the West. The modern city of Detroit, 

 which now stands upon the site of this once celebrated 

 fort, is as we know, situated upon the river of that 

 name which forms the outlet from Lake Huron, via 

 Lake St. Clair, into Lake Erie. 



