220 DETROIT. [1763, May. 



with a gun, cut short, and hidden under his blanket. 

 Pontiac will demand to hold a council ; and after 

 he has delivered his speech, he will offer a peace- 

 belt of wampum, holding it in a reversed position. 

 This will be the signal of attack. The chiefs will 

 spring up and fire upon the officers, and the Indians 

 in the street will fall upon the garrison. Every 

 Englishman will be killed, but not the scalp of a 

 single Frenchman will be touched.^ 



1 Letter to the writer from H. R. Schoolcraft, Esq., containing the 

 traditional account from the lips of the interpreter, Henry Conner. See, 

 also. Carver, Travels, 155 (Lond. 1778). 



Carver's account of the conspiracy and the siege is in several points 

 inexact, which throws a shade of doubt on this story. Tradition, how- 

 ever, as related by the interpreter Conner, sustains liim ; with the addi- 

 tion that Catharine was the mistress of Gladwyn, and a few other points, 

 including a very uiiromantic end of the heroine, who is said to liave per- 

 ished, by falling, when drunk, into a kettle of boiling maple-sap. This 

 was many years after (see Appendix). Maxwell agrees in the main 

 with Carver. There is another tradition, that the plot was disclosed by 

 an old squaw. A third, current among the Ottawas, and sent to me in 

 1858 by Mr. Hosmer, of Toledo, declares that a young squaw told the plot 

 to the commanding ofl&cer, but that he would not believe her, as she had a 

 bad name, being a " straggler among the private soldiers." An Indian 

 chief, pursues the same story, afterwards warned the officer. The Pontiac 

 MS says that Gladwyn was warned by an Ottawa warrior, though a 

 woman was suspected by the Indians of having betrayed the secret. Pel- 

 tier says that a woman named Catharine was actnised of revealing the 

 plot, and severely flogged by Pontiac in consequence. There is another 

 story, that a soldier named Tucker, adopted by the Indians, was warned 

 by his Indian sister. But the most distinct and satisfactory evidence is 

 the following, from a letter written at Detroit on the twelfth of July, 1763, 

 and signed James Macdonald. It is among the Haldimand Papers in the 

 British Museum. There is also an imperfect copy, found among the 

 papers of Colonel John Brodhead, in the library of the Historical Society 

 of Pennsylvania: "About six o'clock that afternoon [May 7], six of 

 their warriors returned and brought an old squaw prisoner, alleging that 

 she had given us false information against them. The major declared 

 she had never given us any kind of advice. They then insisted on 

 naming the author of what he had heard with regard to the Indians, 

 which he declined to do, but told them that it was one of themselves, 



