1763, Mat, June.] TRAITS OF HIS CHARACTER. 255 



French, yet unable to make compensation for the 

 provisions he had exacted, Pontiac had recourse 

 to a remarkable expedient, suggested, no doubt, by 

 one of these European assistants. He issued pro- 

 missory notes, drawn upon birch-bark, and signed 

 with the figure of an otter, the totem to which 

 he belonged ; and we are told by a trustworthy 

 authority that they were all faithfully redeemed.^ 

 In this, as in several other instances, he exhibits 

 an openness of mind and a power of adaptation 

 not a little extraordinary among a people whose 

 intellect will rarely leave the narrow and deeply 

 cut channels in which it has run for ages, who 

 reject instruction, and adhere with rigid tenacity to 

 ancient ideas and usages. Pontiac always exhib- 

 ited an eager desire for knowledge. E-ogers repre- 

 sents him as earnest to learn the military art as 

 practised among Europeans, and as inquiring 

 curiously into the mode of making cloth, knives, 

 and the other articles of Indian trade. Of his 

 keen and subtle genius we have the following 

 singular testimony from the pen of General Gage : 

 " From a paragraph of M. D'Abbadie's letter, 

 there is reason to judge of Pontiac, not only as a 

 savage possessed of the most refined cunning and 

 treachery natural to the Indians, but as a person 

 of extraordinary abilities. He says that he keeps 

 two secretaries, one to write for him, and the other 

 to read the letters he receives, and he manages 



1 Rogers, Account of North America, 244. The anonymous Diary of the 

 Siege says that they bore the figure of a " coon." 



