194 BRADSTREET'S. ARMY OX THE LAKES. [1764, Sept. 



his mission. His Indian and Canadian attendants 

 used every means to dissuade him, and in the even- 

 ing held a council with the Miami chiefs, the result 

 of which Avas most discouraging. Morris received 

 message after message, threatening his life, should 

 he persist in his design ; and word was brought 

 him that several of the Shawanoe deputies were 

 returning to the fort, expressly to kill him. Under 

 these circumstances, it would have been madness 

 to persevere ; and, abandoning his mission, he set 

 out for Detroit. The Indian attendants, whom he 

 had brought from Sandusky, after behaving with 

 the utmost insolence, abandoned him in the woods ; 

 their ringleader being a Christian Huron, of the 

 Mission of Lorette, whom Morris pronounces the 

 greatest rascal he ever knew. With Godefroy and 

 two or three others who remained with him, he 

 reached Detroit on the seventeenth of September, 

 half dead with famine and fatigue. He had ex- 

 pected to find Bradstreet ; but that agile commander 

 had decamped, and returned to Sandusky. Morris, 

 too ill and exhausted to follow, sent him his jour- 

 nal, together with a letter, in which he denounced 

 the Delaware and Shawanoe ambassadors, w^hom 

 he regarded, and no doubt with justice, as the occa- 

 sion of his misfortunes. The following is his 

 amiable conclusion : — 



'- The villains have nipped our fairest hopes in 

 the bud. I tremble for you at Sandusky ; though 

 I was greatly pleased to find you have one of the 

 vessels with you, and artillery. I wish the chiefs 

 were assembled on board the vessel, and that she 



