292 KUIN OF THE INDIAN CAUSE. [1765. 



turn loose upon them their enemies the Cherokees. 

 It was this which drove him to arms ; and now 

 that he knew the story to be false, he would no 

 longer stand in the path of the English. Yet they 

 must not imagine that, in taking possession of the 

 French forts, they gained any right to the country ; 

 for the French had never bought the land, and lived 

 upon it by sufferance only. 



As this meeting with Pontiac and the Illinois 

 chiefs made it needless for Croghan to advance 

 farther on his western journey, he now bent his 

 footsteps towards Detroit, and, followed by Pontiac 

 and many of the principal chiefs, crossed over to 

 Fort Miami, and thence descended the Maumee,^ 

 holding conferences at the several villages which 

 he passed on his way. On the seventeenth of 

 August, he reached Detroit, where he found a 

 great gathering of Indians, Ottawas, Pottawatta- 

 ,mies, and Ojibwas ; some encamped about the fort, 

 and others along the banks of the Hiver Eouge. 

 They obeyed his summons to a meeting with alac- 

 rity, partly from a desire to win the good graces of 

 a victorious enemy, and partly from the importu- 

 nate craving for liquor and presents, which never 

 slumbers in an Indian breast. Numerous meetings 

 were held ; and the old council-hall where Pontiac 

 had essayed his scheme of abortive treachery was 

 now crowded with repentant warriors, anxious, by 

 every form of submission, to appease the conqueror. 

 Their ill success, their fears of chastisement, and 

 the miseries they had endured from the long sus- 

 pension of the fur-trade, had banished from their 



