300 DEATH OF PONTIAC. [1766. 



Spring returned, and Pontiac remembered the 

 promise he had made to visit Sir William Johnson 

 at Oswego. He left his encampment on the Mau- 

 mee, accompanied by his chiefs, and by an English- 

 man named Crawford, a man of vigor and resolution, 

 who had been appointed, by the superintendent, 

 to the troublesome office of attending the Indian 

 deputation, and supplying their wants. ^ 



We ma) well imagine with what bitterness of 

 mood the defeated war-chief urged his canoe along 

 the margin of Lake Erie, and gazed upon the hori- 

 zon-bounded waters, and the lofty shores, green 

 with primeval verdure. Little could he have 

 dreamed, and little could the wisest of that day 

 have imagined, that, within the space of a single 

 human life, that lonely lake would be studded with 

 the sails of commerce ; that cities and villages 

 would rise upon the ruins of the forest ; and that 

 the poor mementoes of his lost race — the wampum 

 beads, the rusty tomahawk, and the arrowhead of 

 stone, turned up by the ploughshare — would 

 become the wonder of school-boys, and the prized 

 relics of the antiquary's cabinet. Yet it needed 

 no prophetic eye to foresee that, sooner or later, 

 the doom must come. The star of his people's 

 destiny Avas fading from the sky ; and, to a mind 

 like his, the black and withering future must have 

 stood revealed in all its desolation. 



The birchen flotilla gained the outlet of Lake 

 Erie, and, shooting downwards with the stream, 

 landed beneath the palisades of Fort Schlosser. 



1 MS. Johnson Papers. 



