FOVR DAYS AT DETROrT. 297 



"as the fire consumes the dry grass of the prairie." 

 He failed to rouse tliem, however, and was forced at 

 last to return to Detroit and accept peace. 



The feelings that surged in his savage heart, when 

 he found himself thus defeated, can only be guessed. 

 Chagrined and disappointed, he retired to Illinois, 

 and there perished by the hand of an assassin. No 

 stone marks his burial-place, ^' and the race whom he 

 hated with such burning rancor trample with unceas* 

 ing footsteps over his forgotten grave." 



The early history of Detroit is full of tragedy, and 

 although the beautiful river and its islands, the splen- 

 did forests and sunny fields that encompass it, seem to 

 have been intended for peace and the play of romance, 

 they were instead the scenes of treachery and carnage. 

 During the war of the Revolution, Detroit and Macki- 

 naw, far from the field of action, nevertheless had 

 their share in it. From their magazines Indians were 

 furnished with arms and ammunition and were sent 

 out with these to harass and destroy the frontier settle- 

 metits of New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and 

 Kentucky, receiving a price upon their return for the 

 scalps which they brought ! Besides these Indian ex- 

 peditions, the local militia went out, at one time under 

 Captain Byrd, and again under Henry Hamilton. 

 The latter, in an attempt to protect the.British interests 

 on the Wabash, was cleverly captured at Vincennes 

 by General George Clarke, who advanced upon this 

 post with his men supported by a formidable but 

 harmless device in the form of a cannon cut out of a 

 tree. Hamilton, dreading the artillery, surrendered, 

 and the people of Detroit, believing that the victor 

 would march against them, erected a new fort near the 



