Chapter 1 1 

 THE DEL AWAKE PKOPHET AND PONTIAC 



Hear what the Great Spirit has ordered me to tell you : Put orl' entirely the cus- 

 toms which you have adopted since the white people came among us. — The Delaware 

 Prophet. 



This is our land, and not yours. — The Confederate Tribes, 1752. 



The English advances were slow and halting, for a long period almost 

 imperceptible, while the establishment <>t' a few small garrisons and 



isolated trading stations by the French hardly deserved to be called an 

 occupancy of the country. As a consequence, the warlike northern 

 tribes were slow to realize that an empire was slipping from their grasp, 

 and it was not until the two great nations prepared for the final strug- 

 gle in the New World that the native proprietors began to read the stars 

 aright. Then it was, in 17">2, that the Lenape chiefs sent to the British 

 agent the pointed interrogatory: "The English claim all on one sideof 

 the river, the French claim all on the other — where is the land of the 

 Indians?" {Bancroft, 1.) Then, as they saw the French strengthening 

 themselves along the lakes, there came a stronger protest from the 

 council ground of the confederate tribes of the west : '• This is our land 

 and not yours. Fathers, both you and the English are white; the land 

 belongs to neither the one nor the other of you, but the Great Being 

 above allotted it to be a dwelling place for us; so, fathers, I desire you 

 to withdraw, as I have desired our brothers, the English." A wampum 

 belt gave weight to the words. (Bancroft, :'.) The French commander's 

 reply was blunt, but more practiced diplomats assured the red men 

 that all belonged to the Indian, and that the great king of the French 

 desired only to set up a boundary against the further encroachments 

 of the English, who would otherwise sweep the red tribes from the Ohio 

 as they had already driven them from the Atlantic. The argument 

 was plausible. In every tribe were French missionaries, whose fear- 

 less courage and devotion had won the admiration and love of the 

 savage; in every village was domiciliated a hardy voyageur. with his 

 Indian wife and family of children, in whose veins commingled the 

 blood of the two races and whose ears were attuned alike to the wild 

 songs of the forest and the rondeaus of Normandy or Provence. It 

 was no common tie that bound together the Indians and the French, 

 and when a governor of Canada and the general of Ins army stepped 

 into the circle of braves to dance the war dance and sing the war song 

 with their red allies, thirty-three wild tribes declared on the wampum 

 belt, "The French are our brothers and their king is our lather. We 

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