d the Indians again to the
attic.

Henry stood up, expecting to die.

The Indians were all partially drunk and had satisfied themselves with
slaughter. One of them seized Henry by the collar and lifted a knife to
plunge into his breast. White man and red man looked intently at each
other, and the savage, perhaps moved by the fearless despair in the
young Englishman's eyes, concluded to take him prisoner. Henry began
to think he could not be killed.

He found that the captain and lieutenant of Michilimackinac were also
alive and prisoners like himself. The missionary priest was doing all
he could to restrain his maddened flock. At a council held between
Chippewas and Ottawas, Henry was bought with presents by a Chippewa
chief named Wawatam, who loved him, and who had been absent the day of
the attack Wawatam put Henry in his canoe, carried him across the strait
to Michilimackinac Island, and hid him in a cave, which is now called
Skull Rock by the islanders, because Henry found ancient skulls and bones
in the bottom of it. As the island was held sacred by the Indians, this
was probably one of their old sepulchres. Its dome top is smothered in a
tangle of evergreens and brush. There is a low, triangular entrance, and
the hollow inside is shaped like an elbow. More than one island boy has
since crept back to the dark bend where Henry lay hidden on the skulls,
but only a drift of damp leaves can be found there now.

The whole story of Alexander Henry's adventures, before he escaped and
returned safely to Canada, is a wonderful chapter in western history.

The Indians were not guilty of all the cruelties practiced in this war.
Bounties were offered for savage scalps. One renegade Englishman, named
David Owen, came back from adoption and marriage into a tribe, bringing
the scalps of his squaw wife and her friends.

Through the entire summer Pontiac was successful in everything except
the taking of Detroit. He besieged it from May until October. With
autumn his hopes began to dwindle. He had asked the French to help him,
and refused to believe that their king had made a treaty at Paris,
giving up to the English all French claims in the New World east of
the Mississippi. His cause was lost. He could band unstable warriors
together for a common good, but he could not control politics in Europe,
nor defend a people given up by their sovereign, against the solidly
advancing English race.

[Illustration: North America at Cl