gnal; but Gladwyn, less tactful than the Indian, boldly accused the
latter of treachery and dared him to do his worst. He did not, however,
take the obvious course of securing the person of Pontiac, who was
allowed to depart and who at once began a siege which for vigor and
ability is hardly surpassed in the annals even of civilized warfare.

The narrative of the siege of Detroit and the fate of the brave and able
chief who conducted it have no connection with the subject of this work;
but the incident of the preservation of the fort from Pontiac's
ingenious plot is germane to the matter in hand. Had the Indians been
successful in their scheme, it is not at all impossible that France
would have made another attempt to maintain her footing in North
America; and thus it might be said with some show of reason that
Gladwyn's immorality was the cause of the consummation of British
dominance in North America, and that an obscure Indian girl saved for
England a possession which that country had bought at the price of some
of her noblest blood.

But the sentiment that brought about the preservation of the defenders
of Detroit, and thus perhaps determined the British title to dominance,
was not the inspiration that led another Indian woman to direct the
course of the white man in America, and in so doing to contribute
largely to the work of subjugating the continent to his race. Sacajawea,
the "Bird-woman," born in the mountain region dwelt in by the Shoshones,
had been made captive, when a child, by the Blackfeet, the foes of her
people, and by them sold into slavery. Her master and husband was
Chabonneau, a French wanderer among the Indians. When Lewis and Clark,
on their famous expedition, reached the Mandan villages, they found
there the Frenchman and his Indian squaw, now a girl of sixteen, and
hired them as interpreters and guides. With her lately-born papoose
strapped to her back, this little woman's native dexterity proved
invaluable to the explorers as they journeyed along the Upper Missouri
in their canoes. Across the divide and into the mountains which were her
native home the party moved, ever helped and encouraged by Sacajawea.
Here, at length, difficulties seemingly too great to be overcome, faced
the explorers, but the little squaw, recognizing in a valley they had
reached the home from which she had been taken five years earlier, saved
the turning back of the expedition. At last she was with her long-lost
tribes