f the French, determined at
once to accept the situation, sue for peace, and lay
plans for future action. So far he had been fighting
ostensibly for the restoration of French rule. In future,
whatever scheme he might devise, his struggle must be
solely in the interests of the red man. Next day he sent
a letter to Gladwyn begging that the past might be
forgotten. His young men, he said, had buried their
hatchets, and he declared himself ready not only to make
peace, but also to 'send to all the nations concerned in
the war' telling them to cease hostilities. No trust
could Gladwyn put in Pontiac's words; yet he assumed a
friendly bearing towards the treacherous conspirator,
who for nearly six months had given him no rest. Gladwyn's
views of the situation at this time are well shown in a
report he made to Amherst. The Indians, he said, had lost
many of their best warriors, and would not be likely
again to show a united front. It was in this report that
he made the suggestion, unique in warfare, of destroying
the Indians by the free sale of rum to them. 'If your
Excellency,' he wrote, 'still intends to punish them
further for their barbarities, it may easily be done
without any expense to the Crown, by permitting a free
sale of rum, which will destroy them more effectually
than fire and sword.' He thought that the French had been
the real plotters of the Indian war: 'I don't imagine
there will be any danger of their [the Indians] breaking
out again, provided some examples are made of our good
friends, the French, who set them on.'

Pontiac and his band of savages paddled southward for
the Maumee, and spent the winter among the Indians along
its upper waters. Again he broke his plighted word and
plotted a new confederacy, greater than the Three Fires,
and sent messengers with wampum belts and red hatchets
to all the tribes as far south as the mouth of the
Mississippi and as far north as the Red River. But his
glory had departed. He could call; but the warriors would
not come when he summoned them.

Fort Detroit was freed from hostile Indians, and the
soldiers could go to rest without expecting to hear the
call to arms. But before the year closed it was to be
the witness of still another tragedy. Two or three weeks
after the massacre at the Devil's Hole, Major Wilkins
with some six hundred troops started from Fort Schlosser
with a fleet of bateaux for Detroit. No care seems to
have been taken to send out scouts to