n to
continue his journey; so, accompanied by Pontiac, he went
to Detroit. Arriving there on August 17, he at once called
a council of the tribes in the neighbourhood. At this
council sat Pontiac, among chiefs whom he had led during
the months of the siege of Detroit. But it was no longer
the same Pontiac: his haughty, domineering spirit was
broken; his hopes of an Indian empire were at an end.
'Father,' he said at this council, 'I declare to all
nations that I had made my peace with you before I came
here; and I now deliver my pipe to Sir William Johnson,
that he may know that I have made peace, and taken the
king of England to be my father in the presence of all
the nations now assembled.' He further agreed to visit
Oswego in the spring to conclude a treaty with Sir William
Johnson himself. The path was now clear for the advance
of the troops to Fort Chartres. As soon as news of
Croghan's success reached Fort Pitt, Captain Thomas
Sterling, with one hundred and twenty men of the Black
Watch, set out in boats for the Mississippi, arriving on
October 9 at Fort Chartres, the first British troops to
set foot in that country. Next day Saint-Ange handed the
keys of the fort to Sterling, and the Union Jack was
flung aloft. Thus, nearly three years after the signing
of the Treaty of Paris, the fleurs-de-lis disappeared
from the territory then known as Canada.

There is still to record the closing act in the public
career of Pontiac. Sir William Johnson, fearing that the
Ottawa chief might fail to keep his promise of visiting
Oswego to ratify the treaty made with Croghan at Detroit,
sent Hugh Crawford, in March 1766, with belts and messages
to the chiefs of the Ottawa Confederacy. But Pontiac was
already preparing for his journey eastward. Nothing in
his life was more creditable than his bold determination
to attend a council far from his hunting-ground, at which
he would be surrounded by soldiers who had suffered
treachery and cruelty at his hands--whose comrades he
had tortured and murdered.

On July 23 there began at Oswego the grand council at
which Sir William Johnson and Pontiac were the most
conspicuous figures. For three days the ceremonies and
speeches continued; and on the third day Pontiac rose in
the assembly and made a promise that he was faithfully
to keep: 'I take the Great Spirit to witness,' he said,
'that what I am going to say I am determined steadfastly
to perform... While I had the French king by