the hand,
I kept a fast hold of it; and now having you, father, by
the hand, I shall do the same in conjunction with all
the western nations in my district.'

Before the council ended Johnson presented to each of
the chiefs a silver medal engraved with the words: 'A
pledge of peace and friendship with Great Britain,
confirmed in 1766.' He also loaded Pontiac and his brother
chiefs with presents; then, on the last day of July, the
Indians scattered to their homes.

For three years Pontiac, like a restless spirit, moved
from camp to camp and from hunting-ground to hunting-ground.
There were outbreaks of hostilities in the Indian country,
but in none of these did he take part. His name never
appears in the records of those three years. His days of
conspiracy were at an end. By many of the French and
Indians he was distrusted as a pensioner of the British,
and by the British traders and settlers he was hated for
his past deeds. In 1769 he visited the Mississippi, and
while at Cahokia he attended a drunken frolic held by
some Indians. When he left the feast, stupid from the
effects of rum, he was followed into the forest by a
Kaskaskia Indian, probably bribed by a British trader.
And as Pontiac lurched among the black shadows of the
trees, his pursuer crept up behind him, and with a swift
stroke of the tomahawk cleft his skull. Thus by a
treacherous blow ended the career of a warrior whose
chief weapon had been treachery.

For twelve years England, by means of military officers,
ruled the great hinterland east of the Mississippi--a
region vast and rich, which now teems with a population
immensely greater than that of the whole broad Dominion
of Canada--a region which is to-day dotted with such
magnificent cities as Chicago, Detroit, and Indianapolis.
Unhappily, England made no effort to colonize this
wilderness empire. Indeed, as Edmund Burke has said, she
made 'an attempt to keep as a lair of wild beasts that
earth which God, by an express charter, had given to the
children of men.' She forbade settlement in the hinterland.
She did this ostensibly for the Indians, but in reality
for the merchants in the mother country. In a report of
the Lords Commissioners for Trade and Plantations in 1772
are words which show that it was the intention of the
government to confine 'the western extent of settlements
to such a distance from the seaboard as that those
settlements should lie within easy reach of the trade
and comme