ompletely
off guard. Suddenly the crowds swayed, gave way, opened; . . . {287}
and down the field towards the fort gates surged the players. A
dexterous pitch! The ball was inside the fort. After it dashed the
Indians. In a flash weapons were grasped from the shawls of the
squaws. Musket and knife did the rest. When Henry heard the war whoop
and looked from a window he saw Indian warriors bending to drink the
blood of hearts that were yet warm. For two days Henry lived in the
rubbish heap of the attic in the house of Langlade, a pioneer of
Wisconsin. Of the whites at Michilimackinac only twenty escaped death,
and they were carried prisoners to the Lower Country for ransom.

From Virginia to Lake Superior such was the Indian war known as
Pontiac's Campaign. Fort Pitt held out like Detroit. Niagara was too
strong for assault, but in September twenty-four soldiers, who had been
protecting _portage_ past the falls, were waylaid and driven over the
precipice at the place called Devil's Hole. More soldiers sent to the
rescue met like fate, horses and wagons being stampeded over the rocks,
seventy men in all being hurled to death in the wild canyon.

Amherst, who was military commander at this time, was driven nearly out
of his senses. A foe like the French, who would stand and do battle,
he could fight; but this phantom foe, that vanished like mist through
the woods, baffled the English soldier. In less than six months two
thousand whites had been slain; and Amherst could not even find his
foe, let alone strike him. "_Can we not inoculate them with smallpox,
or set bloodhounds to track them_?" he writes distractedly.

By the summer of 1764 the English had taken the war path. Bradstreet
was to go up the lakes with twelve hundred men, Bouquet, with like
forces, to follow the old Pennsylvania road to the Ohio, both generals
to unite somewhere south of Lake Erie. Of Bradstreet the least said
the better. He had done well in the great war when he captured Fort
Frontenac almost without a blow; but now he strangely played the fool.
He seemed to think that peace, peace at any price, was the object,
whereas peace that is not a victory is worthless with the Indian.
Deputies met him on the 12th of August near Presqu' Isle, Lake Erie.
{288} They carried no wampum belts and were really spies. Without
demanding reparation, without a word as to restoring harried captives,
without hostages for good conduct, Bradstreet en