had
wintered on the river St. Joseph, had been cut off by the Ottawas and
Pottawattamies, led by an Ottawa chief named Saguina; on which the
behavior of the dangerous visitors became so threatening that Dubuisson
hastily sent a canoe to recall the Hurons and Ottawas from their
hunting-grounds, and a second to invite the friendly Ojibwas and
Mississagas to come to his aid. No doubt there was good cause for alarm;
yet if the dangerous strangers had resolved to strike, they would have
been apt to strike at once, instead of waiting week after week, when
they knew that the friends and allies of the French might arrive at any
time. Dubuisson, however, felt that the situation was extremely
critical, and he was confirmed in his anxiety by a friendly Outagamie,
who, after the news of the massacre on the St. Joseph, told him that his
tribesmen meant to burn the fort.

The church was outside the palisade, as were also several houses, one of
which was stored with wheat. This the Outagamies tried to seize. The
French fired on them, drove them back, and brought most of the wheat
into the fort; then they demolished the church and several of the
houses, which would have given cover to the assailants and enabled them
to set fire to the palisade, close to which the buildings stood. The
French worked at their task in the excitement of desperation, for they
thought that all was lost.

The irritation of their savage neighbors so increased that an outbreak
seemed imminent, when, on the thirteenth of May, the Sieur de Vincennes
arrived, with seven or eight Frenchmen, from the Miami country. The
reinforcement was so small that instead of proving a help it might have
provoked a crisis. Vincennes brought no news of the Indian allies, who
were now Dubuisson's only hope. "I did not know on what saint to call,"
he writes, almost in despair, when suddenly a Huron Indian came panting
into the fort with the joyful news that both his people and the Ottawas
were close at hand. Nor was this all. The Huron messenger announced that
Makisabie, war-chief of the Pottawattamies, was then at the Huron fort,
and that six hundred warriors of various tribes, deadly enemies of the
Outagamies and Mascoutins, would soon arrive and destroy them all.

Here was an unlooked-for deliverance. Yet the danger was not over; for
there was fear lest the Outagamies and their allies, hearing of the
approaching succor, might make a desperate onslaught, burn the French
fort, and