The investment continued, although the attacks became less frequent.  The schooners manoeuvring in the river poured broadsides into the Indian villages, battering down the flimsy wigwams.  Pontiac moved his camp from the mouth of Parent’s Creek to a position nearer Lake St Clair, out of range of their guns, and turned his thoughts to contrive some means of destroying the troublesome vessels.  He had learned from the French of the attempt with fire-ships against the British fleet at Quebec, and made trial of a similar artifice.  Bateaux were joined together, loaded with inflammable material, ignited, and sent on their mission but these ‘fire-ships’ floated harmlessly past the schooners and burnt themselves out.  Then for a week the Indians worked on the construction of a gigantic fire-raft, but nothing came of this ambitious scheme.

It soon appeared that Pontiac was beginning to lose his hold on the Indians.  About the middle of July ambassadors from the Wyandots and Potawatomis came to the fort with an offer of peace, protesting, after the Indian manner, love and friendship for the British.  After much parleying they surrendered their prisoners and plunder; but, soon after, a temptation irresistible to their treacherous natures offered itself, and they were again on the war-path.

Amherst at New York had at last been aroused to the danger; and Captain James Dalyell had set out from Fort Schlosser with twenty-two barges, carrying nearly three hundred men, with cannon and supplies, for the relief of Detroit.  The expedition skirted the southern shore of Lake Erie until it reached Sandusky.  The Wyandot villages here were found deserted.  After destroying them Dalyell shaped his course for the Detroit river.  Fortune favoured the expedition.  Pontiac was either ignorant of its approach or unable to mature a plan to check its advance.  Through the darkness and fog of the night of July 28 the barges cautiously crept up-stream, and when the morning sun of the 29th lifted the mists from the river they were in full view of the fort.  Relief at last!  The weary watching of months was soon to end.  The band of the fort was assembled, and the martial airs of England floated on the morning breeze.  Now it was that the Wyandots and Potawatomis, although so lately swearing friendship to the British, thought the opportunity too good to be lost.  In passing their villages the barges were assailed by a musketry fire, which killed two and wounded thirteen of Dalyell’s men.  But the soldiers, with muskets and swivels, replied to the attack, and put the Indians to flight.  Then the barges drew up before the fort to the welcome of the anxious watchers of Detroit.

The reinforcement was composed of men of the 55th and 8th regiments, and of twenty Rangers under Major Robert Rogers.  Like their commander, Dalyell, many of them were experienced in Indian fighting and were eager to be at Pontiac and his warriors.  Dalyell thought that Pontiac might be taken by surprise, and urged on Gladwyn the advisability of an immediate advance.  To this Gladwyn was averse; but Dalyell was insistent, and won his point.  By the following night all was in readiness.  At two o’clock in the morning of the 31st the river gate was thrown open and about two hundred and fifty men filed out.