The Indians did not destroy Fort St Joseph, but left it in charge of the French under Louis Chevalier.  Chevalier saved the lives of several British traders, and in every way behaved so admirably that at the close of the Indian war he was given a position of importance under the British, which position he held until the outbreak of the Revolutionary War.

We have seen that when Major Robert Rogers visited Detroit in 1760, one of the French forts first occupied was Miami, situated on the Maumee river, at the commencement of the portage to the Wabash, near the spot where Fort Wayne was afterwards built.  At the time of the outbreak of the Pontiac War this fort was held by Ensign Robert Holmes and twelve men.  Holmes knew that his position was critical.  In 1762 he had reported that the Senecas, Shawnees, and Delawares were plotting to exterminate the British in the Indian country, and he was not surprised when, towards the end of May 1763, he was told by a French trader that Detroit was besieged by the Ottawa Confederacy.  But though Holmes was on the alert, and kept his men under arms, he was nevertheless to meet death and his fort was to be captured by treachery.  In his desolate wilderness home the young ensign seems to have lost his heart to a handsome young squaw living in the vicinity of the fort.  On May 27 she visited him and begged him to accompany her on a mission of mercy—­to help to save the life of a sick Indian woman.  Having acted as physician to the Indians on former occasions, Holmes thought the request a natural one.  The young squaw led him to the Indian village, pointed out the wigwam where the woman was supposed to be, and then left him.  As he was about to enter the wigwam two musket-shots rang out, and he fell dead.  Three soldiers, who were outside the fort, rushed for the gate, but they were tomahawked before they could reach it.  The gate was immediately closed, and the nine soldiers within the fort made ready for resistance.  With the Indians were two Frenchmen, Jacques Godfroy, whom we have met before as the ambassador to Pontiac in the opening days of the siege of Detroit, and one Miny Chesne; [Footnote:  This is the only recorded instance, except at Detroit, in which any French took part with the Indians in the capture of a fort.  And both Godfroy and Miny Chesne had married Indian women.] and they had an English prisoner, a trader named John Welsh, who had been captured and plundered at the mouth of the Maumee while on his way to Detroit.  The Frenchmen called on the garrison to surrender, pointing out how useless it would be to resist and how dreadful would be their fate if they were to slay any Indians.  Without a leader, and surrounded as they were by a large band of savages, the men of the garrison saw that resistance would be of no avail.  The gates were thrown open; the soldiers marched forth, and were immediately seized and bound; and the fort was looted.  With Welsh the captives were taken to the Ottawa village at Detroit, where they arrived on June 4, and where Welsh and several of the soldiers were tortured to death.