This had been his policy at Detroit.  He appeared instinctively to dread the advance of the English race, or, perhaps, really foresaw that their arts and industry, against the adoption of which he so vehemently inveighed, would uproot and crush the aboriginal race.  Chianocquot was roused to anger by this duplicity and dispatched him.[83]

[Footnote 83:  Nicollet, in his Hydrographical Report in 1841, has placed this tradition in its proper light.  He gives a somewhat different account of Pontiac’s death, which he states to have taken place when he was in liquor, and the blow was insidiously given.

A Kaskaskia Indian, it seems, was hired for a barrel of rum by an Indian trader to commit the act.  The blow he inflicted by his club fractured the skull of his victim, who lingered a while, but eventually died of the wound.  This was at Fort Chartres, in Illinois.]

Mr. Conner continued:  Pontiac’s village and residence near Detroit was Peach Island and the main shore directly abreast of it, north-east.  In the summer he lived on the island, and in the winter on the main land.

Pontiac was offended at the Indian who, during the siege, killed McDougel, and would have put him to death for the act had the murderer not fled.  The man who did it had been absent, and did not know that this officer had received permission to return to the fort.

4th.  Walter Lowrie, Esq., Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions at New York, writes that the Executive Committee have determined to establish a mission and school among the Chippewas and Ottawas of Lake Michigan as early in the spring as suitable men can be procured.

8th.  The Canadian, or patriot war, is now at its height.  The city has been kept in a perfect turmoil by it for weeks.  The setting fire to outbuildings or deserted houses almost every dark night, appears to be connected with it.  One dark night I stumbled and fell on an uneven pavement on a part of Jefferson Avenue, and immediately a voice cried “Hurrah for Canada!” There was an intense excitement among the lower classes in its favor, which it required a high degree of moral energy in the lovers of law and order to keep down.

This morning a conservative force of 250 volunteer militia embarked, at two P.M., in a steamer for Amherstburg (the Malden of the war of 1812), to demand the surrendry of the State arms recently taken from their place of deposit—­the city jail.  This demand is to be made of the patriot refugee force from Canada, who are about to take post on the island of Boisblanc, at the mouth of the Detroit River.  It was a well-armed force, with muskets and cartridge-boxes well filled; but it was found that, on the way down the river, their cartridge-boxes had been relieved, by persons friendly to the patriots on board, of every particle of ammunition.  The detachment returned about eleven o’clock at night, having proved wholly unsuccessful in the object of the movement.