Thenceforth we have only vague memorials of Pontiac. About the year 1769, when more than usual distrust prevailed among the savages, the English traders on the Illinois were disturbed by the appearance of Pontiac on a visit to the French garrison and village on the present site of St. Louis. St. Ange, then in command of that post, was highly esteemed by Pontiac, and a citizen of St. Louis, Pierre Chouteau, who lived to a great age, was accustomed to describe the appearance of the distinguished chief on that occasion. He wore the full uniform of a French officer, the gift of Marquis of Montcalm toward the close of the French war. He remained at St. Louis for two or three days, when, hearing that a large number of Indians were assembled at Cahokia, on the opposite side of the river, and that some drinking bout or other social gathering was in progress, he told St. Ange that he would cross over to see what was going forward. St. Ange endeavored to dissuade him, reminding him of the little friendship that existed between him and the British. Pontiac's answer was, "Captain, I am a man! I know how to fight. I have always fought openly. They will not murder me; and if any one attacks me as a brave man, I am his match." He went off, was feasted, drank deeply, and, when the carousal was over, strode down the village to the adjacent woods, where he was heard to sing the medicine songs, in whose magic power he trusted as the warrant of success in all his undertakings. In the meanwhile, an English trader, named Williamson, bribed a Kaskaskia Indian with a barrel of rum, and the promise of a greater reward, if he would succeed in killing Pontiac. The assassin stole near Pontiac, in the forest, and watching his moment, glided behind him, and buried a tomahawk in his brain.

This murder roused the vengeance of all the tribes friendly to Pontiac, and the Illinois were nearly exterminated in the retributive war which was waged against them.

Pontiac was buried by his friends, the French officers and residents, with warlike honors, near the fort at St. Louis. "For a mausoleum," says his accomplished biographer, "a city has risen above the forest hero; and the race whom he hated with such burning rancor, trample with unceasing footsteps over his forgotten grave."

CHAPTER XIII.

ENGLISH NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE WESTERN TRIBES-THE CLAIM TO KENTUCKY.

THE English government, as we have seen, never failed to assert the right of the New York tribes to treat the Ohio valley as their conquest, and before the cession by France in 1763, the English claim of sovereignty rested chiefly upon a series of treaties with the chiefs of the Six Nations in 1684, in 1701, and especially on the 14th of September, 1726, by which their lands were conveyed to England, in trust, “to be protected and defended by his majesty, to and for the use of the grantors and their heirs."

At Lancaster, in 1744, however, it was sought to obtain a different and far more important concession from these Indians. Deputies from Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland met the chiefs of the Six Nations, and after a scene of debauchery in the highest degree disgraceful to its English instigators, the Indians were persuaded to give a deed "recognizing the King's right to all lands that are, or by his Majesty's appointment shall be, within the colony of Virginia."

Here was a claim to an indefinite extent of the Ohio valley by purchase, but it was very justly obnoxious to the Ohio Indians to the Delawares and Shawanese especially, whose villages were within the nominal limits of the colony of Virginia, and who indignantly denied any proprietary right in the Indians of New York.

Nevertheless, on this unsubstantial basis rested the grant

of 1748 to the Ohio Company of five hundred thousand acres, to be principally located on the south side of the Ohio River, between the Monongahela and Kenhawa Rivers. The exploration of Gist, in 1750-1, and the mere designation of a road to the Monongahela seem to have been the only effective steps towards a realization of this design.

The Virginians were very sensible that some form of assent by the Ohio Indians was indispensable. Great efforts were therefore made to procure it, and at length representatives of the western tribes were assembled at Logstown, seventeen miles below Pittsburgh, on the 9th of June, 1752.

This was a favorable moment for the designs of the English colonists, since the savages, even to the remote Twightwees, were then inimical to the French and favorably disposed towards the English, but the Virginia commissioners, Messrs. Fry, Lomax and Patton, had no easy task. They produced the Lancaster Treaty, and insisted upon the right of the crown, under its grant, to sell the western lands; but "No," the chiefs said, "they had not heard of any sale west of the warriors' road, which ran at the foot of the Alleghany ridge." The commissioners then offered goods for a ratification of the Lancaster treaty; spoke of the proposed settlement by the Ohio Company; and used all their persuasions to secure the land wanted. Upon the 11th of June, the Indians replied. They recognized the treaty of Lancaster, and the authority of the Six Nations to make it, but denied that they had any knowledge of the western lands being conveyed to the English by said deed; and declined, upon the whole, having any thing to do with the treaty of 1744. They were willing to give special permission to erect a fort at the fork of the Ohio, "as the French have already struck the Twigtwees," but the Virginians wanted much more, and finally, by the influence

1

of Montour, the interpreter, who was probably bribed, the Indians united, on the 13th of June, in signing a deed confirming the Lancaster treaty in its full extent, and consenting to a settlement southeast of the Ohio.

The dissatisfaction of the Ohio savages with the proceedings at Logstown, is very apparent from the fact that in September, 1753, William Fairfax met their deputies at Winchester, Virginia, where he concluded a treaty, with the particulars of which we are unacquainted, but on which, it is stated, was an endorsement that he had not dared to mention to them either the Lancaster or Logstown treaty; a sad commentary upon the modes taken to obtain those grants.

All attempts to secure any practical results from those treaties were postponed by the outbreak and continuance of hostilities, and it was not until after the pacification of 1765, that the occupation of the lands west of the Alleghanies, otherwise than by the Indians, was agitated in any considerable degree.

The royal proclamation of October 7, 1763, our readers have not forgotten, forbade all private settlement or purchase of lands west of the Alleghanies, but as soon as peace was restored by the treaty of German Flats, settlers crossed the mountains and took possession of lands in Western Virginia and along the Monongahela. The Indians remonstratedthe authorities issued proclamations warning off intruders— orders were forwarded by Gen. Gage to the garrison of Fort Pitt to dislodge the settlers at Redstone, but all was ineffectual. The adventurous spirits of the frontier were not alone in their designs upon the wilderness. The old Ohio Company sought a perfection of their grant-the Virginia volunteers of 1754, who had enlisted under a proclamation offering liberal bounties of lands, were also clamorous individual