A simultaneous attack, timed by a change of the moon, was to be
made on the English forts and settlements throughout all the
western country. Every tribe was to fall upon the settlement
nearest at hand, and afterwards all were to combine--with French
aid, it was confidently believed--in an assault on the seats of
English power farther east. The honor of destroying the most
important of the English strongholds, Detroit, was reserved for
Pontiac himself.
The date fixed for the rising was the 7th of May. Six days in
advance Pontiac with forty of his warriors appeared at the fort,
protested undying friendship for the Great Father across the
water, and insisted on performing the calumet dance before the
new commandant, Major Gladwyn. This aroused no suspicion. But
four days later a French settler reported that his wife, when
visiting the Ottawa village to buy venison, had observed the men
busily filing off the ends of their gunbarrels; and the
blacksmith at the post recalled the fact that the Indians had
lately sought to borrow files and saws without being able to give
a plausible explanation of the use they intended to make of the
implements.
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