the war. The French commander, who was now daily awaiting orders
to turn the fortress over to the English, refused; and a
deputation dispatched to New Orleans in quest of the desired
equipment received no reply save that New Orleans itself, with
all the country west of the river, had been ceded to Spain. The
futility of further resistance on the part of Pontiac was
apparent. In 1765 the disappointed chieftain gave pledges of
friendship; and in the following year he and other leaders made a
formal submission to Sir William Johnson at Oswego, and Pontiac
renounced forever the bold design to make himself at a stroke
lord of the West and deliverer of his country from English
domination.

For three years the movements of this disappointed Indian leader
are uncertain. Most of the time, apparently, he dwelt in the
Maumee country, leading the existence of an ordinary warrior.
Then, in the spring of 1769, he appeared at the settlements on
the middle Mississippi. At the newly founded French town of St.
Louis, on the Spanish side of the river, he visited an old
friend, the commandant Saint Ange de Bellerive. Thence he crossed
to Cahokia, where Indian and creole alike welcomed him and made
him the central figure in a series of boisterous festivities.

An English trader in the village, observing jealously the honors
that were paid the visitor, resolved that an old score should
forthwith be evened up. A Kaskaskian redskin was bribed, with a
barrel of liquor and with promises of further reward, to put the
fallen leader out of the way; and the bargain was hardly sealed
before the deed was done. Stealing upon his victim as he walked
in the neighboring forest, the assassin buried a tomahawk in his