to get the English into "hot water" with the red men. They told the Indians
that the English meant to take everything from them, their lands, their
wigwams, and their possessions, including their squaws and children--to
make slaves of the latter--and that the red men must fight or be wiped out.
And they always added that, if the Indians would make war, they, the
French, would help them in every possible manner.

This was but the empty talk of brutal and ignorant traders, who had
everything to gain and nothing to lose. But the Indians listened to them,
and at last concluded that it must be so--that the English meant to
exterminate them. They held long councils of war, and at last determined to
strike a blow at the first favorable opportunity. Pontiac spoke at many of
these secret meetings, in a manner that was truly eloquent of the cause he
espoused.

"The Indian must fight or he must become as a squaw and a slave," said
Pontiac. "The English will press him to the bitter end. They say they are
our friends, but they come as wolves in the night to take away our all. You
ask how are we to fight them, for they are many? We must use our cunning,
we must not let them think we are their enemies. We must treat them as our
best friends. Then, when the time is ripe, shall the blow be struck, and no
English man, woman, or child shall escape. Pontiac has spoken. Who is there
to dispute what he has said?"

The discontent of the Indians was strongest throughout Virginia,
Pennsylvania, and New York. The Delawares--those who would not listen to
such chiefs as White Buffalo--were angered in the extreme, and the
Shawanoes were likewise unsettled. In New York State some simple-minded
Indians petitioned Sir William Johnson to have the English forts "kicked
out of the way," as they expressed it. This, of course, could not be done,