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DETROIT IN 1838 BY HENRY A. FORD
T. E. Tallman was county clerk, and the sheriff,.
John M. Wilson, was content with two deputies. —Detroit News.
THE GLADWYN AND PONTIAC FABLE
BY HENRY A. FORD
"Edmund Kirke" (Mr. J. R. Gilmore) apparently accepts without question the old story of Gladwyn and the Indian girl, and even furnishes it with a new picture, one truer to the probabilities of such a scene than the elaborate painting of the late Mr. Stanley. The story itself is familiar enough to all readers of western or aboriginal history, and need not be repeated. But, after passing almost unchallenged for nearly a century and a quarter, it is time to inquire whether the incident belongs to veritable history or to romance whether it has sufficient warrant in contemporary accounts, or took its origin in the legends and traditions of the wild woods. This inquiry will justify the brief space we care to give to it.
The hero of this tale is Major Gladwyn, English commandant of Detroit and its dependencies in the year of grace 1763, and for some time before and after. The attempt of Pontiac and his warriors to seize the fort and masacre the garrison by an act of treachery succeeding the present to Gladwyn in a particular manner of a belt of wampum at the end of the great Ottawa's address, occurred May 7th of that year. The commander's full official reports have never been reached in the search for authentic accounts of the transac tion; but, in a brief statement to his superior, Gen. Amherst, dated one week after the attempt he simply says: "On the 7th he (Pontiac) came, but he was luckily informed the night before that he was coming to surprise us. " Not a word of Gladwyn's has ever been discovered giving color to the tale that Pontiac's plan was disclosed to him by an Ojibwa (Chippewa) mistress, -or any other Indian girl.
DETROIT MICHIGAN
Page 12
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