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DETROIT IN 1838 BY HENRY A. FORD
Two months later, in early July, a private letter was written from Detroit which was presently given publicity in the Newport (R. I. ) Mercury for August 22, 1763. The writer thus tersely tells the story: "The Ottawas and some of the Chippewas to the number of 300 came to the fort and held a treaty with Major Gladwyn, who had information the evening before that the Indians were determined to fall upon and murder the officers and soldiers in ¦council, while they were to have parties at the different merchants' houses, to treat them in the same manner, " etc.
Had there been valid ground for the tradition, it could hardly have failed to be noticed in the famous "Pontiac Manuscript, " discovered in this city many years ago, the supposed work of a French priest here at the time, and describing events with great particularity and minuteness. If any Indian woman had visited Gladwyn with information of the attempt, and the incident was known among the garrison, he too must have known it, and in his garrulous way would have recorded it. But he whites nothing of the kind— on the contrary says "the plot was disclosed to Gladwyn by a man of the Ottaway tribe. " But he does say further that the next day Pontiac sent four of his warriors from the Ottawa village (just above the present site of Walkerville)., to the Pottawatomie town (at Springwells, now the west end of Detroit, near the fort) to seize an Ojibwa girl whom he suspected; that they took her before Gladwyn but learned nothing from him to criminate her, and she was then taken to Pontiac, who beat her severely with a kind of racket or Indian ball club.
DETROIT MICHIGAN
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