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DETROIT IN 1838 BY HENRY A. FORD
A similar story was told long afterward by an old Indian to Henry Cornier, the interpreter and trader, son of the Moravian pioneer near Mt. Clemens, and very likely has some foundation in fact, though it proves nothing for the historic truth of the woman's guilt.
No other contemporary letter, narrative, or official report has yet been found attributing the betrayal of the plot to an Indian girl. The story has been given reputable currency, chiefly by Mr. Parkman, the historian, who inserts it in much detail in his noble work on "The Conspiracy of Pontiac. "
His immediate authority was a letter from the late Henry R. Schoolcraft, who rested his statement not upon documentary evidence, but upon the tradition related to him by Conner, including the death of the woman by falling into-a kettle of boiling maple sap. It had long before, however, been related and had got into literature. Jonathan Carver heard it on his visit to the northwest six years after the conspiracy, and embodied it in his book of travels. Other accounts are much later, but are in their origin altogether traditional, though in several cases made by persons living at the time of the treacherous attempt and subsequent siege under Pontiac. Pelletier, or Peltier, a descendant of one of the two coureurs des bois found here by Cadillac in 1701 was then 17 years old; and he told it to Gen. Cass in 1824, sixty one years afterwards. Maj. Thompson Maxwell, at Gen. Cass's request, dictated his reminiscences of the siege to the late C. C. Trowbridge in 1821, fifty eight years after
DETROIT MICHIGAN
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