Note 69 — II A Selection of George Croghan’s Letters and Journals Relating to Tours into the Western Country—November 16, 1750-November, 1765.

Rogers in his Journal places this meeting with the Ottawas on the seventh instead of the fifth of November, and locates it at “Chogage” River (formerly supposed to be Cuyahoga, but now thought to be Grand River). Croghan’s account is more detailed, and probably written at the time; while Rogers’s was written or revised later. “Wajea Sipery” is probably Ashtabula Creek, which is sufficiently crooked in its course to make this name appropriate. This is the traditional meeting for the first time, with Pontiac, the Ottawa chief. Parkman’s well-known account of the haughty bearing and dignified demands of this great Indian contrast markedly with Croghan’s simpler and more literal account. In truth, it may be doubted whether this chief was Pontiac at all, as he here speaks of himself as an old man. Rogers’s Journal makes no mention of any chief, and alludes but incidentally to meeting the Ottawa band; but in his Concise Account of North America, published in London (1765), when the exploits of Pontiac were causing much attention, Rogers represents himself as having encountered that chief on his way to Detroit, and that the latter asked him how he dared to enter that country without his (Pontiac’s) leave. This was probably a flight of the imagination, consequent upon his representing the Indian chief as the hero of the tragedy in the verses he was then preparing, known as Ponteach, or the Savages of America (London, 1766). See Parkman, Conspiracy of Pontiac, i, p. 165, ii, appendix B. The plain, unadorned account of Croghan, and the begging attitude of the Ottawa chief, are probably more in accordance with historical verity than Parkman’s and Rogers’s more romantic accounts.—Ed.