Note 1435 — Chapter IX

The fort at Detroit was a stockade on the west side of the Detroit River, twenty-five feet high, with a bastion at each corner, and a block-house over each gateway, the whole enclosing about a hundred small houses. A few pieces of light artillery were mounted on the bastions. The garrison consisted of eight officers, one hundred and twenty soldiers, and forty-five fur traders, under the command of Major Henry Gladwin, an experienced and gallant officer. Two small armed schooners were anchored in the stream. The white cottages of the Canadian farmers lined both banks of the river. About a mile below the fort, on the western bank, was a village of the Pottawattamies, and on the opposite shore a Wyandot village. Four miles above the fort were the lodges of the Ottawas (Parkman's Pontiac, i. 212-222). Parkman's, Conspiracy of Pontiac is one of the most entertaining monographs in American history; and no writer can treat the subject without acknowledging his indebtedness to the accurate and scholarly investigations of that distinguished historian. The reader of this brief summary of events will find full details in the charming narrative of Parkman. He says of the Bouquet and Haldimand Papers, in the British Museum, that they contain "several hundred letters from officers engaged in the Pontiac War, some official, others personal and familiar." These he availed himself of in his last revision (1870), but he had collected 3,400 MS. pages of unprinted documents for his original edition (1851). All these MS. collections are now in the library of the Mass. Hist. Society.—Ed.