Note 461 — Chapter XXIX · 1763-1765. PONTIAC RALLIES THE WESTERN TRIBES.
Reading edition
By the following extract from an official paper, signed by Captain Grant, and forwarded from Detroit, it appears that Pontiac still retained, or professed to retain, his original designs against the garrison of Detroit. The paper has no date, but was apparently written in the autumn of 1764. By a note appended to it, we are told that the Baptiste Campau referred to was one of those who had acted as Pontiac’s secretaries during the summer of 1763:—
“On Tuesday last Mr. Jadeau told me, in the presence of Col. Gladwin & Lieut. Hay of the 6th Regiment, that one Lesperance, a Frenchman, on his way to the Illinois, he saw a letter with the Ottawas, at the Miamee River, he is sure wrote by one Baptist Campau (a deserter from the settlement of Detroit), & signed by Pontiac, from the Illinois, setting forth that there were five hundred English coming to the Illinois, & that they, the Ottawas, must have patience; that he, Pontiac, was not to return until he had defeated the English, and then he would come with an army from the Illinois to take Detroit, which he desired they might publish to all the nations about. That powder & ball was in as great plenty as water. That the French Commissary La Cleff had sold above forty thousand weight of powder to the inhabitants, that the English if they came there might not have it.
“There was another letter on the subject sent to an inhabitant of Detroit, but he can’t tell in whose hands it is.”