The ball was started from the middle of the ground, and the game was for each side to keep it from touching their own post and drive it against that of their adversaries. Hundreds of lithe and agile figures were leaping and bounding over each other, turning handsprings and somersaults, striking with the bats, tripping each other up, every way, any way, to get at the ball and foil the adversary. At one moment the whole were crowded together, a dense throng of combatants, all struggling for the ball; at the next, they are scattered again, and running over the ground like hounds in full chase. Each, in his excitement, yelled and shouted at the height of his voice.
Suddenly the ball rose high, and descending in a wide curve, fell near the gate of the fort. This was no chance stroke, but a part of a preconcerted stratagem to insure the surprise and destruction of the garrison. The players instantly bounded toward the ball, a rushing, maddened and tumultuous throng, but just as they neared the gates, the shouts of sport changed suddenly to the ferocious war-whoop. The squaws threw open their blankets, exposing the guns, hatchets and knives, and the players instantly flung away their bats and seized the weapons, before the amazed English had time to think or act. They at once fell upon the defenseless garrison and traders, butchered fifteen on the spot, captured the rest, including the commander, while everything that had belonged to the English was carried off or destroyed, though none of the French families or their property was disturbed. It is said that these captives were afterward ransomed at Montreal, at high prices.
{ Illustration: Hollow Horn Bear, Sioux Chief.}
As we have seen, it was a part of Pontiac's plan that each tribe should attack the fort or English settlement nearest to them. For this reason, and because it was the largest and best fortified place, he took personal command at the siege of Detroit.
This settlement was founded by La Motte Cadillac in 1701, and contained at this time, according to Major Rogers, about twenty-five hundred people. The center of the settlement was the fortified town or fort, which stood on the western margin of the river, and contained about a hundred houses, compactly built, and surrounded by a palisade twenty-five feet high, with a bastion at each corner, and block-houses over the gates.