Under an unusually hot sun on a late spring day on the Straits of Mackinac, British Major George Etherington, commandant of Fort Michilimackinac, was suffering from an acute case of cultural blindness. And there was no excuse for it. Relaxed at the sidelines of a rousing game of baggatiway (similar to lacrosse) outside the fort, the major should have seen the danger signs in this Ojibwe versus Sauk contest of sweaty, half-naked bodies painted with white clay and charcoal.
The 30-year-old officer was born in the colonies, and most likely grew up on stories of Indian uprisings. He'd even served in the just-ending French and Indian War, in which the English had wrested control of North America from the French—a victory that had put this previously French fort in Etherington's care. Though the major had been raised on American soil and had fought on it, he was still English. And in that country, a battle was a battle, and a sporting event was a sporting event.
Perhaps that explains why the major missed the clues. Though well armed, his garrison of 35 or so soldiers was vastly outnumbered by the hundreds of Indians encamped around it, there to exchange furs for wares—steel tomahawks and knives included—from French Canadian traders. That there'd been a run on tomahawks of late didn't seem to worry the major. And he was only irritated by warnings from the many French Canadians who lived at the fort, that the Indians were planning an uprising. He threatened to have the next person who spread similar gossip locked up down at Fort Detroit. The unwitting Etherington had not yet heard that Fort Detroit was under siege, attacked several weeks before by a coalition of tribes led by Pontiac, the Odawa chief. Foreseeing that English domination spelled the end of his people's lifestyle, Pontiac had just begun his famous rebellion.
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