The
gate was immediately closed, and the nine soldiers within
the fort made ready for resistance. With the Indians were
two Frenchmen, Jacques Godfroy, whom we have met before
as the ambassador to Pontiac in the opening days of the
siege of Detroit, and one Miny Chesne; [Footnote: This
is the only recorded instance, except at Detroit, in
which any French took part with the Indians in the capture
of a fort. And both Godfroy and Miny Chesne had married
Indian women.] and they had an English prisoner, a trader
named John Welsh, who had been captured and plundered at
the mouth of the Maumee while on his way to Detroit. The
Frenchmen called on the garrison to surrender, pointing
out how useless it would be to resist and how dreadful
would be their fate if they were to slay any Indians.
Without a leader, and surrounded as they were by a large
band of savages, the men of the garrison saw that resistance
would be of no avail. The gates were thrown open; the
soldiers marched forth, and were immediately seized and
bound; and the fort was looted. With Welsh the captives
were taken to the Ottawa village at Detroit, where they
arrived on June 4, and where Welsh and several of the
soldiers were tortured to death.
A few miles south of the present city of Lafayette, on
the south-east side of the Wabash, at the mouth of Wea
Creek, stood the little wooden fort of Ouiatanon.
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