The officers, knowing that their communications with the east were cut, that food was scarce, that a vigorous assault could not fail to carry the fort, urged Gladwyn to accept the offer, but he sternly refused.

He would not abandon Detroit while one pound of food and one pound of powder were left in the fort.

Moreover, the treacherous conduct of Pontiac convinced him that the troops and traders as they left the fort would be plundered and slaughtered.
He rejected Pontiac's demands, and advised him to disperse his people and save his ammunition for hunting.
At this critical moment Detroit was undoubtedly saved by a French Canadian.

But for Jacques Baby, the grim spectre Starvation would have stalked through the little fortress.
Baby was a prosperous trader and merchant who, with his wife Susanne Reaume, lived on the east shore of the river, almost opposite the fort.

He had a farm of one thousand acres, two hundred of which were under cultivation.