No trust could Gladwyn put in Pontiac's words; yet he assumed a friendly bearing towards the treacherous conspirator, who for nearly six months had given him no rest.

Gladwyn's views of the situation at this time are well shown in a report he made to Amherst.

The Indians, he said, had lost many of their best warriors, and would not be likely again to show a united front.

It was in this report that he made the suggestion, unique in warfare, of destroying the Indians by the free sale of rum to them.

'If your Excellency,' he wrote, 'still intends to punish them further for their barbarities, it may easily be done without any expense to the Crown, by permitting a free sale of rum, which will destroy them more effectually than fire and sword.' He thought that the French had been the real plotters of the Indian war: 'I don't imagine there will be any danger of their [the Indians] breaking out again, provided some examples are made of our good friends, the French, who set them on.' Pontiac and his band of savages paddled southward for the Maumee, and spent the winter among the Indians along its upper waters.