Pontiac's Rebellion

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This multitribal assault on British western posts after the French and Indian War resulted from several factors: trade disputes; the Delaware Prophet's millennial teachings; Gen. Jeffrey Amherst's termination of customary gift distributions to Indians; settlers' encroachment; and the new British forts.

The Ottawa war leader Pontiac opened the conflict on 9 May, attacking Fort Detroit with warriors from several tribes. The 120‐man garrison held out under Maj. Henry Gladwin, but Indians soon captured six forts and forced the abandonment of Fort Edward Augustus. Senecas took two other forts, Venango and Le Boeuf; Le Boeuf's garrison escaped to Fort Pitt, joining the command of Capt. Simeon Ecuyer, to fight off further Indian attacks. At one point, Ecuyer tried to weaken the besiegers by distributing smallpox‐contaminated blankets during a parley, which may have caused an epidemic.

In the next phase, fighting centered on the supply lines of Detroit and Fort Pitt. Indians inflicted heavy losses on the British in a surprise attack at Point Pelee, Ontario (28 May), and won a signal victory at Devil's Hole near Niagara Falls, 14 September, when 300–500 Senecas overwhelmed 2 British companies and a convoy, killing 72. Nonetheless, the British armed vessels Huron and Michigan retained control of Lake Erie, bringing reinforcements to Detroit between June and November, and sustaining the post until the Indians raised their siege. Indians attacked Col. Henry Bouquet's relief force of 460 men at Bushy Run (5 August). Bouquet reached Fort Pitt, but his 110 casualties prevented him from beginning offensive operations.

The final phase began in 1764, when Colonel Bouquet led 1,200 men into the Delaware heartland in October, securing the release of 200 captives and a promise of peace. Pontiac failed to secure assistance from the remaining French garrisons in Illinois and finally sought peace in late 1764. Hostilities were formally concluded at Oswego, July 1766.

The war exacerbated Indian‐hating in the colonies, as both the resort to smallpox at Fort Pitt and the “Paxton Boys” massacre in 1763 of twenty peaceful Indians in Pennsylvania show. The British promised to enforce the Royal Proclamation of October 1763 prohibiting colonization west of the Appalachian ridge, and restored the prewar patterns of trade and gift giving. Indians ceded no extensive lands, and the British reestablished none of their abandoned forts. Some 450 British regulars and provincials lost their lives. Indian and settler losses re‐main unknown.

[See also Native American Wars: Wars Between Native Americans and Europeans and Euro‐Americans.]

Bibliography

• Howard H. Peckham, Pontiac and the Indian Uprising, 1947.
• Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815, 1991

A multitribal assault on British western posts after the French and Indian War (1754-63), was the result of several factors, including trade disputes and the encroachment of British settlers. On May 9, 1763, Ottawa war leader Pontiac initiated the conflict by attacking Fort Detroit. Though Fort Detroit held out, the Indians soon captured six other forts and forced the abandonment of Fort Edward Augustus. Fighting continued for three years, ending with a treaty signed at Oswego, July 1766 in which the British promised to enforce the Royal Proclamation of 1763 that prohibited colonization west of the Appalachian ridge.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

By 1700, waves of epidemics and devastating Iroquois raids in the Great Lakes region had subsided and a lasting peace was forged between a constellation of Algonquian Indian communities and the French. With outposts at Detroit and Sault Ste. Marie, French fur traders and missionaries traveled throughout the region, linking Indian communities with French political, economic, and religious centers in Montreal and Quebec City. This precariously maintained but shared Algonquian-French world collapsed in the mid-1700s during the French and Indian War (1754–1763). Ceding their extensive North American empire to Britain, French imperial officials in 1763 left behind French, Indian, and métis (mixed-blooded) citizens and allies.

As the French influence in the Great Lakes waned, Indian leaders throughout the region grew increasingly concerned. Few could imagine a world without French trade goods or markets for their furs. As the British attempted to take control of the region, Indian leaders became incensed at their failure to follow existing trading, political, and social protocols. British commanders, such as General Jeffrey Amherst at Detroit, refused to offer credit and gifts to Indian leaders while British settlers often refused to even visit Indian encampments, practices at odds with the intimate ties that had been forged between Indians and the French.

Several prominent Indian leaders attempted to unite the region's diverse Indian populations together to resist British domination. From a religious perspective, several prophets—including Neolin, the Delaware Prophet—called for the abandonment of Indian dependence on European goods and a return to older cultural values and practices. One Ottawa chief, Pontiac, became particularly influenced by Neolin's vision and began organizing the region's warrior societies to repel the British. By late June 1763, Pontiac and his forces had sacked every British fort west of Niagara, taking eight out of ten. The two most strategic posts, at Fort Pitt and Fort Detroit, held out. As Pontiac's forces lay siege to Detroit, British reinforcements arrived to relieve the fort, and after more than a year of war, Pontiac withdrew in November 1763.

Having negotiated a peace with British leaders in 1766, Pontiac was unable to unite again the region's diverse Indian populations against the British and was killed in 1769 by a rival warrior. Having initially brought together most of the region's groups against the British, Pontiac ironically succeeded in gaining what most Indian communities desperately needed: goods, markets, and allies. Struggling to feed and clothe themselves during the war, many Great Lakes communities found their new postwar ties with the British comparable with their previous relations with the French. British leaders now offered gifts and credit to Indian leaders at forts and trading outposts throughout the region, and British leaders in Canada and New York welcomed Indian guests as allies. Equally important, British officials also attempted to keep colonial settlers out of Indian lands, recognizing the legitimacy of Indian claims to the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes. While Pontiac's War with the British did not drive the British out, it ultimately forged more than a generation of shared ties between British and Indian communities in the region.

Bibliography

Anderson, Fred. Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1759–1766. New York: Knopf, 2000.

White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.