Pontiac's rebellion (1763-6), misnomer for an uprising by American Indian tribes of the eastern Great Lakes region. Pontiac was an Ottawa chief, but the Delaware, Shawnee, and Seneca were more significant. During the French and Indian war they wrung land recessions from the English in treaties which neither side intended to respect, underlined when Amherst discontinued buying peace with gifts in 1760.

The rebellion was also inspired by the revivalist preaching of a Delaware prophet and started with a botched attack on Fort Detroit by Pontiac in May 1763. A number of small forts in today's New York, Pennsylvania, and Michigan fell soon afterwards and some 2, 000 settlers were killed. Apart from the innovative device of giving the besiegers of Fort Pitt smallpox-infected blankets, Amherst had no answers and he was replaced by Gage in November.

In December, Scotch-Irish settlers in Pennsylvania murdered Christianized Conestoga and Delaware Indians in the Paxton Riots, but the uprising had petered out by then. Pontiac tried to spread rebellion to Illinois and Ohio, but tribes fell away steadily, the last surrendering in July 1764 in Ohio. Pontiac himself signed a peace treaty at Oswego in July 1766. He was murdered three years later.

— Hugh Bicheno

The Oxford Companion to Military History. Copyright © 2001, 2004 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.