Pontiac's War

PONTIAC'S WAR

PONTIAC'S WAR. 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.

Ned Blackhawk

See also French and Indian War ; Indian Policy, Colonial ; Indian Trade and Traders ; Indian Treaties, Colonial ; Wars with Indian Nations: Colonial Era to 1783 .