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| Chief Pontiac |
A war leader of the Odawa tribe, Pontiac (often called Chief Pontiac) was identified by many contemporary British colonial officials as the chief instigator of a devastating succession of military attacks against Anglo-American forts and settlements throughout the Great Lakes region during the summer of 1763. As rumor and speculation grew, the British feared that his actions were part of a wider French conspiracy, but it is more likely that Pontiac was pursuing his own plot.
His reputation as the architect of one of the most substantial Native American military actions in North American history was cemented by the prolific U.S. historian Francis Parkman.
In his History of the Conspiracy of Pontiac (1851), Parkman credited Pontiac’s intellect and bravery in executing the plot, but characterized his actions as a doomed effort on the part of “savages” to stave off the inevitable advance of Anglo-Saxon civilization across the continent.
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While subsequent historians have disputed the extent of Pontiac’s political influence and military organizing beyond his home settlement near Detroit, he was undoubtedly the principal catalyst for a Native American resistance movement unprecedented in both its geographic scope and its ultimate diplomatic success.
An active partisan on behalf of the French during the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), Pontiac remained loyal to his allies after the conquest of Canada by Great Britain on 8 September 1760. Many of his subsequent activities were devoted to trying to bring about a return to the relationship his people experienced with the French civil and military officials.
Following the takeover of former French forts in the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley by British Army troops (1760–1761), many of the local Native American nations grew aggrieved by the parsimony of British officials in diplomatic negotiations, as well as by the failure of the British to fulfill an earlier promise to ban settlement west of the Appalachian mountains.
Pontiac worked to meld this growing anti-English sentiment among the region’s native peoples with nativist messages of spiritual revival emanating from Delaware villages in the Ohio country. Pontiac also collaborated with the local French population at Detroit, some of whom promoted the notion of the defeated French king sending an army up the Mississippi River to join with the natives against the British.
Jittery British traders and officers, upon hearing this news, proved all too ready to believe that the ensuing war was the product of a French conspiracy, but in fact Pontiac and his followers fought for their own ends.
Pontiac commenced his siege of the key British fort at Detroit on 9 May 1763. Within a month, he had nearly 1,000 Odawa, Ojibwa, Potawatomi, and Huron warriors fighting with him. Pontiac followed up his initial attack by sending wampum belts with encoded messages encouraging similar attacks against other British posts.
For this reason, he has been characterized as the orchestrator of the entire conflict. Yet while other native nations followed Pontiac’s lead, a lack of unity in timing and an emphasis on local tribal objectives proved the rule for the duration of the war.
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This did not, however, compromise the overall impact of Native American military actions. Their well-conceived ruses, gunfire from entrenched positions, and flaming arrows had, by the end of June 1763, destroyed or forced the abandonment of nine British-occupied forts between western Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The troops at Detroit held out until reinforcements arrived on 3 October 1763. On 30 October 1763 Pontiac learned that his appeals for assistance from French troops still posted in Illinois had been categorically rejected, and he raised his siege.
Hostilities in Pontiac’s War continued intermittently for the next two years, and during that time Pontiac visited Native American communities throughout modern Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois, urging continued resistance to the British regime.
With most of the interior forts razed, Native American warriors turned their attention to frontier settlements. Ultimately, historians have estimated that native attacks in Pontiac’s War accounted for the deaths of 2,000 Anglo-American settlers and 400 British soldiers.
As Pontiac’s notoriety grew, he came to be seen by the British authorities as crucial to prospects for ending the conflict. Despite the success of two military expeditions sent to the Great Lakes region over the summer of 1764 in securing the submission of many of the principal combatants, Pontiac remained elusive.
Fearing that the war would continue unless he was dead or conciliated, the British pursued him relentlessly. In talks with British negotiators at Fort Ouiatanon (near modern Lafayette, Indiana) in July 1765, Pontiac agreed to preliminary terms of peace.
Pontiac’s principal demand that the British make clear purchases of land in the Great Lakes region in advance of any settlement was endorsed in the July 1766 Treaty of Oswego, which ended Pontiac’s War.
After fighting the British to a military stalemate and securing a key diplomatic victory for his native allies, Pontiac attempted to live a peaceful life of hunting. Yet his reputation attracted attention and fear, and he was murdered under suspicious circumstances by a Peoria Indian in the Illinois village of Cahokia on 20 April 1769.
