Pontiac (c.1720–April 20, 1769), was a Native American Ottawa leader, famous for his participation in a war against British occupation that bears his name: Pontiac's Rebellion. Pontiac rose to great fame and importance during that war, and yet the documentary evidence of Pontiac's life is scanty. Much of what has been written about Pontiac had been based on tradition and speculation, and so depictions of him have varied greatly over the years.¹

Pontiac was labeled the "chief" of the Ottawas by his white contemporaries and subsequent historians; modern historians believe that the Ottawas did not have an overall "chief" in Pontiac's time. However, Pontiac's rise to prominence led British officials to negotiate with Pontiac as if he had great authority. Pontiac embraced this expansive role, which ultimately helped lead to his downfall.²

Contents

1 Early years 2 "Rebellion" 3 Later years 4 Notes 5 References

Early years

Pontiac was born between 1712 and 1720, probably on the Maumee River, near the mouth of the Auglaize. His father was an Ottawa, and his mother an Ojibwa, and so both were of the Anishinaabe people. By 1755 he had become a prominent war leader among the loose confederacy of Ottawa, Potawatomi and Ojibwa people. He was an ally of France and possibly took part in the victory (9 July 1755) over the Braddock Expedition at the outset of the French and Indian War.

"Rebellion"

After the French and Indian War, Indian allies of the defeated French found themselves increasingly dissatisfied with the trading practices of the victorious British. The architect of British Indian policy, General Jeffrey Amherst, decided to cut back on the provisions customarily distributed to the Indians from the various forts, which he considered to be bribes. Additionally, the French had made gunpowder and ammunition readily available, which were needed by the Indians to hunt food for their families and skins for trade. However, Amherst did not trust his former Indian adversaries, and restricted the distribution of gunpowder and ammunition.

Pontiac, like other Indian leaders, was certain that the British intended to starve, disarm, and destroy them. Taking advantage of general Indian dissatisfaction with the British, as well as a native religious revival inspired by Neolin, Pontiac planned a resistance. On April 27, 1763, he held a large council about 10 miles below Fort Detroit . His words, as reported by a French chronicler, were a call to arms:

"It is important for us, my brothers, that we exterminate from our lands this nation which seeks only to destroy us. You see as well as I that we can no longer supply our needs, as we have done from our brothers, the French. [...] From all this you can see well that they are seeking our ruin. Therefore, my brothers, we must all swear their destruction and wait no longer. Nothing prevents us; they are few in numbers, and we can accomplish it."³

Widespread attacks against British forts in the Ohio Country soon followed (see Pontiac’s Rebellion). It is difficult to ascertain the degree to which Pontiac himself organized the resistance. Older accounts of the war portrayed Pontiac as a savage but brilliant mastermind behind a massive "conspiracy"; historians today generally agree that Pontiac may have inspired the uprising, but he neither commanded nor coordinated it. Pontiac was a primarily a local leader, and his efforts were concentrated on the (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to capture Fort Detroit.

Later years

Pontiac himself made submission to Sir William Johnson on 25 July 1766 at Oswego. In April 1769 he was murdered, at Cahokia, Illinois (nearly opposite St. Louis, Missouri) by a Kaskaskia Indian bribed by an English trader; and he was buried near the St. Louis Fort. His death occasioned a bitter war in which a remnant of the Illinois tribe was practically annihilated in 1770 at Starved Rock (between the present Ottawa and La Salle, Illinois), by the Potawatomi, who had been followers of Pontiac.

Notes

Note 1: Dowd, pages 5-8.

Note 2: Dowd, pages 9-11, discusses how Pontiac was envisioned as the Ottawa "chief"; White, pages 299-300 (and throughout), discusses how Europeans created "alliance chiefs" by investing Indian leaders with authority not granted them by the Indian people themselves.

Note 3: Peckham, pages 119-20.

References

• Dowd, Gregory Evans. War Under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, & the British Empire. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.
• Parkman, Francis. The Conspiracy of Pontiac, 2 volumes. Boston, 1851. Parkman's landmark work on Pontiac has been considered historically unreliable by academic historians over the last several decades, but Parkman's prose is still much admired, and his books remain in print.
• Peckham, Howard H. Pontiac and the Indian Uprising. University of Chicago Press, 1947.
• White, Richard. The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815. Cambridge Universtiy Press, 1991.