Pontiac’s War: The Native Rebellion That Shook Britain

0:05 On the 2nd of June, 1763, a band of Ojibwe and Sauks arrived upon

0:11 the walls of Fort Michilimackinac in what is northern Michigan.

0:15 They were unarmed, and had come, they claimed,

0:18 to commemorate the birthday of King George

0:21 III with their ritual ball game of lacrosse.

0:25 As the commander of one of the most isolated garrisons in the British Empire,

0:30 Major Etherington was delighted for the entertainment.

0:32 Placing money on an Ojibwe victory over the Sauks,

0:36 he invited the 35 redcoats under his command

0:38 to come out into the field to spectate, instructing them to come unarmed.

0:43 The game commenced to much fanfare and applause until,

0:47 suddenly, all hell broke loose.

0:49 With a mighty swing of his lacrosse stick,

0:52 a native warrior launched the ball over the stockade and into the fort.

0:57 Suddenly, the women among them threw off their blankets to reveal hidden knives,

1:02 tomahawks and rifles.

1:03 The warriors fell upon the redcoats outside the walls,

1:06 killing them before rushing into the fort.

1:09 This dramatic event unfolded at the height of Chief Pontiac’s War,

1:14 an important prequel to the creation of America and one

1:17 of the most successful Native American rebellions in history.

1:23 You Have Not Yet Conquered Us By the mid 1700s,

2:00 Britain’s Thirteen Colonies were well established on the Eastern Seaboard,

2:10 while the French Empire laid claim

2:12 to a massive 8,000,000 square kilometer territory

2:15 which stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the edge of the Arctic Circle.

2:20 However, while the British colonial population numbered nearly a million,

2:25 there were only around 60,000 French

2:27 settlers within the entirety of Nouvelle-France.

2:31 Save for a handful of larger settlements like Quebec City and Montreal,

2:35 these few Francophones were dispersed throughout a network of remote

2:39 fur trading outposts built along waterways like the St.

2:43 Lawrence, Ohio, and Wabash, and most of what is now

2:47 the American Midwest remained sovereign indigenous country,

2:49 unknown and unsettled by white men.

2:52 Unlike the thirteen colonies of Britain,

2:55 the French in North America relied on the good will of the local

3:00 native nations to project any authority

3:03 against their European rivals in the theatre.

3:05 To that end, French traders and missionaries went to great

3:10 lengths to learn the languages and customs of their Algonquian neighbours,

3:14 providing tributary gifts to influential

3:16 chieftains in order to cultivate alliances.

3:19 Through their interactions with the French,

3:22 the Algonquian nations grew accustomed to a method of interaction

3:25 with Europeans in which their sovereignty and way of life were respected.

3:31 This, however, would change when France was swept off the continent,

3:36 and the Anglos began to encroach westwards.

3:40 In 1754, the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War in Europe saw indigenous nations

3:45 take up the tomahawk alongside their respective

3:48 French and British allies in North America, with the Six Nations of the Iroquois

3:54 honouring their longstanding alliance with Britain,

3:57 and Algonquian nations siding with their French fur-trading partners.

4:02 There were far fewer French settlers in North America than British,

4:05 forcing the French to rely on their native allies to level the playing field.

4:10 At the Battle of the Monongahela in the wild forests of Pennsylvania,

4:15 a force of 640 French-aligned Odawas,

4:19 Ojibwes and Potawatomis fell upon a British column over twice their number,

4:24 appearing like wraiths from the treeline and massacring their foe.

4:29 Yet Frances’ early successes soon waned.

4:32 In 1759, British General James Wolfe martyred

4:35 himself in the conquest of Quebec City,

4:38 a fatal blow to French power in North America.

4:42 Thereafter, the French formally capitulated,

4:45 surrendering their vast New World Empire to Britain.

4:48 Per the international laws of Europe,

4:50 all the lands around the Great Lakes and Ohio River

4:54 Valley once claimed by France now belonged to the British Crown.

4:59 Yet the vast length and breadth of these lands had never been settled by France,

5:04 and the sovereign nations within them were not

5:07 keen on bending the knee to King George.

5:10 As British soldiers garrisoned the formerly French forts in the region,

5:14 they were given a sober warning by the Ojibwe chieftain Minavavana:

5:18 “Although you have conquered the French,

5:21 you have not yet conquered us.” Much like their later American successors,

5:27 the British Empire did not view Native Americans as sovereign peoples.

5:31 After conquering France’s North American colonies,

5:35 Britain respected French-Canadian language and religion

5:38 but denied similar recognition to France’s Indigenous allies,

5:43 who saw themselves as undefeated and expected

5:46 the same respect the French had shown.

5:49 Instead, British authorities treated them as a conquered population.

5:54 Governor-General Lord Jeffrey Amherst ended

5:56 the French custom of gift-giving to native leaders and expanded former trading

6:01 posts into military strongholds, heightening unease.

6:04 At the same time, waves of settlers

6:07 from the Thirteen Colonies pushed west despite limited official approval.

6:12 Amid rising tensions, the Lenape prophet Neolin warned that English

6:18 influence would bring disease and ruin.

6:21 His message inspired the Odawa chief Pontiac,

6:25 who by 1762 led a growing anti-British alliance.

6:30 In 1763, after war belts and tomahawks were

6:34 sent across the Great Lakes and Mississippi regions, open rebellion began.

6:38 Fort Detroit With a population of over 4.3 million,

6:43 the modern metropolitan area of Detroit is one

6:46 of the largest urban sprawls in the American Midwest,

6:49 but back in 1763 it was a humble wooden stockade,

6:54 defended by a British garrison commanded by one

6:57 Major Henry Gladwin and consisting of 120 redcoats,

7:01 a handful of irregular militias, and two small warships on the Detroit River.

7:07 The continued existence of this remote frontier settlement was put

7:10 to the test when it came under siege by a large native warband.

7:15 When Pontiac’s warriors appeared before the white

7:18 oak palisades of Detroit on May 9th,

7:21 the Odawa Chieftain hatched a plan to take the fort by infiltration.

7:26 He and his warriors would enter unarmed

7:28 to smoke the peace pipe with its commander

7:31 while their women concealed rifles with shortened barrels

7:34 under blankets and snuck them into the compound,

7:37 at which point they would fall like leopards upon the unsuspecting garrison.

7:43 Unfortunately for Pontiac, his scheme was betrayed to Gladwin by a native woman,

7:48 who, some legends claim, was in love with the British Major.

7:52 Pontiac set up camp at the mouth of a creek

7:55 two miles to the north while his warriors surrounded the palisades.

7:59 Unaccustomed to siege warfare,

8:01 the natives were unable to breach Detroit’s walls.

8:04 Yet in the surrounding woodlands, they were apex predators,

8:08 and found their prey in the British reinforcements making for the besieged fort.

8:12 On May 28th, a contingent of Wyandots fell

8:15 upon a company of the Queen’s Rangers 40

8:18 miles east of Detroit at Point Pelee on what

8:21 is now the Canadian side of the border,

8:23 massacring 60 of the 90 soldiers in the column.

8:27 On July 29th, a force of 250 British regulars commanded

8:32 by one Captain James Dalyell arrived to bolster Detroit’s defenses.

8:37 Against Gladwin’s advice,

8:38 Dalyell decided to launch an offensive strike on Pontiac’s camp.

8:43 Dalyell marched north, aiming to ambush his enemy under the cover of darkness.

8:48 Instead, he was surrounded by Algonquian braves that drowned the night sky

8:53 with their whooping as they fell upon

8:56 the redcoats from prepared entrenchments along the treeline.

8:59 Dalyell was killed, and his column scattered and fled.

9:03 Around this time, Pontiac attempted to negotiate a surrender out of Gladwin,

9:08 ominously declaring that if the British commander refused and was captured,

9:13 he would be treated as a native,

9:16 and ritually tortured to death in the native way.

9:19 Gladwin dryly pointed out that his own king

9:22 would execute him if he abandoned his post, so he intended to remain.

9:27 Detroit ultimately held out,

9:28 and Pontiac was eventually forced to break his siege.

9:32 By then, however, the entire Old Northwest was aflame in rebellion.

9:37 The Fires Spread By the summer of 1763,

9:41 the frontierlands of British America had been

9:44 engulfed in a whirlwind of fervent indigenous fury.

9:47 As Chief Pontiac and his warriors prosecuted their siege on Fort Detroit,

9:51 his allies among the neighbouring nations fanned out

9:55 and struck the nearest British outposts within their lands.

9:58 The great British army that had conquered these lands

10:02 from the French three years prior had dispersed,

10:05 and what small garrisons remained in occupied Indian

10:07 country were not even aware of the native uprising.

10:10 On May 16th, a band of Wyandots infiltrated

10:14 Fort Sandusky under a false banner of peace,

10:17 massacring and scalping the 15 redcoats within

10:21 and burning the structure to the ground.

10:24 A week later, Fort St.

10:26 Joseph fell to a band of Potawatomis in much the same manner.

10:31 Fort Miami fell when its commander, Ensign Holmes,

10:34 was lured out of its walls by his indigenous

10:37 Miami mistress and shot dead by her kinsmen.

10:40 Fort Ouiatanon fell to the Kickapoos,

10:43 who invited its 20-man garrison out of its walls under a false

10:47 pretense of a peace council only to be surrounded and captured.

10:51 The Kickapoos had been on good terms with the British,

10:54 and apologized for seizing their fort, claiming “they were obliged to do it

10:59 by the other nations.” At Fort Michilimackinac,

11:02 a band of Ojibwes and Sauks offered to stage

11:05 a game of lacrosse in honour of King George III.

11:08 The British garrison came out to watch,

11:10 at which point a player launched the ball

11:12 through the gates the redcoats had left open,

11:14 a sign for his fellow warriors to rush in and seize the structure.

11:18 By June, the Senecas had joined the fray.

11:21 They were part of the Iroquois Confederacy

11:24 that had fought alongside the British against the French,

11:27 yet had been mistreated by their English allies all the same.

11:32 The Senecas took Fort Venango, possibly also by way of lacrosse bamboozle,

11:37 as well as Fort Le Boeuf and Fort Presque Isle.

11:40 The situation could only be described as a military disaster,

11:44 with British authority west of the Appalachians having nearly collapsed.

11:48 Pogroms and Massacres A generation before the rise of the United States,

11:53 Pontiac’s uprising sparked intense racial

11:55 violence between settlers and Indigenous peoples.

12:00 As British forts fell, frontier regions of Pennsylvania, Virginia,

12:04 and Maryland were ravaged by raids that burned farms and killed civilians,

12:10 leaving thousands dead or displaced.

12:12 The brutality was not one-sided.

12:15 In retaliation, a group of Pennsylvanian colonists

12:18 known as the Paxton Boys targeted nearby Mohican,

12:22 Lenape, and Susquehannock communities,

12:24 many of whom were Christian converts uninvolved in the rebellion.

12:29 Their killings drew sharp condemnation from Benjamin Franklin,

12:33 who argued that punishing all Indigenous people

12:36 for the actions of a few was unjust.

12:39 Siege of Fort Pitt With a population of over 2.4 million,

12:43 the modern Pittsburgh MSA is one of the largest urban areas in the Rust Belt.

12:48 Much like Detroit, however, its humble origins lay in a rugged frontier

12:53 fortress that came under siege during Pontiac's War.

12:57 On June 22nd, a warrior wave of Shawnees, Lenapes,

13:01 Mingos and Senecas appeared before the walls of Fort Pitt to find it crowded

13:06 with panicked refugees from the surrounding farmsteads

13:09 coming to seek the safety of its walls.

13:12 Most prominent among the native leaders was Guyasuta,

13:15 a Seneca war chief who 10 years earlier had journeyed

13:19 along the frontier with a young British officer named George Washington.

13:24 Fort Pitt was a proper citadel,

13:26 made of stone bastions covering all angles of attack and defended

13:31 by a 230-man garrison led by the 22-year-old Swiss Mercenary Simeon Ecuyer.

13:37 When the natives launched their first assault upon the walls,

13:41 they were driven back by cannonfire.

13:43 Around this time, evidence of smallpox was

13:46 discovered within the fort’s overcrowded refugee camp,

13:49 giving Captain Ecuyer an insidious idea.

13:52 On the 24th, the Lenape chieftain Turtleheart

13:55 parlayed with two British officers outside Pitt.

13:58 “All the other forts have fallen,” He warned them.

14:02 “This is the only one you have left in our country.

14:07 The officers cordially informed Turtleheart they would hold out,

14:10 and as a gesture of ostensible good faith,

14:14 presented a tribute of smallpox-infested

14:16 blankets taken from the fort’s hospital.

14:19 It is unknown how effective this attempt at biological warfare actually was,

14:23 but it was nonetheless an indication of how the British considered the “heathen

14:28 Indians” to lie outside the civilized

14:31 conduct which governed war between European peoples.

14:35 In the closing days of July, a 500-strong column of British soldiers commanded

14:40 by one Colonel Henry Bouquet departed Carlisle,

14:42 Pennsylvania, to march to the relief of Fort Pitt.

14:46 When Guyasuta’s scouts reported this, the Seneca

14:49 Chief broke the siege to intercept.

14:51 The two forces met at a place called Bushy Run.

14:55 Lenapes and Shawnees fell upon the redcoats in a fury,

14:59 forcing them up a hill where they made

15:02 a makeshift bunker out of flour sacks and hunkered down.

15:05 The natives assaulted this position,

15:06 but were driven back by a furious counterattack of the 42nd Highlanders.

15:11 The kilted Scotsmen charged headlong into the painted warriors,

15:15 putting them to flight.

15:17 One fifth of the British force had been killed, but Fort Pitt had been saved.

15:22 An Uneasy Compromise By late 1763 the momentum of Pontiac’s alliance was fading.

15:28 Although many smaller British forts in the Great

15:31 Lakes and Ohio Valley had fallen, Fort Pitt and Fort Detroit held firm,

15:36 turning the conflict into a draining

15:38 war of attrition that weakened tribal unity.

15:41 Hopes that French victories would draw France back into the war proved false,

15:47 and it became clear that no aid was coming.

15:51 One by one, nations began making separate peace with Britain,

15:54 beginning with the Senecas at the Treaty of Fort Niagara.

15:59 In 1764, Colonel Henry Bouquet marched into the Ohio Valley with a strong force,

16:04 persuading groups like the Shawnees and Lenapes

16:07 to end hostilities rather than fight.

16:10 Pontiac resisted longer, but in July 1766,

16:14 he finally signed a formal peace treaty with the British at Fort Ontario,

16:20 ending the rebellion.

16:22 In many ways, Pontiac’s rebellion was a strategic victory

16:26 for the indigenous nations who had fought within it.

16:29 The British had not been driven from their lands,

16:32 but had been roughed up enough to take measures

16:35 to appease the tribes to prevent any further trouble.

16:38 To that end, the British restored the French practice of tributary gift-giving

16:43 and placed restrictions on their colonial

16:45 settlement west of the Allegheny Mountains,

16:47 which was to be designated Indian Territory.

16:51 In fact, King George III had issued a Royal Proclamation back

16:57 in 1763 demarcating just such a line before Pontiac’s War had even begun,

17:02 but the bloody Indian rebellion had lit a fire

17:06 under the British Government’s rump to start actively enforcing it.

17:10 Through his rebellion,

17:11 Pontiac had won the Native Americans a reprieve from colonial aggression,

17:16 albeit only a temporary one.

17:18 Indeed, the party most outraged by Britain’s peace

17:22 with the Indians was the Empire’s colonial American subjects,

17:26 who would eventually cite Britain’s limitations on their westward expansion

17:30 as one of the chief justifications for their own rebellion;

17:34 a rebellion that would create a new nation which posed

17:37 a greater threat to native peoples than the British Empire ever had.

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