Pontiac – 2

The stormy season prevented Rogers from advancing farther

Continuing Pontiac’s Uprising,
our selection from E.O. Randall. The selection is presented in eight easy 5 minute installments.

Previously in Pontiac’s Uprising.

Time: 1763
Place: Detroit

The stormy season prevented Rogers from advancing farther. Michilimackinac and the three remoter posts of Ste. Marie, La Baye (Green Bay) and St. Joseph remained in the hands of the French until the next year. The interior posts of the Illinois country were also retained by the French, but the British conquest of America was completed. The victory of England and the transfer of the French strongholds to British commanders were a terrible and portentous blow to the Indian. He could not fail to foresee therein dire results to his race. His prophetic vision read the handwriting on the wall! Expressions and signs of discontent and apprehension began to be audible among the Indian tribes; “from the Potomac to Lake Superior and from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, in every wigwam and hamlet of the forest, a deep-rooted hatred of the English increased with rapid growth.” When the French occupied the military posts of the lakes and the rivers they freely supplied the neighboring Indians with weapons, clothing, provisions and fire-water. The sudden cessation of these bounties was a grievous and significant calamity.

The English fur-trader and incomer was rude and coarse and domineering as compared with the agreeable and docile Frenchman. Worse and more alarming than all was the intrusion into the forest solitude and hunting-ground of the Indian by the English settler, who regarded the red man as having no rights he was bound to respect. While the rivalry between the two white nations was in progress, the red man was courted by each as holding in large degree the balance of power. But the war over, the ascendant Briton no longer regarded the Indians as necessary allies and they were in large measure treated with indifference and injustice. The hostility of the Indian against the British was, of course, assiduously promoted by the French, who saw in it trouble for the British, possibly a regaining of their lost ground. The warlike and revengeful spirit of the Indian began to give itself vent. The smoldering fires were bound to burst forth. During the years 1761 and 1762 plots were hatched in various tribes to stealthily approach and, by attack or treacherous entrance, destroy the posts of Detroit, Fort Pitt and others. These plots were severally discovered in time to forestall their attempt. Indian indignation reached its height when in 1763 it was announced to the tribes that the King of France had ceded all their (Indian) country to the King of England, without consulting them in the matter. At once a plot was contrived, “such as was never before or since conceived or executed by North American Indians.”

It was determined and planned to make an assault upon all the British posts on the same day; “then, having destroyed the garrisons, to turn upon the defenseless frontier and ravage and lay waste the white settlements.” It was fondly believed by thousands of braves that then the British might be exterminated, or at least driven to the seaboard and confined to their coast settlements. It was the great chief, Pontiac, who if he did not originally instigate, fostered, directed and personally commanded this secretly arranged universal movement. His mastermind comprehended the importance and necessity of combined and harmonious effort. He proposed to unite all the tribes into one confederacy for offensive operations. At the close of 1762 he dispatched ambassadors to the different nations — to the tribes of the North on the Lakes; to the northwest, the head-waters of the Mississippi and south to its mouth; to the east and the southeast. The Indians thus enlisted and banded together against the British comprised, “with few unimportant exceptions, the whole Algonquin stock.” Especially were the Ohio tribes solicited and secured; the Shawanoes, the Miamis, the Wyandots and the Delawares. The Senecas were the only members of the Iroquois confederacy that joined the league. The onslaught was to be made in the month of May, 1763, the tribes to rise simultaneously at the various points and each tribe destroy the British garrison in its neighborhood.

It was a vast scheme, worthy the brain and courage of the greatest general and shrewdest statesman. The plan was divulged by individual Indians to officers at two or three of the posts, but was either disbelieved or its importance ignored. While this gigantic and almost chimerical plot was being developed by Pontiac and his associate chiefs, the treaty of peace between France and England was signed at Paris, February 10, 1763. By this compact France yielded to England all her territory north of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence and east of the Mississippi. The Spanish possessions on the Gulf of Mexico were ceded to England, the territory west of the Mississippi going to Spain. France was left no foothold in North America. While the powers of England, France and Spain were in the French capital arranging this result, as Parkman remarks, “countless Indian warriors in the American forests were singing the war-song and whetting their scalping-knives.”

The chief center of Indian activity and the main point of attack was the post of Detroit, the Western head-quarters of the British government. Pontiac was personally to strike the first blow. The rendezvous of his painted and armed warriors was to be the banks of the little river Ecorces, which empties into the Detroit River a few miles below the Fort, now the city of Detroit. It was April 27th when the assembled warriors listened to the final war-speech of the great chief.

Continued.

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