Pontiac
Pontiac led a confederation of nations against British posts in the Great Lakes in 1763 and besieged Detroit for five months. He was an Odawa war leader, born around 1720 near the Detroit river, and had almost certainly fought alongside the French against Braddock in 1755. The grievance was what British victory in the Seven Years' War had changed. The French had traded, married into the nations, given gifts as a diplomatic obligation, and needed allies; the British commander Jeffery Amherst regarded gift-giving as bribery, cut the supply of powder and ammunition on which hunting now depended, and made it clear the posts were garrisons rather than trading houses. Settlers were also crossing the mountains in numbers. The revolt drew on the teaching of Neolin, a Delaware prophet who preached that the nations should give up European goods, alcohol and dependence, and return to their own ways. Pontiac attacked Detroit in May 1763 and, when the surprise failed, blockaded it. Within weeks eight other posts had fallen across the region from Michilimackinac to Pennsylvania. Amherst wrote to a subordinate proposing that smallpox be sent among the nations by means of blankets, and the officers at Fort Pitt did distribute infected items from the hospital. The war ended inconclusively in 1766. Its political consequence was the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which reserved everything west of the Appalachians to the nations and forbade colonial settlement — a grievance the colonists listed among their reasons for rebelling. Pontiac was murdered in 1769. The revolt is named for him by the British, and he probably never commanded more than his own following.
- Lived: 1720 CE – 1769 CE
- Nationality: Ottawa
- Roles: war_chief, military_leader, political_organizer
