Early References to Pontiac
The earliest surviving written reference to Pontiac is in a French document dated 1757. It purports to be a copy of a speech that Pontiac gave defending an alliance with the French, encouraging the French to make good on promises they had made to the Ottawas, and describing an attempt by George Croghan, a trader and British official with close Indian ties, to entice the western tribes away from the French. The document, which was part of the personal papers of Sir William Johnson, superintendent of the British Indian Department in the north, unfortunately was destroyed in a fire. Only a brief summary of its content remains, making verification of the document impossible.
It is possible (though the event is undocumented) that Pontiac was present during a victory by the French and their Indian allies over the British general Edward Braddock as he approached the French garrison, Fort Duquesne, on July 9,1755. Howard Peckham, in his highly respected Pontiac and the Indian Uprising, suggests that Pontiac likely was present—a reasonable conclusion regarding a respected warrior probably somewhere in his thirties at the time. Francis Parkman, in his The Conspiracy of Pontiac (published in 1851 and revised by the author in 1870), an important study of Pontiac and the French-British conflict that has been supplanted in parts by recent historians, places him at the battle. Parkman, however, is less than definitive about Pontiac’s role: “It is said that he commanded the Ottawas at the memorable defeat of Braddock... .”1
Clearly, Pontiac must have demonstrated his ability in war and his capacity for leading prior to 1760, when he firmly enters the English (and later American) historical annals. He probably was a war chief. As Peckham points out, this position—far from being hereditary—was open to just about any male who proved his skill in combat and his ability to lead others into battle.
Allying with the French
During the French and Indian War, Pontiac was strongly supportive of the French, although it is a testament to the Euro-American mindset that Pontiac was seen by contemporary British and some later historians as being manipulated by the French for their own ends. The term “conspiracy” was applied by Parkman and others to Pontiac’s efforts beginning in 1760, with the French viewed as co-conspirators urging the Ottawas and their other Indian allies to oppose British rule.
It is true that the French needed Indian support to have any chance against the British, but allying themselves with the French was a conscious political decision on the part of Pontiac and other Indian leaders, who saw the French as far less harmful to native interests than the British. The French were not present in large enough numbers to seem like an overpowering presence and generally were not viewed by Native Americans as a threat to take over traditional Indian lands. Gregory Evans Dowd, in his War Under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations and the British Empire, argues that the small French population in North America was both a disadvantage and an advantage for the French. The native peoples saw the French as less ominous. At the same time the French, who were clearly unable to dominate their neighbors yet greatly in need of their support against the British, treated Indians as allies—in other words, as something at least approaching equals. The especially small number of French women who immigrated to the New World also led to a lot of intermarrying of male French settlers with native women, further establishing close connections, understanding, and mutual respect between the two peoples.
British Attitudes and Policies
The British apparently saw Pontiac as an unusually perceptive figure among what they believed to be a generally ignorant mass of savagery. However, he was far from alone in recognizing that the French could serve Indian interests both as trading partners and by helping to keep the British in check. Dowd succinctly contrasts French and English goals in relation to two native peoples in terms that Pontiac and his allies would have recognized as more broadly applicable to all Indian nations: “Finally, the French came among the Ottawas to gain their trade, their souls [by conversion to Christianity], their hand in marriage, or their comradeship in arms, but the British especially came among the Delawares to gain their lands.”2
The British shared little of the French desire to intermingle with the native population, erroneously judged Indians to be savage and untrustworthy, and viewed them as neither allies (too close to being equals) nor subjects (individuals to whom certain rights and privileges belong). At best, they were viewed as separate peoples under the control and protection of the Crown. That status was reinterpreted by the still-new United States in 1831-1832, in the words of Chief Justice John Marshall of the Supreme Court, as “domestic, dependent nations.”3
What the British did during the French and Indian War, through the actions of military officers and colonists, was to denigrate Indians verbally, mistreat their women, engage in heavy hunting on traditional native hunting grounds (thus decreasing the availability of game for everyone), and threaten native retention of the land itself. They also made trading more difficult by isolating trading centers on a small number of distant posts, charging high prices for British products, and curtailing the sale of ammunition.
In addition, the British, especially after the French capitulation in North America on September 8, 1760, established a policy of greatly reducing the practice of gift giving. Believing that they no longer had to worry about Indian support of the French and, therefore, had less reason to win their friendship, the British, under orders of commander-in-chief Sir Jeffery Amherst, sharply scaled back the practice of giving gifts. Gifts were not primarily an economic issue for the Ottawas and other native peoples, nor were they viewed principally as material possessions. Rather, the giving of gifts was perceived as a way to show respect for the recipient in a culture, such as that of the Ottawas, in which generosity was a prized value.
By 1762, the Ottawas and other native groups were increasingly angered and threatened by a growing wave of mistreatment at the hands of the British and resolved to fight back. They did not yet realize that the conflict between the French and the British, which had largely ceased in North America in 1760 but had continued in Europe, was finally drawing to a close. Ultimately, it would end with the Peace of Paris, signed on February 10, 1763.
World History
