Never Come to Peace Again: Pontiac's Uprising and the Fate of the British Empire in North America

by David Dixon

Overview

Prior to the American Revolution, the Ohio River Valley was a cauldron of competing interests: Indian, colonial, and imperial. The conflict known as Pontiac’s Uprising, which lasted from 1763 until 1766, erupted out of this volatile atmosphere. Never Come to Peace Again, the first complete account of Pontiac’s Uprising to appear in nearly fifty years, is a richly detailed account of the causes, conduct, and consequences of events that proved pivotal in American colonial history.

When the Seven Years’ War ended in 1760, French forts across the wilderness passed into British possession. Recognizing that they were just exchanging one master for another, Native tribes of the Ohio valley were angered by this development. Led by an Ottawa chief named Pontiac, a confederation of tribes, including the Delaware, Seneca, Chippewa, Miami, Potawatomie, and Huron, rose up against the British. Ultimately unsuccessful, the prolonged and widespread rebellion nevertheless took a heavy toll on British forces.

Even more devastating to the British was the rise in revolutionary sentiment among colonists in response to the rebellion. For Dixon, Pontiac’s Uprising was far more than a bloody interlude between Great Britain’s two wars of the eighteenth century. It was the bridge that linked the Seven Years’ War with the American Revolution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780806145013
Publisher:	University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date:	05/15/2014
Series:	Campaigns and Commanders Series , #7
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

David Dixon (1954-2008) was Professor of History at Slippery Rock University, Pennsylvania. He is the author of the award-winning book Hero of Beecher Island: The Life and Military Career of George A. Forsyth.

Read an Excerpt

Never Come to Peace Again

Pontiac's Uprising and the Fate of the British Empire in North America

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By David Dixon

UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS

Copyright © 2005 University of Oklahoma Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8061-4501-3

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CHAPTER 1

"WHY DO YOU COME TO FIGHT ON OUR LAND?"

Christian Frederick Post rode slowly through a torrent of showers to reach his destination at Fort Allen, located along the Lehigh River. He carried with him instructions from William Denny, provincial governor of the colony of Pennsylvania, to meet with the various Indian nations in the Ohio Country and convince them of the English government's desire for peace. It was July 19, 1758, the fourth year of the Great War for Empire between Britain and France, a conflict that had led many of the Native peoples living in the trans-Appalachian frontier to ally themselves with the forces of Louis XV, France's Bourbon ruler. The wilderness struggle had desolated the interior of North America, and Post was resolved to do his part "to restore peace and prosperity to the distressed."

As Post rode on through the downpour, far to the west loomed the dark and imposing slopes of the Appalachian Mountains. Beyond the crest of that seemingly impenetrable barrier lay the Ohio Country, a cauldron of unrest and awful violence. For more than a hundred years the region had been a scene of instability. As early as 1656 the Iroquois had swooped down on the Erie Indians living in this area and all but annihilated them. In an attempt to replenish their dwindling population and establish barriers against encroaching Europeans and other Indians, the League of Five Nations, as the five tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy were sometimes called, devastated and displaced yet other Indian peoples. Afterward, the Iroquois claimed the Ohio Country as part of their domain, and some members of the confederacy, such as the Senecas, chose to stay in the region. Many Iroquois who decided to remain in the Ohio Country eventually lost the connection with their own tribes and clans and became known as the Mingoes.

Later, as the Europeans became more numerous and began occupying the Delaware River valley in Eastern Pennsylvania, more Indian people moved to the Ohio Country. The Lenapes, known to the English as the Delawares, had vacated most of their land in the East and settled into a new environment in the Susquehanna River valley. From there, small bands and entire villages began to leave the valley and trek across the mountains to join the "people on the other side" in the Allegheny River valley region. This resulted in an effective split between the Susquehanna Delawares and those who had decided to immigrate to the Ohio Country.

Perhaps one of the biggest blows to the Delawares who remained east of the mountains came with the 1737 "Walking Purchase." This land transaction occurred as a result of the Penn family's desire to obtain more property along the upper Delaware River valley. The practice of purchasing land from the Indians had begun with the founder, William Penn, who would then sell the land to prospective European immigrants. When the area around Philadelphia became too congested, the Penn heirs decided to acquire the remaining Delaware land along the river, north of the City of Brotherly Love. To accomplish this task, Thomas Penn instructed his provincial secretary, James Logan, to arrange yet another land purchase from the Delawares. When the Indians refused to sell, Logan requested that the Iroquois intercede and force the remaining Delawares to relocate. The League of Five Nations, interested in furthering its growing ties with the English in Pennsylvania, agreed to assist Logan and sent a delegation to the Delaware villages to compel their removal. Eventually, the land transaction was completed when Englishmen marked off the boundaries by walking along the bank of the Delaware River for a day and a half. This so-called Walking Purchase served to terminate all Indian claims to land in the Delaware River valley. The dispossessed tribespeople, filled with bitterness and resentment toward the English, begrudgingly moved west into the Susquehanna River valley, and some went even further, across the mountains into the Ohio Country.

The Senecas, Mingoes, and Delawares were not the only tribes that occupied the land beyond the Appalachians. Other refugee Indians migrated into the region in the early years of the eighteenth century. The Shawnees, whom other tribes often called "wanderers," once resided in small villages east of the mountains. Like their Delaware neighbors, they moved to the Ohio Country. There they were joined by other Shawnees who came from the south and west. One particular band aligned itself with a mixed-blood French trader named Peter Chartier, who established a trading community along the Allegheny River in 1734. Other Shawnees assembled at villages such as Sewickley Town, near the winding river that the Indians called Youghiogheny, and Keckenepaulin's Town, which was located west of Laurel Ridge at the mouth of what would later be known as Loyalhanna Creek.

Soon other Indian people entered the region. Mahicans came in small numbers from the Hudson River valley, where they had been pushed out by the Dutch and English. Wyandots came from the west and settled near the Delaware village of Kuskuski, along the river, lined with bull thistles, that the Indians called Shenango. Miamis (also known as Twightwees), Neutral Hurons, Piankashaws, Ottawas, and others could be found from time to time in the Ohio Country as they all participated in a lively intertribal trade network. While animosity and suspicion often accompanied the relations between these various peoples, more and more, as Indians entered the region, they learned to coexist. Before long, multitribal communities sprang up along the Ohio, Allegheny, and Monongahela river valleys. In 1748, when the Pennsylvania Indian agent and interpreter Conrad Weiser visited the village of Loggstown, an important trading community along the Ohio River, he found 789 warriors assembled there. These Indians included representatives from the Delawares, Wyandots, Shawnees, Hurons, and Mahicans and from each of the five tribes of the Iroquois Confederacy. During his negotiations with the many nations of Indians present, Weiser noted that they identified themselves as "all one People." In particular, the Iroquois representatives insisted that they spoke "in behalf of all the Indians on Ohio."

The Native peoples of the Ohio Country could well manage this cohabitation as a result of shared experiences, common political agendas, and similarity in dress, appearance, and material culture. Peter Williamson, who spent time with the Ohio tribes as a captive, described their common dress:

That they in general, wear a white blanket.... Their mogganes [moccasins] are made of Deer Skins, and the best Sort have them bound round the Edges with little Beads and Ribbands. On their Legs they wear Pieces of blue Cloth for Stockings.... Breeches they never wear, but instead thereof, two Pieces of Linen, one before and another behind. The better Sort have Shirts of finest Linen they can get, and to those some wear Ruffles; but these they never put on till they have painted them various Colours, which they get from the Pecone Root, and Bark of Trees, and they never pull them off to wash, but wear them, till they fall in pieces. They are very proud, and take great delight in wearing Trinkets; such as Silver Plates round their Wrists and Necks ... from their Ears and Noses they have Rings and Beads, which hang dangling an Inch or Two. The Men have no Beards, to prevent which, they use certain Instruments and Tricks as soon as it begins to grow. The Hair of their Heads is managed differently, some pluck out and destroy all, except a Lock hanging from the Crown of the Head, which they interweave with Wampum and Feathers of various Colours.

Similarly, another white captive, John McCullough, described an Ohio warrior as having an appearance "very terrifying to us." McCullough later wrote about his encounter with the Indian:

He had a brown coat on him, no shirt, his breast bare, a breech-clout, a pair of leggins and moccasons—his face and breast painted rudely with vermillion and verdigrease—a bunch of artificial hair, dyed of a crimson color, fixed on the top crown of his head, a large triangle piece of silver hanging below his nose, that covered almost the whole of his upper lip; his ears (which had been cut according to their particular custom) were stretched out with fine brass wire, made in the form (but much larger) of what is commonly fixed in suspenders, so that, perhaps he appeared something like what you might apprehend to be the likeness of the devil.

Most observers also noted that the Indians of the Ohio Country were adorned with tattoos. Williamson remembered that one "old Indian had his body covered over, from head to foot, with certain hieroglyphics—which they perform by inserting gunpowder, or charcoal, into the skin with the point of a turkey quill, sharpened in the form of a pen, or some other instrument they have for that purpose; which always denotes valor."

This late-eighteenth-century image of a Great Lakes warrior adorns a map of the Ohio Country prepared by an unknown French cartographer. Note the scalps dangling from the trade musket that he carries. The original map is in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris. Courtesy the Rock Foundation, New York.

Indeed, the various tribes' residence in the Ohio Country—where they shared common land, resources, experiences, and material culture—allowed the various tribes to begin the process of forging a collective identity. They had all arrived on the Allegheny Plateau as refugees of sorts, escaping the press of European colonization or taking advantage of a new land rich in resources. They chiefly desired to recapture their traditional and familiar ways of life and preserve their cultural integrity, which had been threatened by their close proximity to the whites east of the mountains. While the Ohio Indians certainly did not deter the presence of European traders among them, they had no intention of sharing the land with white inhabitants. It is perhaps ironic that their very presence along the waters of the Ohio Country would eventually result in a struggle between France and Great Britain for control and occupation of this coveted region.

It was only natural that when the people of the Northeastern Woodlands began to migrate into the Ohio Valley region, European traders would soon follow. The intercourse that developed between the various Indian nations of the Ohio Country and the British and French traders who converged on them transcended purely economic concerns. The commercial exchange that they conducted helped to open diplomatic discourse, cement alliances, conclude land transactions, and eventually, conduct war. The dynamics that governed the trade supported the Indians' belief that whichever European trading partners offered the finest and least expensive goods represented the nation that was the most attractive friend and ally. Consequently, perceptive Indians frequently attempted to manipulate both European rivals by using trade as a precondition for a positive diplomatic relationship. While Indians commanded some leverage in their trade relationships with whites, their increasing dependence on European goods made it impossible for them to remain neutral in the face of a growing rivalry between England and France.

The merchandise that the English carried across the mountains and the French transported along the lakes and rivers included woolen blankets, linen shirts, looking glasses, beads, copper and tin kettles, combs, bars of lead, hatchets, firearms, and gunpowder. For the most part, early relationships between the traders and Indians were cordial. James Adair, who began to transact business with the various tribes in 1735, commented on this relationship:

Before the Indians were corrupted by mercenary empirics, their good sense led them to esteem the Traders among them as their second Sun, warming their backs with the British fleeces, and keeping in their candle of life, both by plentiful support and continual protection and safety, from the arms and ammunition which they annually brought them. While the Indians were simple in manner and uncorrupt in morals, the Traders could not be reckoned unhappy, for they were kindly treated and watchfully guarded by a society of friendly and sagacious people, and possessed all the needful things to make a reasonable life easy. Through all the Indian countries every person lives at his own choice, not being forced in the least degree to anything contrary to his own inclination.

The introduction of rum and other spirits by unscrupulous traders profoundly altered the idyllic nature of the exchange. In a meeting with Pennsylvania officials in 1753, one Iroquois leader complained, "Your Traders now bring scarce anything but Rum and Flour; they bring little Powder and Lead, or other valuable goods. The Rum Ruins us. We beg you would prevent its coming in such quantities by regulating the Traders.... These Whiskey Sellers, when they have once got the Indians in Liquor, make them sell their very clothes from their backs. In short, if this practice be continued, we must be inevitably ruined."

Both England and France claimed the prerogative to trade and settle the land beyond the Appalachians. The French "claimed the River Ohio, otherwise called the Beautiful River, and its tributaries ... by virtue of its discovery by Sieur de la Salle; of the trading posts the French have had there since; and of possession; which is so much the more unquestionable, as it constitutes the most frequent communication from Canada to Louisiana." While La Salle had indeed touched upon the lower Ohio River during his 1682 journey, he certainly had never explored the upper valley region. In La Salle's wake, the French began to establish trading posts in the vicinity of the Great Lakes. In 1691 they constructed Fort Saint Joseph, situated near the southern end of Lake Michigan. A decade later the French soldier Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac established another military post, called Fort Pontchartrain, located along what is now known as the Detroit River. In this area resided the Ottawa, Potawatomie, Chippewa, and Wyandot nations. In 1715 another post, Fort Michilimackinac, helped secure the vital Straits of Mackinac between lakes Michigan and Huron. Two years later the French erected Fort La Baye along the Green Bay in present-day Wisconsin. Like other such establishments, La Baye was occupied by a small militia, fur traders, and Jesuit missionaries intent on converting the Indians. With the Great Lakes in seemingly firm control, the French began to establish other military posts to protect the access route from Quebec to New Orleans. In 1719 work commenced on Fort Ouiatenon along the banks of the Wabash, a river that wound its way to the lower Ohio, giving access to the Mississippi. With the construction of all these posts, France was able to secure its claims to the Great Lakes, protect the line of communication between Canada and New Orleans, and establish a viable trade relationship with the Indian inhabitants of the region. As more and more Indians relocated to the Ohio Country after 1720, the Canadians cast their eyes toward the possibility of the lucrative trade that might be fostered there.

In the meantime, the British were also looking across the mountains to the Ohio Country. The Indians of the Great Lakes, attracted by the higher prices the English paid, had for years smuggled their furs to Albany traders. One of the provisions of the Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the European conflict known as the War for the Spanish Succession in 1713, gave the British and French belligerents equal access to the American fur trade. From that time on, an intense rivalry ensued for domination in the industry. By the end of the 1720s, Pennsylvania traders were firmly established in the various Indian villages along the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers. Records from the Pennsylvania Assembly indicate that enterprising men such as James Le Tort, Edmund Cartlidge, and Henry Bailey were trading among the Delawares, Shawnees, and Mingoes at Loggstown, Kuskuski, and Kittaning in 1727.

Within a few years, the English made serious inroads in breaking the French monopoly of the fur trade along the trans-Appalachian frontier. Indians in the Ohio Country and along the Great Lakes quickly learned that British trade goods were generally better in quality and cheaper in price. A major turning point in the rivalry between Britain and France for dominance in the fur trade came when war once again broke out between the two European powers in 1744. While fighting in the War for the Austrian Succession was confined to the European continent and the New England frontier, the British traders attempted to take advantage of the conflict by expanding their influence among the western tribes.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Never Come to Peace Again by David Dixon. Copyright © 2005 University of Oklahoma Press. Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Contents

List of Illustrations,
Preface,
Acknowledgments,
1. "Why Do You Come to Fight on Our Land?",
2. "A Colony Sprung from Hell",
3. "If You Suffer the English among You, You Are Dead Men",
4. "Drive off Your Lands Those Dogs Clothed in Red",
5. "A General Panick Has Seized This Extensive Country",
6. "The Bravest Men I Ever Saw",
7. "Nothing Remains in Our Heart but Good",
8. "The Ends of the American Earth",
Appendix: Colonel Bouquet's Letters from Bushy Run,
Notes,
Bibliography,
Index,

Editorial Reviews

“A thoroughly researched and detailed narrative of one of the great military conflicts of early America.”—Colin G. Calloway, author of New Worlds for All: Indians, Europeans, and the Remaking of Early America


“Dixon vividly recreates the conflict’s dramatic events such as the siege of Detroit, the surprise and capture of a half-dozen smaller British posts, and the battle at Bushy Run.”—American Historical Review

From the Publisher