Volume 3, Chapter 2, The Ohio Lands, Pontiac's Rebellion
The first and immediate problem the British faced was what to do with the Ohio Lands,
which had been militarily conquered from the French by 1759.
Since the European war with France was not to be ended for four more years, the Ohio
Ohio lands would continue, at least temporarily, from 1759 on, under British military occupation.
First to swing into action, with acclaim to Ohio lands, was the Ohio Company. In 1749,
the Ohio Company, a Virginia Company headed by the president of the royally appointed
Virginia Council, Thomas Lee, and including the Lee family, the Washington family, and
George Mason, induced the Crown to direct Virginia to grant the company 200,000 acres
of French-held land at the strategic forks of the Ohio River. Soon Robert Dinwiddie,
The powerful governor of Virginia from 1751 to 1758, his patron, the powerful imperialist, the Duke of Bedford, and the powerful Mercer and Carter families were added to the Ohio Company.
Now, with Britain in full military control of the Ohio lands, the Ohio Company naturally
swung into action, putting pressure on the Crown and the military for acknowledgement
of its claim.
During 1760, officials of the Company offered Colonel Henry Bouquet, Commandant of Fort
Pitt, a share in the Company.
The Ohio Company, however, met formidable resistance among British officialdom. The new Governor
of Virginia, Francis Fauxquare, was trenchantly opposed to the Ohio Company and to land grants
in general. Furthermore, the British militia dug in for a lengthy stay and constructed many
and many more forts in the Ohio Valley. Finally, the Earl of Egremont in November 1761 officially
proclaimed a British policy of prohibiting all grants to settlements upon Indian lands,
thus blocking the Ohio Company or any other settlement. As soon as the fighting ended
In 1760, General Geoffrey Amherst, the British commander, indulged his absolute contempt
and hatred for the Indians. The substantial supply of presents that the British had been
wont to grant the Indians was suddenly cut off now that France was beaten. Moreover, Amherst
arbitrarily decreed severe restrictions on the amount of ammunition that could be traded
or given to the Indians. With the supply of ammunition, so necessary to their livelihood
of hunting, suddenly cut off, the Indians were naturally embittered against the English.
When the Indians protested, Amherst savagely told them, through intermediaries, that should
they cause any trouble, they must not only expect the severest retaliation, but an entire
As a typical hardliner, Amherst scoffed at the suggestion that the Indians might be either capable of causing or courageous enough to create any real mischief.
He was, therefore, heedless of repeated warnings of probable Indian uprising upon the cutting off of their ammunition.
In addition to cutting off the Indians' supply of ammunition, Amherst ruthlessly blocked their supply of rum.
Not only did he prohibit any sale of rum to the natives, but he also ordered all trading to be confined to the British forts in order to enforce the ban.
Also aggravating Indian resentment was the personal arrogance of the British toward them,
a striking contrast to the previous friendliness and camaraderie of the French.
The Indians were expected to conduct business at the forts and then leave.
The English soldiers were forbidden to fraternize with them.
Another Indian grievance was Amherst's arrogant disregard of English treaties with the Western
The gifts were, of course, made without bothering to purchase the land from the tribes. Alarmed
by the threat to their lands, the Indians were further disturbed by the rapid British
The British construction of new forts, especially the one at Sandusky Bay, on the southwest
shore of Lake Erie. Amherst grew particularly cocky from the ruthless British suppression
during 1761 of a Cherokee uprising in South Carolina. The western Indians were driven
to a point of desperation by the news in early 1763 that their friends, the friends of the
The French had ceded the whole of America east of the Mississippi to the hated British.
Jeffrey Amherst simply shrugged off the problem of disturbed Indians. Whatever idle notions
they may entertain in regard to the sessions can be of very little consequence.
But General Amherst was soon to find out that the consequences were great indeed, for on
On May 7, the Indians launched a general uprising dedicated to driving the hated British out
of all lands west of the Appalachians.
Headed by the great Ottawa chief Pontiac, the Pontiac Rebellion began with the massacre
of a band of British soldiers near Detroit, followed by the rapid conquest of all the
The forts in the northern Ohio Valley, including Fort Sandusky and Fort Miamis, now Fort Wayne,
Indiana, with the exception of the Great Fort of Detroit. This conquest was completed by
the beginning of June 1763 and included the destruction of a troop sent to relieve Detroit
from Indian siege. Hearing the great news of victory, the Indians further east joined
In the Allegheny region, Forts Le Brouff, Presque Isle and Benango were quickly captured by Seneca's and Huron's, and Delaware's and Shawnee's had even besieged Fort Pitt by the end of June.
General Hammerst perfectly exemplified the classical hardliner, the eternally tough enemy of appeasement.
Like all hardliners, he was ignorant of the fears, aims or motivations of those he designated as the enemy.
He knew only that they were evil and contemptible, men easily cowed by the equivalent of a whiff of grape,
Convinced that they would not dare to resist stern and harsh measures, Amherst found, as hardliners invariably do, that repression only provoked resistance, and suddenly the despised enemy was striking and winning on many fronts.
One would think that the hardliner, seeing the abject failure of his policy, seeing his
toughness only provoke conflict, would have the grace to admit his error and retire from
the scene. But the hardliner has never done so. Instead, he takes the outbreak as merely
an indication that only extermination can be the desserts of such a diabolical enemy.
General Amherst's negotiations for peace became more traitorous than ever.
General Amherst reacted to the Indian uprising as might be expected.
At first, and for quite a while, he refused to believe that near savages could have the
gall to attack, much less in danger, post where British soldiers were stationed.
When he finally realized the scope of the war, he could only express amazement.
He could not believe that his own actions might have provoked the war. The enemy must
be irrational.
It is difficult, my lord, he wrote to the British Secretary of State, to account any
causes that can have induced these barbarians to this perfidious attempt.
Driven into frenzy, Amherst vowed, as is typical of the hardliner, ruthless extermination of
He set upon all-out punishment, and frantically ordered his commanders to take no prisoners.
As he ordered one troop, the Indians were to be treated not as a generous enemy, but
as the vilest race of beings that ever infested the earth, and whose riddance from it must
be esteemed a meritorious act for the good of mankind.
We will therefore take no prisoners, but put to death all that fall into your hands.
If the Indians were truly sub-human, then any means for their extermination was proper.
Accordingly Amherst in early July directed his chief aide, Colonel Henry Bouquet, a Swiss
mercenary, to spread smallpox among the Indians. Colonel Bouquet, an apathetic Indian, was
Delighted, Amherst replied, that you will do well to try to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets, as well as to try every other method that can serve to extirpate this excrucable race.
One other method was hunting the Indian vermin down with dogs, but this proved impracticable because of the scarcity of good English hunting dogs in the colonies.
Thus Pontiac's rebellion gave rise to one of the great advances of the art of modern war, germ warfare.
As in the case of other important inventions in history, other great minds were thinking along the same lines, even as General Amherst was adumbrating the concept of germ warfare, his commandant at Fort Pitt had been putting it into practice.
Captain Simeon Ecuaire, another Swiss mercenary, generously gave two smallpox-infected blankets
to the Delaware Indians. The new theory bore fruit, and soon smallpox raged among the Delawares
and the Shawnees, and seriously reduced the fighting spirit of the eastern Ohio tribes.
German Warfare was not decisive, however. The summer of 1763 found all the Ohio country
in the hands of the Indians, except for the besieged forts of Pitt and Detroit. The Indians
proceeded to ravage the frontier settlements of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. By
the end of the year, over a thousand whites had been killed or captured. Unfortunately
For the Indians, neither the more northerly nor the southern Indians revolted. In New
York, the Iroquois, except for the Senecas, remained pro-British. To the south, the Cherokees
were still cowed by the suppression two years earlier, and by the lavish presence given
them at a great conference in Augusta arranged by Lord Egremont.
The turning points of the war were Colonel Bouquet's ability to relieve Fort Pitt after
his victory at Bush-Iran in early August and Fort Detroit's ability to withstand Pontiac's
siege. Pontiac had always clung to the hope that the beloved French, still occupying Louisiana
and the Illinois country, would come to his aid and drive out the English once again.
But in October the French commander in Illinois wrote to Pontiac and told him the facts of
life. The French had made peace and were indeed leaving, and the Indians had better make peace
themselves. His heart no longer in the war, Pontiac offered peace, and the offer was accepted
by the Commandant of Detroit. The Indians were ready to quit and make peace. The big
The question now was the attitude of the British Army. Would it make peace calmly and bloodlessly?
Or would it insist on bloody vengeance to be wreaked upon guilty and innocent Indians
alike in the name of punishment? Amherst, no longer a hero, had been happy to hurry
back to England in October, leaving General Thomas Gage with the task of crushing the
Gage's instincts were certainly a hard line, but he soon realized that a policy of suppressing
the Western Indians would at least drive them west of the Mississippi into Louisiana and
thus end the lucrative British beaver trade with them.
The Indians to the East, however, had no such escape route, so Gage sent out two punitive
expeditions in the summer and fall of 1764. But Colonel John Bradstreet, leaving Fort
Niagara in the summer with a formidable force, had either the wisdom or the naivete to circumvent
and Gage's rather vague orders, and to conclude a just and easy peace with the Shawnees and
the Delawares, insisting only on the Indians' surrender of all their English prisoners.
Gage and Bouquet were furious at this failure to wreak vengeance to punish these infamous
murders by the Indians. Gage refused to ratify the peace and ordered an attack on the Indians,
who at the same time had failed to surrender the white prisoners.
Colonel Bouquet was now sent out in the fall of 1764 from Fort Pitt with orders to pillage
and kill all the Shawnees and Delawares in Ohio that they could find and to burn all
their villages.
He was then to force the Indians not only to surrender prisoners but also to deliver
Booker up the murderers of white traders to pay a high indignity to the traders and to
renounce all land east of the Ohio River.
Booker, however, found out that the Indians had been preparing to surrender their prisoners
to Brad Street and, out in the field, even the tough Booker agreed to forego punishment
for the prompt surrender of captives.
By mid-November, with Gage giving him carte blanche, Bouquet had concluded peace with
the Delawares and Shawnees in return for the prompt return of white prisoners. Unfortunately,
the British insisted on forced repatriation, including as prisoners all whites who had
grown to prefer Indian life and half-breed children born in the Indian camps. At any
At any rate, rationality triumphed over repression, and a formal and harmonious peace was concluded
with Delaware's and Shawnee's in the spring of 1765. The only imposed indemnity was to
be land granted as compensation to the English traders.