WEBVTT NOTE 2. The Ohio Lands: Pontiac's Rebellion 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.000 Volume 3, Chapter 2, The Ohio Lands, Pontiac's Rebellion 2 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:14.160 The first and immediate problem the British faced was what to do with the Ohio Lands, 3 00:00:14.160 --> 00:00:19.480 which had been militarily conquered from the French by 1759. 4 00:00:19.480 --> 00:00:24.560 Since the European war with France was not to be ended for four more years, the Ohio 5 00:00:24.560 --> 00:00:34.520 Ohio lands would continue, at least temporarily, from 1759 on, under British military occupation. 6 00:00:34.520 --> 00:00:42.360 First to swing into action, with acclaim to Ohio lands, was the Ohio Company. In 1749, 7 00:00:42.360 --> 00:00:47.940 the Ohio Company, a Virginia Company headed by the president of the royally appointed 8 00:00:47.940 --> 00:00:54.760 Virginia Council, Thomas Lee, and including the Lee family, the Washington family, and 9 00:00:54.760 --> 00:01:03.040 George Mason, induced the Crown to direct Virginia to grant the company 200,000 acres 10 00:01:03.040 --> 00:01:11.400 of French-held land at the strategic forks of the Ohio River. Soon Robert Dinwiddie, 11 00:01:11.400 --> 00:01:26.400 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. 12 00:01:26.400 --> 00:01:35.080 Now, with Britain in full military control of the Ohio lands, the Ohio Company naturally 13 00:01:35.080 --> 00:01:40.560 swung into action, putting pressure on the Crown and the military for acknowledgement 14 00:01:40.560 --> 00:01:42.520 of its claim. 15 00:01:42.520 --> 00:01:49.720 During 1760, officials of the Company offered Colonel Henry Bouquet, Commandant of Fort 16 00:01:49.720 --> 00:01:53.080 Pitt, a share in the Company. 17 00:01:53.080 --> 00:02:00.480 The Ohio Company, however, met formidable resistance among British officialdom. The new Governor 18 00:02:00.480 --> 00:02:07.680 of Virginia, Francis Fauxquare, was trenchantly opposed to the Ohio Company and to land grants 19 00:02:07.680 --> 00:02:14.160 in general. Furthermore, the British militia dug in for a lengthy stay and constructed many 20 00:02:14.160 --> 00:02:23.360 and many more forts in the Ohio Valley. Finally, the Earl of Egremont in November 1761 officially 21 00:02:23.360 --> 00:02:30.560 proclaimed a British policy of prohibiting all grants to settlements upon Indian lands, 22 00:02:30.560 --> 00:02:36.920 thus blocking the Ohio Company or any other settlement. As soon as the fighting ended 23 00:02:36.920 --> 00:02:43.920 In 1760, General Geoffrey Amherst, the British commander, indulged his absolute contempt 24 00:02:45.280 --> 00:02:51.520 and hatred for the Indians. The substantial supply of presents that the British had been 25 00:02:51.520 --> 00:02:58.520 wont to grant the Indians was suddenly cut off now that France was beaten. Moreover, Amherst 26 00:02:59.760 --> 00:03:05.860 arbitrarily decreed severe restrictions on the amount of ammunition that could be traded 27 00:03:05.860 --> 00:03:12.040 or given to the Indians. With the supply of ammunition, so necessary to their livelihood 28 00:03:12.040 --> 00:03:19.100 of hunting, suddenly cut off, the Indians were naturally embittered against the English. 29 00:03:19.100 --> 00:03:26.020 When the Indians protested, Amherst savagely told them, through intermediaries, that should 30 00:03:26.020 --> 00:03:33.140 they cause any trouble, they must not only expect the severest retaliation, but an entire 31 00:03:33.140 --> 00:03:57.140 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. 32 00:03:57.140 --> 00:04:06.140 He was, therefore, heedless of repeated warnings of probable Indian uprising upon the cutting off of their ammunition. 33 00:04:06.140 --> 00:04:14.140 In addition to cutting off the Indians' supply of ammunition, Amherst ruthlessly blocked their supply of rum. 34 00:04:14.140 --> 00:04:26.140 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. 35 00:04:26.140 --> 00:04:32.860 Also aggravating Indian resentment was the personal arrogance of the British toward them, 36 00:04:32.860 --> 00:04:39.780 a striking contrast to the previous friendliness and camaraderie of the French. 37 00:04:39.780 --> 00:04:44.300 The Indians were expected to conduct business at the forts and then leave. 38 00:04:44.300 --> 00:04:49.980 The English soldiers were forbidden to fraternize with them. 39 00:04:49.980 --> 00:04:55.900 Another Indian grievance was Amherst's arrogant disregard of English treaties with the Western 40 00:04:55.900 --> 00:05:16.540 The gifts were, of course, made without bothering to purchase the land from the tribes. Alarmed 41 00:05:16.540 --> 00:05:21.480 by the threat to their lands, the Indians were further disturbed by the rapid British 42 00:05:21.480 --> 00:05:27.800 The British construction of new forts, especially the one at Sandusky Bay, on the southwest 43 00:05:27.800 --> 00:05:34.800 shore of Lake Erie. Amherst grew particularly cocky from the ruthless British suppression 44 00:05:35.100 --> 00:05:42.100 during 1761 of a Cherokee uprising in South Carolina. The western Indians were driven 45 00:05:44.140 --> 00:05:51.140 to a point of desperation by the news in early 1763 that their friends, the friends of the 46 00:05:51.480 --> 00:05:58.760 The French had ceded the whole of America east of the Mississippi to the hated British. 47 00:05:58.760 --> 00:06:04.900 Jeffrey Amherst simply shrugged off the problem of disturbed Indians. Whatever idle notions 48 00:06:04.900 --> 00:06:11.740 they may entertain in regard to the sessions can be of very little consequence. 49 00:06:11.740 --> 00:06:18.120 But General Amherst was soon to find out that the consequences were great indeed, for on 50 00:06:18.120 --> 00:06:25.160 On May 7, the Indians launched a general uprising dedicated to driving the hated British out 51 00:06:25.160 --> 00:06:28.920 of all lands west of the Appalachians. 52 00:06:28.920 --> 00:06:36.160 Headed by the great Ottawa chief Pontiac, the Pontiac Rebellion began with the massacre 53 00:06:36.160 --> 00:06:42.700 of a band of British soldiers near Detroit, followed by the rapid conquest of all the 54 00:06:42.700 --> 00:06:50.420 The forts in the northern Ohio Valley, including Fort Sandusky and Fort Miamis, now Fort Wayne, 55 00:06:50.420 --> 00:06:56.740 Indiana, with the exception of the Great Fort of Detroit. This conquest was completed by 56 00:06:56.740 --> 00:07:03.500 the beginning of June 1763 and included the destruction of a troop sent to relieve Detroit 57 00:07:03.500 --> 00:07:10.540 from Indian siege. Hearing the great news of victory, the Indians further east joined 58 00:07:10.540 --> 00:07:27.540 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. 59 00:07:27.540 --> 00:07:37.540 General Hammerst perfectly exemplified the classical hardliner, the eternally tough enemy of appeasement. 60 00:07:37.540 --> 00:07:47.540 Like all hardliners, he was ignorant of the fears, aims or motivations of those he designated as the enemy. 61 00:07:47.540 --> 00:07:56.540 He knew only that they were evil and contemptible, men easily cowed by the equivalent of a whiff of grape, 62 00:07:56.540 --> 00:08:15.540 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. 63 00:08:15.540 --> 00:08:22.460 One would think that the hardliner, seeing the abject failure of his policy, seeing his 64 00:08:22.460 --> 00:08:29.000 toughness only provoke conflict, would have the grace to admit his error and retire from 65 00:08:29.000 --> 00:08:37.620 the scene. But the hardliner has never done so. Instead, he takes the outbreak as merely 66 00:08:37.620 --> 00:08:45.280 an indication that only extermination can be the desserts of such a diabolical enemy. 67 00:08:45.280 --> 00:08:51.740 General Amherst's negotiations for peace became more traitorous than ever. 68 00:08:51.740 --> 00:08:55.860 General Amherst reacted to the Indian uprising as might be expected. 69 00:08:55.860 --> 00:09:01.460 At first, and for quite a while, he refused to believe that near savages could have the 70 00:09:01.460 --> 00:09:09.020 gall to attack, much less in danger, post where British soldiers were stationed. 71 00:09:09.020 --> 00:09:13.980 When he finally realized the scope of the war, he could only express amazement. 72 00:09:13.980 --> 00:09:21.020 He could not believe that his own actions might have provoked the war. The enemy must 73 00:09:21.020 --> 00:09:22.020 be irrational. 74 00:09:22.020 --> 00:09:28.280 It is difficult, my lord, he wrote to the British Secretary of State, to account any 75 00:09:28.280 --> 00:09:35.060 causes that can have induced these barbarians to this perfidious attempt. 76 00:09:35.060 --> 00:09:41.540 Driven into frenzy, Amherst vowed, as is typical of the hardliner, ruthless extermination of 77 00:09:41.540 --> 00:09:50.820 He set upon all-out punishment, and frantically ordered his commanders to take no prisoners. 78 00:09:50.820 --> 00:09:56.620 As he ordered one troop, the Indians were to be treated not as a generous enemy, but 79 00:09:56.620 --> 00:10:03.060 as the vilest race of beings that ever infested the earth, and whose riddance from it must 80 00:10:03.060 --> 00:10:08.580 be esteemed a meritorious act for the good of mankind. 81 00:10:08.580 --> 00:10:15.580 We will therefore take no prisoners, but put to death all that fall into your hands. 82 00:10:17.460 --> 00:10:24.460 If the Indians were truly sub-human, then any means for their extermination was proper. 83 00:10:24.540 --> 00:10:31.220 Accordingly Amherst in early July directed his chief aide, Colonel Henry Bouquet, a Swiss 84 00:10:31.220 --> 00:10:38.220 mercenary, to spread smallpox among the Indians. Colonel Bouquet, an apathetic Indian, was 85 00:10:38.580 --> 00:11:03.580 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. 86 00:11:03.580 --> 00:11:16.580 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. 87 00:11:16.580 --> 00:11:26.580 Thus Pontiac's rebellion gave rise to one of the great advances of the art of modern war, germ warfare. 88 00:11:26.580 --> 00:11:45.580 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. 89 00:11:45.580 --> 00:11:54.300 Captain Simeon Ecuaire, another Swiss mercenary, generously gave two smallpox-infected blankets 90 00:11:54.300 --> 00:12:02.300 to the Delaware Indians. The new theory bore fruit, and soon smallpox raged among the Delawares 91 00:12:02.300 --> 00:12:08.060 and the Shawnees, and seriously reduced the fighting spirit of the eastern Ohio tribes. 92 00:12:08.060 --> 00:12:15.060 German Warfare was not decisive, however. The summer of 1763 found all the Ohio country 93 00:12:17.420 --> 00:12:24.420 in the hands of the Indians, except for the besieged forts of Pitt and Detroit. The Indians 94 00:12:24.580 --> 00:12:31.200 proceeded to ravage the frontier settlements of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. By 95 00:12:31.200 --> 00:12:37.420 the end of the year, over a thousand whites had been killed or captured. Unfortunately 96 00:12:37.420 --> 00:12:43.780 For the Indians, neither the more northerly nor the southern Indians revolted. In New 97 00:12:43.780 --> 00:12:50.940 York, the Iroquois, except for the Senecas, remained pro-British. To the south, the Cherokees 98 00:12:50.940 --> 00:12:56.440 were still cowed by the suppression two years earlier, and by the lavish presence given 99 00:12:56.440 --> 00:13:03.480 them at a great conference in Augusta arranged by Lord Egremont. 100 00:13:03.480 --> 00:13:09.360 The turning points of the war were Colonel Bouquet's ability to relieve Fort Pitt after 101 00:13:09.360 --> 00:13:15.480 his victory at Bush-Iran in early August and Fort Detroit's ability to withstand Pontiac's 102 00:13:15.480 --> 00:13:22.860 siege. Pontiac had always clung to the hope that the beloved French, still occupying Louisiana 103 00:13:22.860 --> 00:13:29.620 and the Illinois country, would come to his aid and drive out the English once again. 104 00:13:29.620 --> 00:13:34.660 But in October the French commander in Illinois wrote to Pontiac and told him the facts of 105 00:13:34.660 --> 00:13:41.660 life. The French had made peace and were indeed leaving, and the Indians had better make peace 106 00:13:41.660 --> 00:13:49.040 themselves. His heart no longer in the war, Pontiac offered peace, and the offer was accepted 107 00:13:49.040 --> 00:13:56.160 by the Commandant of Detroit. The Indians were ready to quit and make peace. The big 108 00:13:56.160 --> 00:14:03.960 The question now was the attitude of the British Army. Would it make peace calmly and bloodlessly? 109 00:14:03.960 --> 00:14:10.000 Or would it insist on bloody vengeance to be wreaked upon guilty and innocent Indians 110 00:14:10.000 --> 00:14:16.760 alike in the name of punishment? Amherst, no longer a hero, had been happy to hurry 111 00:14:16.760 --> 00:14:22.840 back to England in October, leaving General Thomas Gage with the task of crushing the 112 00:14:22.840 --> 00:14:37.780 Gage's instincts were certainly a hard line, but he soon realized that a policy of suppressing 113 00:14:37.780 --> 00:14:45.400 the Western Indians would at least drive them west of the Mississippi into Louisiana and 114 00:14:45.400 --> 00:14:50.760 thus end the lucrative British beaver trade with them. 115 00:14:50.760 --> 00:14:57.940 The Indians to the East, however, had no such escape route, so Gage sent out two punitive 116 00:14:57.940 --> 00:15:05.980 expeditions in the summer and fall of 1764. But Colonel John Bradstreet, leaving Fort 117 00:15:05.980 --> 00:15:13.960 Niagara in the summer with a formidable force, had either the wisdom or the naivete to circumvent 118 00:15:13.960 --> 00:15:21.080 and Gage's rather vague orders, and to conclude a just and easy peace with the Shawnees and 119 00:15:21.080 --> 00:15:28.080 the Delawares, insisting only on the Indians' surrender of all their English prisoners. 120 00:15:28.080 --> 00:15:34.360 Gage and Bouquet were furious at this failure to wreak vengeance to punish these infamous 121 00:15:34.360 --> 00:15:41.580 murders by the Indians. Gage refused to ratify the peace and ordered an attack on the Indians, 122 00:15:41.580 --> 00:15:46.480 who at the same time had failed to surrender the white prisoners. 123 00:15:46.480 --> 00:15:52.860 Colonel Bouquet was now sent out in the fall of 1764 from Fort Pitt with orders to pillage 124 00:15:52.860 --> 00:15:59.180 and kill all the Shawnees and Delawares in Ohio that they could find and to burn all 125 00:15:59.180 --> 00:16:01.100 their villages. 126 00:16:01.100 --> 00:16:06.020 He was then to force the Indians not only to surrender prisoners but also to deliver 127 00:16:06.020 --> 00:16:12.460 Booker up the murderers of white traders to pay a high indignity to the traders and to 128 00:16:12.460 --> 00:16:15.900 renounce all land east of the Ohio River. 129 00:16:15.900 --> 00:16:21.960 Booker, however, found out that the Indians had been preparing to surrender their prisoners 130 00:16:21.960 --> 00:16:29.380 to Brad Street and, out in the field, even the tough Booker agreed to forego punishment 131 00:16:29.380 --> 00:16:32.680 for the prompt surrender of captives. 132 00:16:32.680 --> 00:16:38.880 By mid-November, with Gage giving him carte blanche, Bouquet had concluded peace with 133 00:16:38.880 --> 00:16:46.320 the Delawares and Shawnees in return for the prompt return of white prisoners. Unfortunately, 134 00:16:46.320 --> 00:16:53.540 the British insisted on forced repatriation, including as prisoners all whites who had 135 00:16:53.540 --> 00:17:01.280 grown to prefer Indian life and half-breed children born in the Indian camps. At any 136 00:17:01.280 --> 00:17:08.280 At any rate, rationality triumphed over repression, and a formal and harmonious peace was concluded 137 00:17:08.920 --> 00:17:15.920 with Delaware's and Shawnee's in the spring of 1765. The only imposed indemnity was to 138 00:17:17.400 --> 00:17:24.400 be land granted as compensation to the English traders.