![]() Burdened with a vision from the “Master of Life” (the “Great Spirit” to others), Neolin expressed that Native Americans had become too dependent on Europeans for their livelihoods, particularly when it came to the tools and weapons they used on a daily basis. Simultaneous to these developments was the spread of a revitalization movement by the Delaware Prophet, Neolin. Coupled with the post-war encroachments on Native territories by colonists, imperial restrictions on trade, and stationing English troops in the Great Lakes and Ohio River Valley, Native American groups such as the Ottawa and Iroquois complained “These steps appears to them as if the English have a mind to cut them off the face of the earth.” 1 Therefore, Amherst violated Native expectations and, in effect, severed potential alliance between the British Empire and Indigenous nations. But in most Indigenous societies, gifting was culturally important and cemented the political relationships between two parties. In the end, the governor general in North America – Jeffrey Amherst – summed up British attitudes toward Native Americans, who were “the Vilest Race of Beings that Ever Infested the Earth,” and he was “fully convinced the only true method of treating those is to keep them in a proper subjection.” Most egregiously, Amherst discontinued the political tradition of gift-giving, an unnecessary cost in his eyes. At the same time, the English inherited an elaborate system of alliances with the Indigenous peoples of those regions, which prompted imperial administrators to deliberate on whether or not Native Americans were the subjects of empire or autonomous polities. Following the British victory in 1763, the empire sought to integrate former French and Spanish territories – Canada, Florida, and the Great Lakes – into its American dominion. The origins of “Pontiac’s Rebellion” can be traced to the political fallout of the Seven Years’ War. However, the American colonists resented the empire’s change of heart, given that such conciliatory measures ran counter to their anxieties and hostility toward Native Americans, which contributed to the growing disillusionment that culminated in revolution. Even though the conflict ended in a stalemate after two years of intense fighting, the British Empire was forced to reconsider its policy toward Native Americans, ultimately recognizing Indigenous autonomy. Although the war originated in the Great Lakes and Ohio River Valley, the violence spread as fast west to the Illinois Country and as far east to western Virginia. Also known as “Pontiac’s War” or “Pontiac’s Uprising,” the violence represented an unprecedented pan-Indian resistance to European colonization in North America, in which Indigenous nations – Ottawa, Delaware, Potawatomie, Shawnee, Mingo (Seneca), Wyandot, Ojibwe, Huron, Choctaw, Piankashaw, Kickapoo, Tunica, Peoria, and Mascouten – challenged the attempts by the British Empire to impose its will and abrogate Native sovereignty. Pontiac’s Rebellion (1763-1765) was an armed conflict between the British Empire and Algonquian, Iroquoian, Muskogean, and Siouan-speaking Native Americans following the Seven Years’ War.
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