Pontiac (Native American chief)

Pontiac (Native American chief) (1720?-1769), chief of the Ottawa people and leader of the confederate tribes of the Ohio Valley and Lake Region against the British in 1763-1765. He distinguished himself in the French service at an early age and is said to have led the warriors of his own tribe against the British army officer Edward Braddock in 1755. With the object of driving the British from their frontier possessions and reestablishing Native American autonomy, Pontiac organized a confederacy that embraced virtually all the tribes from the head of Lake Superior almost to the Gulf of Mexico. According to the arrangement the warriors of each tribe, on a concerted day, early in May 1763, were to attack the garrison in their immediate neighborhood. Pontiac himself was to lead the assault at Detroit.

In the great wilderness extending from the Pennsylvania frontier to Lake Superior were 14 British posts, of which the most important were Fort Pitt, Detroit, and Mackinaw. The Native Americans captured all but four of the posts, Niagara, Pitt, Ligonier, and Detroit. Mackinaw was taken by a stratagem, and the entire garrison was killed. A plot for the capture of Detroit seems to have been betrayed to the commanding officer by a Native American woman, and failed, but Pontiac at once began a siege that lasted for five months. Reinforcements finally succeeded in entering Detroit; Pontiac's men began to desert him, and the news of the signing of a peace treaty between France and Great Britain removed all hopes of French aid. Pontiac thereupon raised the siege and on August 17, 1765, entered into a formal peace treaty, which he confirmed at Oswego in 1766. Three years later he was murdered by a member of the Illinois tribe.