dians forced the British to surrender nine posts: Fort 

 Michillimackinac on the straits between Lakes Huron 

 and Michigan; Fort Edward Augustus at Green Bay, 

 Wisconsin; Fort St. Joseph at Niles, Michigan; Fort 

 Ouiatenon at present Lafayette, Indiana; Fort Miami 

 at present Fort Wayne, Fort Sandusky in northern 

 Ohio, and three posts on the northwestern Pennsyl- 

 vania frontier. The first six were in localities with small 

 French and metis (Indian and White) civilian pop- 

 ulations engaged in trading and farming. The British 

 held out in only two western forts, Pittsburgh and 

 Detroit. 



Pontiac ended the six-month siege of Detroit in 

 late October, 1 763 after an early snowfall forecast the 

 need to begin winter hunting, and after a French 

 messenger arrived from Fort Chartres, Illinois, bring- 

 ing first news of the terms of the Treaty of Paris signed 

 in June, 1763. This treaty ended the global warfare in 

 which the North American Indians had become in- 

 volved. In European, but certainly not in native Amer- 

 ican perception, the treaty transferred to Great Britain 

 all the French territory east of the Mississippi River, but 

 the New Orleans district and Province of Louisiana 

 west of the Mississippi went to Spain. Pontiac did not 

 really believe the report of the peace terms, and he 

 went to Fort Chartres, still hoping for French assist- 



ance. The French communities in southwestern Illi- 

 nois, as well as Vincennes in southern Indiana, were 

 not part of Canada, which admittedly had been con- 

 quered, but were on the northern edge of French 

 Louisiana. Illinois Indians made a futile appeal to the 

 French governor in New Orleans, and sympathetic In- 

 dians prevented British occupation of Fort Chartres 

 until Pontiac agreed to make peace in 1765. No longer 

 a war leader, Pontiac's influence faded before his mur- 

 der in 1769. 



Though the French left the Great Lakes Indian 

 country, native leaders still had diplomatic alternatives 

 when the Spanish established headquarters for Upper 

 Louisiana in 1770 at St. Louis, Missouri, founded by 

 French from Illinois in 1764- The Spanish presence in 

 the Mississippi Valley until recession to France in 1802 

 and subsequent purchase by the United States in 1803, 

 brought a new element into the western Great Lakes 

 frontier. During the next quarter-century, the Illinois, 

 beleaguered Shawnees, and their Cherokee allies, 

 the Delaware, Kickapoo, and Miami, sought Spanish 

 protection on the west bank of the Mississippi River. 



In the years following the general uprising associ- 

 ated with Pontiac, the principal concern of all Indian 

 people west of the Appalachian mountains was the pre- 

 vention of further loss of land to the advancing white 



11 



Floor mat, Potawatomi. Cat 1 5571 1 

 Photo by Ron Testa, neg 1 1 0293c 



