By the start of 1761, the British army had managed to occupy all the French forts and trading posts in the Ohio Country and along the Great Lakes. With Quebec conquered and the local Algonquian and Iroquoian peoples seemingly subdued, they began the process of integrating the new territory into the British Empire. While the French had treated the various native nations and groups as allies and trading partners, the British, led by generals who had zero experience dealing with the natives, saw them as a conquered people. As such, they stopped the practice of giving gifts to local leaders and restricted the sale of gunpowder. Basically, they tried to swing their dicks around and ended up looking like a bunch of assholes.
Overall, the British couldn’t have chosen a worst time to act like a bunch of jackasses. Smallpox was still ravaging the region, which combined with the French losing the war, was having a significant destabilizing affect on the political situation. Native nations and towns were becoming increasingly divided between the old guard who did not wish to return to war and the more hawkish who wanted to get shit started again. The end of the gift giving and the restriction of gunpowder, which many natives relied upon to hunt for both commerce and food, only pushed more natives into the let’s fuck some shit up side of things. Several prominent native leaders, foremost amongst them a member of the Odawa nation named Pontiac, began to openly call for the various nations and tribes to unite to force the British out, and a religious movement swept across the region, combining native and European religious practices and calling for a return to a more traditional way of life. For nearly two years tireless efforts by people on both sides managed to keep the peace, but it all came to an end in the spring of 1763 when the French formally surrendered all claims to the region. The end of the possibility of the more amicable French returning tipped the scales and what had been a tinder box blew up into a fiery shit storm. Pontiac and his followers attacked an important fort, an act which spurred others to attack forts and trading post across the Ohio Country and Great Lakes region, while others began raiding frontier settlements in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.
What became known as Pontiac’s War was a real clusterfuck. Caught by surprise, the British regulars in the area found themselves besieged and divided, while the colonies were quickly overwhelmed by thousands of refugees fleeing eastward. Who exactly was doing the attacking was rather confusing. Rather than specific nations or bands declaring war, the attackers were collections of individuals from across the Midwest and Great Lakes led by whichever leader happened to inspire them the most. Having learned how to fight effectively together during the French and Indian War, they coalesced again, though often with very differing goals ranging from trying to force the British out, to revenge for past wrongs, to just wanting to raid and plunder. As a result of this confusion, the British and colonists were unsure how to attack back, resulting in them just beating the crap out of any native they came upon. Many colonies also enacted bounties, paying for any native scalp delivered. In Pennsylvania, a paramilitary group known as the Paxton Boys slaughtered multiple native villages throughout the colony before being stopped by the colonial militia, most of whom were peaceful and largely assimilated into European culture.
Not understanding the political situation across the Atlantic, many of the native fighters hoped their attacks would inspire the French to return or at least provide aid, which resulted in most French traders and settlers being left alone, but of course this was a hope in vain. The chaos lasted for over a year, until the summer of 1764, when a combined force of British regulars and colonial militia marched into the Ohio Country, destroying every sign of native habitation they came upon. The various nations and towns quickly did everything they could to show they were peaceful, including handing over those who had participated in the war, leading to most participants fleeing west for the relative safety of the Illinois Country. Unwilling to pursue them, the British instead looked for a diplomatic solution. First, the British re-established the old French way of doing things, providing gifts and generally recognizing the sovereignty of the native nations over their lands. Second, the area between the Appalachian Mountains and Mississippi River were declared an Indian Reserve, where no Europeans could settle outside of sanctioned forts and trading posts. As a result, the war was effectively over by 1765.
Though the natives were placated by the changes, they made others decidedly unhappy. French settlers along the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers, forced to leave, largely re-settled around the now Spanish trading post of St. Louis, turning it into a burgeoning town. Further east, colonists living along the Appalachian frontier, reacting with contempt, continued pushing deeper into what is today West Virginia and western Pennsylvania. Unwilling to use force to stop the illegal settlements, the British instead negotiated treaties with the Cherokee and Iroquois Confederacy to buy the disputed territory, followed by a second treaty with the Cherokee in 1770 which purchased land in what is today eastern Tennessee. Of course, in all of this the Shawnee and several other native groups, who actually lived in the area, were not consulted. As a result, a short but violent conflict called Lord Dunmore’s War broke out in 1774, which ended with the Virginia militia forcefully pushing the natives west across the Ohio River. Overall, the British attempts to create an Indian Reserve did little to end conflict, instead just setting as standard the belief that assimilation and peaceful coexistence between colonists and natives was impossible.
