18 ғасырдағы Жерорталық Американың соғыс басшысы Понтиак

18th century Native American war chief

Pontiac or Obwaandi'eyaag (c. 1714/20 – April 20, 1769) was an Odawa war chief known for his role in the war named for him, from 1763 to 1766 leading Native Americans in an armed struggle against the British in the Great Lakes region due to, among other reasons, dissatisfaction with British policies. It followed the British victory in the French and Indian War, the American front of the Seven Years' War. Pontiac's importance in the war that bears his name has been debated. Historical accounts from the 19th century portrayed him as the mastermind and leader of the revolt, but some subsequent scholars argued that his role had been exaggerated. Historians today generally view him as an important local leader who influenced a wider movement that he did not command. The war began in May 1763 when Pontiac and 300 followers attempted to take Fort Detroit by surprise. His plan foiled, Pontiac laid siege to the fort, where he was eventually joined by more than 900 warriors from a half dozen tribes. Meanwhile, messengers spread the word of Pontiac's actions, and the war expanded far beyond Detroit. In July 1763, Pontiac defeated a British detachment at the Battle of Bloody Run, but he was unable to capture the fort. In October, he lifted the siege and withdrew to the Illinois Country. Pontiac's actions contributed to the British Crown's issuance of the Proclamation of 1763, which prohibited any settlers west of the Appalachian Mountains to preserve an area for Native Americans. Pontiac's influence declined around Detroit because of the siege but he gained stature as he continued to encourage the various tribal leaders to fight against the British. Seeking to end the war, British officials made him the focus of their diplomatic efforts. In July 1766, he made peace with British Superintendent of Indian Affairs Sir William Johnson. The British attention to Pontiac aroused resentment among other tribal leaders, as the war effort was decentralized. Pontiac claimed greater authority than he possessed. He was increasingly ostracized and in 1769 he was assassinated by a Peoria warrior.

Contemporaneous documents reveal little about Pontiac before 1763. He was probably born between 1712 and 1725, perhaps at an Odawa village on the Detroit or Maumee River. Other sources state that he may have been born in Defiance, Ohio. Pontiac was always identified as Odawa by people who knew him. Since 1723 he had also lived in close proximity to Fort Detroit (which he later besieged). Pontiac was married to a woman named Kantuckee Gun in 1716 and they had 2 children both sons. They also had a daughter, Marie Manon who is described as a Salteuse or Saulteaux Indian. She is buried in Assumption Cemetery in Windsor, Ontario. By 1747, Pontiac had become a war leader among the Odawa, when he allied with New France against a resistance movement led by Nicholas Orontony, a Huron leader. Nicolas had also allowed the English to build a trading post, Fort Sandusky, in 1745 near Sandusky Bay in Ohio country. Pontiac continued to support the French during the French and Indian War (1754–1763) against British colonists and their allied Native Americans. He may have taken part in the famous French and Indian victory over the Braddock expedition on July 9, 1755, although there is no direct evidence. In one of the earliest accounts of Pontiac, Robert Rogers, a noted British frontier soldier, claimed to have met with the warrior chief in 1760, although many details in Rogers' story are unreliable. Rogers wrote a play about Pontiac called Ponteach: or the Savages of America (1765), which helped to make the Odawa leader famous and began the process of mythologizing about him. According to historian Richard White, the play made Pontiac "the most famous Indian of the eighteenth century".

Pontiac's final years are sparsely documented. He was summoned to Detroit in August 1767 to testify in the investigation of the murder of Elizabeth "Betty" Fisher, a seven year old English colonist. In 1763 during the siege of Detroit, an Odawa war party had attacked the Fisher farm, killing Betty's parents and taking the girl captive. The following year, while Betty was still captive at Pontiac's village, she tried to warm herself at Pontiac's fire. The girl was sick with dysentery, and Pontiac became angry when she soiled some of his clothes. According to court testimony, Pontiac picked up the naked child, threw her into the Maumee River, and called upon a French speaking ally to wade into the river and drown her. This was done. The French colonist who drowned Fisher was later arrested by the British, but he had escaped by the time that Pontiac came to testify. Pontiac neither confirmed nor denied his role in the murder, and the investigation was eventually dropped. The attention paid to Pontiac by the British Crown encouraged him to assert more power among the Indians of the region than he possessed by traditional rights. "By 1766 he was acting arrogantly and imperiously," wrote historian Richard White, "assuming powers no western Indian leader possessed." In 1768, he was forced to leave his Odawa village on the Maumee River and relocate near Ouiatenon on the Wabash River. On May 10, 1768, he dictated a letter to British officials in which he explained that he was no longer recognized as a chief by the people of his village on the Maumee. Pontiac was assassinated on April 20, 1769, near the French town of Cahokia. Most accounts place his murder in Cahokia, but historian Gregory Dowd wrote that the killing probably happened in a nearby Indian village. The killer was a Peoria warrior whose name has not been preserved. He was apparently avenging his uncle, a Peoria chief named Makachinga (Black Dog), whom Pontiac had stabbed and badly wounded in 1766. A Peoria band council had authorized Pontiac's execution. The Peoria warrior came behind Pontiac, stunned him by clubbing him, and stabbed him to death. Various rumors quickly spread about the circumstances of Pontiac's death, including one that the British had hired his killer. Benjamin Drake, writing in 1848, records that the Michigamie, along with the other bands in the Illinois Confederation, had been attacked by a general confederation of the Sauk, Fox, Kickapoo, Sioux, Chippewa, Odawa, and Potawatomi, along with the Cherokee and Choctawa from the south. The war continued for a great many years until the Illinois Confederation was destroyed. Drake records that by 1826, only about 500 members of the Confederation remained. Lieutenant Pike, in his travels to the sources of the Mississippi, remarked, "By killing the celebrated Sauk chief, Pontiac, the Illinois, Cahokias, Kaskaskias, and Peorias kindled a war with the allied nations of the Sauks and Reynards, which has been the cause of the almost entire destruction of the former nations." According to a story recorded by historian Francis Parkman in The Conspiracy of Pontiac (1851), a terrible war of retaliation against the Peoria resulted from Pontiac's murder. This legend is still sometimes repeated, but there is no evidence that there were any Indian reprisals for Pontiac's murder. Pontiac's burial place is unknown, and may have been at Cahokia. But evidence and tradition suggest that his body was taken across the river and buried in St. Louis, recently founded by French colonists from New Orleans and the Illinois Country. In 1900, the Daughters of the American Revolution placed a commemorative plaque at the southeast corner of Walnut and S Broadway in St. Louis, which was said to be near Pontiac's burial place.

Historians have differed in their assessments of Pontiac's importance. Older accounts of the war portrayed him as a ruthless but brilliant mastermind behind a massive "conspiracy" which was planned in advance. For example, Norman Barton Wood dubbed him the "Red Napoleon". Historians today generally agree that Pontiac's actions at Detroit were the spark that instigated the widespread uprising, and that he helped to spread the resistance by sending emissaries urging other leaders to join it, but he did not command the various tribal war leaders as a whole. They operated in a highly decentralized way. In addition, tribal leaders around Fort Pitt and Fort Niagara, for example, had long been calling for a declaration of war against the British; they were not led by Pontiac. According to historian John Sugden, Pontiac "was neither the originator nor the strategist of the rebellion, but he kindled it by daring to act, and his early successes, ambition, and determination won him a temporary prominence not enjoyed by any of the other Indian leaders." The British assumed that chiefs were able to hold more authority than they usually did, and failed to recognize the decentralized nature of the Indian bands and tribes. Places named for Pontiac include the cities of Pontiac in Michigan and Illinois in the United States; Pontiac, Quebec, in Canada; and the Pontiac Regional County Municipality in Quebec. Pontiac was also the name of a popular automobile brand of General Motors, developed and originally based in Detroit, which was discontinued in 2010. A Belgian watch company was also named after him, reportedly because he was able to tell the time by the stars. Various streets and buildings throughout the US are named after Pontiac.