Chief Pontiac illustration   Save
Pontiac Collection
Description: Reproduction of an illustration depicting Pontiac, an Ottawa chief. This portrait appears as a print in SC 208, the Chief Pontiac Collection, and in publication in "The Lives of Famous Indian Chiefs" by Norman B. Wood (1906). Chief Pontiac was born ca. 1720. By 1755, he was a chief of the Ottawas. Pontiac subscribed to the religious beliefs of Neolin, a prophet of the Delaware people, who encouraged native people to forsake English goods and customs. When the French and Indian War ended in 1763, all French lands in North America were turned over to the English. American Indians lost their long-time French ally and worried that more British settlers would come to the Ohio Country. Pontiac and the Ottawas, in the interest of protecting their lands, encouraged tribes in the Ohio Country to rise up in 1763. The Ottawa attacked Fort Detroit in May 1763; the Shawnee, Munsee, Wyandot, Seneca and Delaware people also raided English settlements in the Ohio Country and in western Pennsylvania during 1763. The English military invaded the Ohio Country from Pennsylvania in the fall of 1764 and subdued the area's American Indian tribes. Pontiac's Rebellion ended in the fall of 1764, and Pontiac formally surrendered to the English in July 1766. In 1769, he was murdered by a member of the Peoria Tribe. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: AL02991
Subjects: Pontiac, d. 1769; American Indians; Ohio History--Settlement and Early Statehood; Ottawa Tribe; American Indian tribal leaders
Places: Pontiac Collection