American Indian Culture and Research Journal

It was 24 July 1766, and the eyes of the Ottawa and Wyandot warriors suggested they were displeased with their situation as they gathered for a conference between their spokesmen-Teata and Pontiac-and British Indian superintendent Sir William Johnson. Their disapproving stare would not have been directed at the superintendent but at the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, and Cayuga warriors accompanying Sir William. Johnson downplayed the Iroquois Confederacy’s presence at Lake Ontario in his reports to London, although their presence was crucial to his negotiations with the western nations. The confederacy’s presence at the conference conveyed a clear message: The Six Nations Iroquois, despite some internal political problems, would remain the centerpiece of Anglo-Indian relations, even as that policy moved into the Great Lakes region. Even Pontiac, who came in the ”name of all Nations to the Westward” could not ignore the implied message. The warriors, chiefs, diplomats, interpreters, and soldiers who gathered at Lake Ontario in 1766 were trying to put an end to the Anglo-Indian War of 1763-65, a war commonly referred to as ”Pontiac’s Rebellion.” Thanks to writers such as Francis Parkman and Howard Peckham, Pontiac’s Rebellion is one of the most thoroughly documented “Indian” events of the colonial period. Only recently, however, has the Native American perspective been explored. Recent studies by Michael N. McConnell, Richard White, and Gregory Evans Dowd direct historians toward a new appreciation for the complexities of the issues faced by western Indians as they decided whether to take ”up the hatchet’’ against the British. This is study builds on these more recent works by examining a variety of political, generational, and religious issues that Sir William Johnson tried to resolve when he met with Pontiac in July 1766.