Pontiac's War - Origins

Origins

Further information: Great Britain in the Seven Years War

You think yourselves Masters of this Country, because you have taken it from the French, who, you know, had no Right to it, as it is the Property of us Indians.

Nimwha, Shawnee diplomat, to George Croghan, 1768

In the decades before Pontiac's Rebellion, France and Great Britain participated in a series of wars in Europe that also involved the French and Indian Wars in North America. The largest of these wars was the worldwide Seven Years' War, in which France lost New France in North America to Great Britain. Most fighting in the North American theater of the war, generally called the French and Indian War in the United States, came to an end after British General Jeffrey Amherst captured the last important French settlement, Montréal, in 1760.

British troops proceeded to occupy the various forts in the Ohio Country and Great Lakes region previously garrisoned by the French. Even before the war officially ended with the Treaty of Paris (1763), the British Crown began to implement changes in order to administer its vastly expanded North American territory. While the French had long cultivated alliances among certain of the Native Americans, the British post-war approach was essentially to treat the Native Americans as a conquered people. Before long, Native Americans who had been allies of the defeated French found themselves increasingly dissatisfied with the British occupation and the new policies imposed by the victors.