After the Conquest: Michilimackinac, a Borderland in Transition, 1760-1763

Abstract

After the Conquest: Mchilimackinac, a Borderland inTransition, 1760-1763 by Keith R.Widder On the morning of June 2, 1763, opposing teams of Ojibwe and Sac warriors played a game of baggatiway or lacrosse outside the land gate of Fort Michilimackinac. The Ojibwe used the contest as a ruse to surprise British officers and soldiers who had gathered to watch the action. When a ball was thrown over the palisade, some players raced into the fort where they killed one British officer, twenty enlisted men, and one trader; in addition, they took as their prisoners two officers, fifteen soldiers, and two traders. The Ojibwe plundered the traders' goods, but they left French-Canadian bystanders unharmed.1 Ojibwe mistrust and fear of British policies and behavior that began with the French surrender of Montreal to Gen. Jeffery Amherst on September 8, 1760, led to this violence. And these hostilities at the fort meant that the Ojibwe and other Native Peoples still needed to negotiate their relationship with British officials if a lasting peace were ever to be realized. An analysis of events beginning with the arrival of British troops and merchants in September 1761 shows that the Indians, French, and British struggled to redefine the economic and diplomatic boundaries within a vast borderland surrounding Michilimackinac in the aftermath of the British conquest of Canada. Frontier regions are incubators for friction, and in this case the war between France and Great Britain had not yet really ended for the people in the Michilimackinac borderland. French troops remained in Illinois; and the full impact of the Treaty of Paris agreed to by Great Britain and France in February 1763, ending The author would like to thank Robert J. Andrews, David A. Armour, David T. Bailey, Donald P. Heldman, Elizabeth M. Scott, and Agnes Haigh Widder for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. 1 Milo M. Quaife, ed., Alexander Henry's Travels andAdventures in the Years 1760-1776 (Chicago: Lakeside Press, 1921), 78-85; Todd E. Harburn, In Defense of the Red Ensign at Michilimackinac 1763: The British Garrison during Pontiac's Uprising at Michilimackinac and Copt. George Etherington's Company 60th or Royal American Regiment (Okemos, Mich.: Michilimackinac Society Press, 2000). Michigan Historical Re view 34:1 (Spring 2008): 43-61 ?2008 by Central Michigan University. ISSN 0890-1686 All Rights Reserved. 44 Michigan Historical Review the Seven Years' War, had not yet been felt atMichilimackinac. Thus, unresolved issues burst into violence in June 1763. With the fall of Montreal the French and Indian War ended in Canada and the eastern English colonies, but peace in the Michilimackinac borderland awaited British negotiation with the Indian nations of the western Great Lakes. Under pressure from Whitehall to reduce expenses,2 Gen. Jeffery Amherst, the commander in chief of the British Army inNorth America, devised a simple policy for the pays d'en haut^ also known as the upper country?make peace and carry on a fair, free fur trade.3 By May 1763, however, a viable peace still remained elusive and violence broke out in what historians commonly refer to as Pontiac's Uprising or Pontiac's War. Between May 16 and June 19, Indians captured English posts at Sandusky (Sandusky, Ohio), St. Joseph (Niles, Mich.), Miami (Fort Wayne, Ind.), Ouiatanon (Lafayette, Ind.), Mchilimackinac (Mackinaw City, Mich.), Venango (Franklin, Pa.), Le Boeuf (Waterford, Pa.), and Presque Isle (Erie, Pa.). British garrisons, however, held Fort Detroit, Fort Niagara, and Fort Pitt, which enabled Britain to prevent the Indians from winning the war.4 At least three 2Richard Middleton, Pontiac's War: Its Causes, Course, and Consequences (New York: Routiedge, 2007), 19-22. 3Amherst's policy of peace and trade was not new; it formed the basis of the ongoing Iroquois-British relationship, but Amherst's methods differed from the traditional British approach toward establishing peaceful and profitable relations with the Iroquois. Timothy J. Shannon declares that the Covenant Chain "maintained peace and trade between British colonies, the Six Iroquois Nations, and other Indians associated with their confederacy." He also makes the point that friendship between the Iroquois and the British needed "to be periodically 'brightened' or renewed by engaging in diplomatic councils and...