Ponteach, or the Savages of America

by Tiffany Potter

  The siege at Detroit continued throughout, receiving word of these victories, much as we see in the very condensed timeline of Rogers’ play. The first attempt to liberate Detroit came on 31 July, when a surprise attack failed, and British soldiers were trapped on a bridge, leaving twenty-three soldiers dead and thirty-eight wounded in what came to be known as the Battle of Bloody Run (the creek ran red with blood).11 As significant as this victory was for Pontiac, however, Fort Detroit still could not be taken, and enthusiasm for what had become a stalemate collapsed. As Rogers’ play depicts, several of the groups that had held Detroit (including Ottawas, Chippewas, Potawatomis, Mississaugas, Hurons, and Wyandots) abandoned the siege through the harvest season of late summer and fall, and some negotiated peace with the British. It was not until 31 October, though, that Pontiac abandoned the siege, negotiating a truce with Henry Gladwin and promising to ask other nations to bury the hatchet as well.

  Though violent hostilities became rare by the winter of 1763–64, it still remained to negotiate formal peace agreements. In the summer of 1764, Sir William Johnson negotiated a treaty at Fort Niagara with the Iroquois (most of whom had remained neutral in the war in any case), bringing the Senecas back into the Covenant Chain. That August, Colonel John Bradstreet negotiated a treaty with the Ohios at Presque Isle (though it was later rescinded by Major General Thomas Gage, who had by then replaced Amherst as the leader of British forces in North America), and at Fort Detroit, conducting a treaty with several Ottawa and Ojibwa leaders in September 1764. A second treaty with the Ohios was begun by Bouquet in October 1764 and completed by Johnson in July 1765. Pontiac agreed to a treaty with Johnson at Oswego in New York on 25 July 1766.

  In the end, there was no clear victor in Pontiac’s Rebellion. The allied Indigenous nations failed to drive out the British, but the British failed to realize their sense of the Indians as a conquered people. Fatigue and negotiated treaties replaced triumphant victories as the markers of the end of the conflict, and ultimately many circumstances returned to the way they had been under the French before the brief intervention of Amherst’s attempts at conquest and control. Separate from the local treaties and peace agreements that developed between 1763 and 1766 came the English Crown’s attempt to resolve the conflict. News of the Indian victories in the spring and summer of 1763 contributed to the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which first declared, ‘whereas it is just and reasonable, and essential to our Interest, and the Security of our Colonies, that the several Nations or Tribes of Indians with whom We are connected, and who live under our Protection, should not be molested or disturbed in the Possession of such Parts of Our Dominions and Territories as, not having been ceded to or purchased by Us, are reserved to them, or any of them, as their Hunting Grounds,’ and then designated Indian Territory as all land west of the Appalachians to the Mississippi River: ‘And We do further declare it to be Our Royal Will and Pleasure, for the present as aforesaid, to reserve under our Sovereignty, Protection, and Dominion, for the use of the said Indians, all the Lands and Territories not included within the Limits of Our said Three new Governments, or within the Limits of the Territory granted to the Hudson’s Bay Company, as also all the Lands and Territories lying to the Westward of the Sources of the Rivers which fall into the Sea from the West and North West as aforesaid.’ This effort at segregation failed, of course, and colonists continued to press westward. Their resentment at being constrained by Britain was one of the many factors that contributed to the American Revolution.12

  ROBERT ROGERS

  Robert Rogers was born in early November of 1731 in Methuen, Massachusetts.13 He is best known, of course, as the leader of Rogers’ Rangers, one of the most successful fighting units in the French and Indian War. His earlier life, though, was marked by accusations of misconduct as a result of what Parkman calls ‘his vain, restless, and grasping spirit, and more than doubtful honesty’ (1: 163). There were several legal skirmishes, but most dangerously, he was tried in New Hampshire in February of 1755 for counterfeiting, a potentially capital offence. Though four of the sixteen men tried in the conspiracy were jailed, Rogers was first held over for further investigation, and then released, apparently as a result of handing over twenty-four men he had recruited as soldiers for Massachusetts to the service of New Hampshire instead (Nevins 42).14 This manoeuvre was protested by Major Joseph Frye, who had paid him to recruit the men for Massachusetts, but Rogers was never prosecuted.

  Later in 1755, as a young captain, he was given command of a regiment under Major-General William Johnson, who would later become Superintendent of the Indian Department, and whose knowledge of and respect for Indigenous traditions and cultures may be reflected in Rogers’ Ponteach. Much of Rogers’ work for Johnson and his other superior officers involved scouting and reconnaissance, and this experience (and the associated battles) perhaps qualified Rogers to prepare for the Army ‘Rogers’ Ranging Rules,’ a list of twenty-eight military tactics suited to forest conditions, later published in his Journals of Major Robert Rogers (1765). Rogers invented neither the Rangers (there were three other Ranger companies in 1756, and one as early as 1744 in Nova Scotia), nor the battle techniques he described (some of which had been used by other companies serving in North America), but he systematized and distributed them, and thus they are widely associated with his name. Rogers was made major of the Rangers in His Majesty’s Service in 1758.

  Rogers and his Rangers became known for both great bravery and great hardiness, and stories such as those of the two Battles on Snowshoes contributed to their status. Named because the snowshoes worn by Rogers’ men were both unusual and critical to the fight, there were two Battles on Snowshoes, in January 1757 and March 1758. In the first, Rogers’ men were pinned down and vastly outnumbered, but, according to the account of Private Thomas Brown (taken captive in the battle), ‘we Killed more of the Enemy than we were in number’ (quoted in Cuneo 48). In fact, later historians have suggested that Rogers took seventy-four men into battle, with some twenty being killed or captured, while the French forces had perhaps thirty-seven casualties. Despite the defeat, Rogers was praised for preventing a worse outcome. As Captain Abercrombie put it, ‘You cannot imagine how all ranks of people here are pleased with your conduct and your mens [sic] behaviour’ (quoted in Cuneo 51). The second Battle on Snowshoes, in March 1758, was also a defeat, but was even more spectacular in its myth. Rogers’ men leaped from hiding places along a river near an enemy camp to attack a group of about 100 Indians and French soldiers; the enemy retreated, and the Rangers gave chase, only to discover that this had only been an advance party from a much larger group. Only fifty-four of the original 181 soldiers returned to Fort Edward. This battle also gave rise to the famous legend of Rogers’ defying death (and gravity) by sliding 400 feet down the side of an almost-vertical slope to the frozen surface of Lake George. While there is no proof of this event, the rockface he supposedly went down has become known as ‘Rogers Rock.’ Shortly after these events, Rogers was promoted to major. A widely read account of a more successful battle in March 1759 appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine, and is reprinted in this volume as Appendix D.

  In his most famous battle (depicted in the 1940 Spencer Tracy film Northwest Passage), Rogers led six Ranger companies under General Amherst to fight alongside James Wolfe in Quebec in 1759. In this conflict, Rogers and his men were sent by Amherst to confront the Abenaki community of Odanak (St Francis), members of which had attacked English settlers to the south. In his letter of orders, Amherst reminded Rogers of ‘the barbarities that have been committed by the enemy’s Indian scoundrels on every occasion, where they had an opportunity of showing their infamous cruelties on the King’s subjects, which they have done without mercy’ (Rogers, Journals 105). The sunrise attack was a success, and the village was burned to the ground, though Rogers’ claims in his Journals to have killed over 200 Abenakis may be overstated. Rogers was also present at the 1760 capitulation of Montreal, and he was sent from there
by Amherst to claim Fort Detroit from the French. It was on this mission that Rogers claims in his Concise Account to have first met Pontiac, who purportedly facilitated Rogers’ journey through at times hostile territory.15 This meeting will be discussed further below, but the Concise Account notes, ‘At our second meeting he gave me the pipe of peace, and both of us by turns smoaked with it; and he assured me he had made peace with me and my detachment; that I might pass thro’ his country unmolested, and relieve the French garrison; and that he would protect me and my party from any insults that might be offered or intended by the Indians’ (see pages 180–1, this volume).

  After the end of the French and Indian War, Rogers took posts with regular divisions in South Carolina and New York, and went on half-pay after the New York companies were disbanded. During Pontiac’s Rebellion, Rogers served under Captain James Dalyell in the efforts to counter Pontiac’s Siege of Detroit. Dalyell’s party reached Fort Detroit by the Detroit River on 28 July 1763, and managed to enter the fort at dawn. Dalyell advocated a quick attack, but the French habitants appear to have sent word to Pontiac, who had recently moved his main camp to a location some two miles from the fort, keeping the fort and town surrounded at all times. The Battle of Bloody Run took place on 31 July. Dalyell was killed in action, but Rogers survived to endure the siege until its end.

  Rogers’ administrative talents were unfortunately not in the league of his military ones: he had failed to make sufficiently detailed agreements for payment of expenses for his Rangers, and many costs had been paid out of pocket. He struggled to gain reimbursement for his expenditures, but made several bad (and possibly illicit) financial decisions in the early 1760s, including pressing litigation about his family lands in Merrimac and a fruitless claim to 25,000 acres on Lake George. Even his own father-in-law sued him for debt. Near the end of the French and Indian War, Rogers was suspected of illegal trading with the same Indian nations his military units were supposed to regulate, earning the wrath of Sir William Johnson. In January 1764, he resigned his commission suddenly and headed to New York, where he was briefly arrested for debt.

  In early spring 1765, he travelled to London to seek some sort of fortune: a military promotion (now unlikely in America because of the disapproval of Johnson and others for his ethics and tactics outside of battle); an administrative position in one of the colonies; or funding for his next venture, a search for the Northwest Passage. There was an appetite in London for tales of battle in America, and Rogers was a very minor celebrity in his first season in London, mentioned in The Gentleman’s Magazine, Monthly Review, and The Critical Review in 1765 and 1766. Monthly Review for January 1766, for example, asserted that ‘Few of our readers are unacquainted with the name, or ignorant of the exploits of Major Rogers, who with so much reputation headed the provincial corps called Rangers during the whole course of our late successful wars in America.’

  It was during this period that he began his publishing ventures. He published his Journals of Major Robert Rogers and A Concise Account of North America in London in October of 1765, and both received wide acclaim. The Journals offer short, generally factual first-hand accounts of his military excursions from September 1755 to February 1761, written, Rogers asserts ‘not with silence and leisure, but among deserts, rocks, and mountains, amidst the hurries, disorders, and noise of war, and under that depression of spirits which is the natural consequence of exhausting fatigue’ (iii–iv). They also reproduce correspondence and letters of order from Amherst and other leaders. Concise Account is the more entertaining book, a work of highly descriptive historical geography. It is generally typical of this genre in the later eighteenth century, but is notable particularly for its last section, a sixty-page overview of the ‘Customs, Manners, &c. of the Indians.’ This too is a typical element of such a document, but Rogers’ stands out in the detail of its depiction and the fact that he distinguishes customs and traditions among several of the Great Lakes and Five Nations, rather than describing ‘Indians’ as a homogeneous group. Not least because its material so consistently illuminates the circumstances of Ponteach, this section of Concise Account is reprinted as an appendix to this volume, as are contemporary reviews of the publication from Monthly Review and Critical Review.

  For a time Rogers was also named as the author of The Diary of the Siege of Detroit, published in 1860 by Franklin B. Hough, but the attribution of this document and the one that follows it in Hough’s collection (‘A Narrative of the Principal Events of the Siege. By Major Robert Rogers’) have long been disputed. John Cuneo cites the Diary as a misattribution in his biography of Rogers, for example, and David Dixon’s Never Come to Peace Again explains, ‘Since Rogers did not arrive at the beleaguered post until later in the siege, the information contained in this portion of the diary clearly came from someone other than the famed ranger. Indeed, Rogers’s account of these events was lifted directly from a letter written by Lieutenant James McDonald to Colonel Henry Bouquet on July 12, 1763’ (299n25). Though Hough’s title page and introduction are unclear on exactly what documents are attributed to Rogers on what provenance, the Clements Library at the University of Michigan lists the original manuscript diary given in the volume as ‘Diary of the Siege of Detroit’ under the authorship of Jehu Hay, a lieutenant at Fort Detroit beginning in 1762 and throughout the siege, who eventually became the last lieutenant-governor of Detroit.16

  Much more confidently attributable to Rogers (at least in substantial part) is Ponteach. Rogers’ final publication – also written during his period in London – failed to find a stage for its depiction of the dishonour, violence, and passion of the North American front. Rogers was more successful in his other London endeavours, though. On orders from the king, he was appointed commandant at Michilimackinac, one of the most important and westernmost of British forts in America. Early in 1766, Rogers took up the post and sent men on exploratory journeys seeking the Northwest Passage, but they were unsuccessful (most notable among them Jonathan Carver, whose partly ghost-written journal of his attempt to find the passage became one of the best-known eighteenth-century accounts of North American Indians). Despite his royal preferment, however, Rogers was still disliked by Johnson and General Thomas Gage, the commander of British Forces in America who had replaced Amherst. In his efforts to create an effective administrative and trade system, Rogers continued his relationships with Indigenous nations who were friendly with the British, and developed amicable relationships with local habitants. He went too far, though, when in 1767 he created a plan to allow Michilimackinac and its regions to become a semi-independent ‘Civil Government’ administered by a governor and council, reporting directly to the Privy Council and the king in London. Not least in response to such actions, Gage maligned Rogers at every opportunity, including accusations of war profiteering, gambling, and profligacy. While the various accusations are unproven, the hostility of the relationship was clear, so when Rogers eventually offended his assistant Nathaniel Potter, Potter took an easy revenge by accusing Rogers of secretly planning to turn to the French if his governance plan was rejected. Such a circumstance seems unlikely, given that the French had no standing to speak of in North America, but the accusation was enough. Rogers was tried for treason in Montreal in 1768; he was acquitted of all charges, but was not reinstated to his post at Michilimackinac.

  In 1769, Rogers returned to England, hoping for assistance with his debts and repayment of what he felt he was owed, either through the friendship of the king or through the courts. Neither was particularly successful, and Rogers spent extended periods in debtors’ prison. He sued Gage for false imprisonment over the events in Montreal, and the suit was settled out of court: Rogers was returned to a major’s half-pay in exchange for dropping his claim. Rogers also fought for the British in the American Revolution (after having his offer of service to the Continentals rejected by a suspicious George Washington), and returned yet again to Britain at the end of the war. Rogers’ last years were spent in Lond
on, still in and out of debtors’ prison and with a reputation for drunkenness. He died on 18 May 1795.

  PONTIAC

  In reading Rogers’ Ponteach, it is essential to keep in mind the distinctions between the fictionalized character of Ponteach and the historical figure Pontiac. The Ottawa war chief Pontiac was a smart man opposed to the British taking control of territory in the Great Lakes region; that much is certain. Beyond that, though, his character and historical significance have long been in dispute. The earliest detailed depiction of Pontiac comes from Navarre’s Journal of Pontiac’s Conspiracy. The Journal recognizes Pontiac’s leadership at the siege of Detroit, but opens with this characterization: ‘Pontiac, great chief of all the Ottawas, Chippewas, Pottawattamies, and all the nations of the lakes and rivers of the north, was a proud, vindictive, war-like and easily offended man’ (16). Most other information that we have on Pontiac from contemporary sources survives in the communications of British military leaders who are understandably hostile. Rogers’ Concise Account reports that Pontiac describes himself as ‘the King and Lord of the country [Rogers] was in’ and demonstrates what Rogers calls ‘great strength of judgment, and a thirst after knowledge’ (see page 181 this volume). The most famous account of Pontiac, though, comes in Francis Parkman’s rather hagiographic The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War after the Conquest of Canada (1870 [1851]), which imagines Pontiac as a great man, a brilliant tactician, and a noble single-handed leader of a vast, complex conspiracy designed to heroically protect an ultimately doomed people. In perhaps his most famous summary line, Parkman asserts that (despite Pontiac’s belonging to a race that Parkman assumed marked him as inherently inferior and ‘thorough[ly] savage’), ‘The American forest never produced a man more shrewd, politic, and ambitious’ (1: 183, 166). Howard Peckham’s 1947 biography is still the most scholarly overview of Pontiac’s life, and Gregory Evans Dowd’s War under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations and the British Empire (2002) and Richard Middleton’s Pontiac’s War: Its Causes, Courses, and Consequences (2007) offer the most effectively detailed analyses of Pontiac’s place in the complex historical circumstances of the 1750s and 1760s.