54 The flesh of an animal killed in hunting and used as food; in the eighteenth century the term encompassed all game animals, including deer, boar, hare, and rabbit.
55 King George III’s Royal Proclamation of 1763 included provision 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.’
56 Rogers’ Concise Account reports that in 1760 while on their way to secure Fort Detroit, he and his Rangers encountered Pontiac, who granted them safe passage through his territory to Detroit (see pages 180–2 in this volume). Though Rogers may embellish the individual role of Pontiac in the meeting, the Ottawa did negotiate free passage for the British through the exchange of gifts and smoking of the calumet.
57 As William Nester documents, Jeffrey Amherst, commander of the king’s forces in North America in 1759, instituted a policy that reduced gifts and munitions to the Indians in an effort to reduce administrative costs, weaken Indian military capacity, and force them to return to hunting by traditional means. Gifts were seen by most Indian nations as payment for access to their lands, while Amherst considered them unnecessary and undeserved presents.
58 A subordinate or servant. The more specific definition, from feudal England, is also relevant: a person permitted by a superior to hold lands, but only on the condition of homage and allegiance.
59 Sheet lightning, wherein a wide surface is illuminated at once, often appearing to be the whole sky or a large cloud.
60 Animal names widely represent clans within tribes. Bear, Eagle, and Wolf are common clan names, used by several nations, including the Hurons, whose clans included Bear, Wolf, Hawk, and Heron. Pontiac himself used the otter symbol, and Fox is a clan name that came to represent a nation (the Fox, part of the Algonquian language group, are now part of the Sac and Fox Nation). Rogers’ Concise Account asserts that the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy were identified with the bear, otter, wolf, tortoise, and eagle, but given the historical hostility between the Great Lakes and Iroquois Nations, the implication of Huron clans seems more likely.
61 The Mohawk and the larger Iroquois Confederacy had a long-standing alliance with the English, known as the Covenant Chain. The Mohawks declared the Chain broken in 1753, but the agreement was re-established in 1755, and held through Pontiac’s Rebellion.
62 Rogers’ Concise Account asserts that the Mohawk were the most successful, powerful, and feared nation in eastern America, commanding emulation by neighbouring nations. See Concise Account in this volume, pages 166–7.
63 The governor of New France had agreed to the Capitulation of Montreal on 8 September 1760, surrendering North American territories to Britain; the Peace of Paris was signed in February 1763 to formalize the end of the Seven Years’ War.
64 This was a common complaint, voiced also, for example, by Shawnee diplomat Nimwha during peace negotiations with George Croghan at Fort Pitt in 1768: ‘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.’
65 A room designated for the storage of weapons and ammunition.
66 Not cruel, but rather lacking the spirit to win in battle.
67 Ponteach expects that the defeated French will return to battle once they see a possibility of victory against the English. The 1763 Peace of Paris agreement that ended the Seven Years’ War would preclude this, however, a circumstance that contributed to the eventual failure of Pontiac’s Rebellion.
68 A catalogue of soldiers.
69 Vigorously encouraged.
70 Corrected from Ponteack.
71 Figurative language communicating a sense of oppression or humiliation, derived from the device used to couple together beasts of burden such as oxen.
72 The Mohawk leader Theyanoguin was known as Hendrick. Though he had been killed in battle in 1755 in the Seven Years’ War, before the events of Rogers’ play, the name is probably used here because the Mohawk ‘King Hendrick’ could be expected to be remembered in England as one of the ‘Four Indian Kings’ whose visit created a sensation in London in 1711. In fact, however, as Barbara Sivertsen has shown, there were actually two different Mohawk sachems called Hendrick Peters by Europeans. The two have been conflated by generations of historians, but as Dean Snow has recently documented, the sachem known to the Mohawks as Tejonihokarawa was a member of the Wolf Clan born around 1660, while the Hendrick Peters also known as Theyanoguin was a member of the Bear Clan born in 1692.
73 Rogers’ Concise Account reports, ‘The Indians depend much upon their dreams, and really believe that they dream the whole history of their future life … for which reason they make dreaming a kind of religious ceremony when they come to sufficient years’ (170).
74 See the excerpt from Rogers’ Concise Account in this volume: ‘The Indians have a great veneration for this animal, and imagine that to dream of it portends good fortune and long life … It is dangerous to approach very near this animal when he is hunted, as he sometimes springs furiously on his pursuers, and tramples them to pieces’ (188).
75 Each of these animals is described in detail in Rogers’ Concise Account. See pages 185–90 in this volume.
76 The Roman Catholic Church dispatched large numbers of priests to North America on conversion missions. There were two priests at Detroit during the time covered by the play, and one, Father Potier, Jesuit missionary to the Hurons, was closely associated with habitant Pierre Meloche, who was a friend and adviser to Pontiac. There is no historical evidence, however, of Potier’s having any sort of personal advisory relationship with Pontiac, and certainly no record of any conduct like that depicted later in the play. Father Potier’s accounts are included in The Jesuit Relations.
77 Given the play’s epic mode of the heroic, this may refer specifically to Alexander Pope’s 1725–6 translation of Homer’s Odyssey, in which a ‘phantom’ speaks to Penelope: ‘O why, Penelope, this causeless fear, / To render sleep’s soft blessing insincere? / Alike devote to sorrow’s dire extreme / The day-reflection and the midnight-dream!’ (IV 1063).
78 Two days.
79 Throughout this section, the contraction for ‘thou shalt’ is inconsistent.
80 Though turtles are highly symbolic in the Great Lakes Indigenous cultures, this line seems rather to allude to European tradition, in which the turtle alludes to the turtledove, an emblem of romantic love. Turtle is also one of the traditional Mohawk clans, but the historical Hendrick (Theyanoguin, long dead by the events of the play) was a member of the Bear Clan.
81 A collective term for the confederacy of Algonquian tribes, formerly occupying south Wisconsin, northern Illinois, and sections of Iowa and Missouri, comprising the Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Michigamea, Moingwena, Peoria, and Tamaroa. Ironically, the historical Pontiac would be murdered in 1769 by a Kaskaskia man, provoking the vengeance of the Lake tribes on the Illinois, and contributing to a highly destructive war.
82 Among the Ottawas, as among most nations, captives faced several possible fates. They could be killed, adopted into a family, ransomed, kept as a slave, sold as a slave to another community, or some combination of these. As the captor, Chekitan would normally have chosen how the captive would be disposed of, unless a woman in the community claimed the captive for adoption.
83 It seems likely that this stage direction should change ‘them’ to ‘him’ but it has been left uncorrected to recognize the ambiguity of movement implied by the comma missing from either after Chekitan or after Monelia.
84 Corrected from Iv’e.
85 Traditional Mohawk territory was east of the Great Lakes, with its eastern boundary approximately parallel to Lake Champlain and southern boundary proximate to the Mohawk River. The territory spread over what is now divided between New Y
ork and Quebec.
86 Earthquakes were recorded in the eastern Great Lakes and St Lawrence Valley in 1638, 1661, 1663, 1727, and 1732, with the strongest on 18 December 1737, which was also felt in Boston, Philadelphia, and Delaware.
87 A gallant young man. Samuel Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary provides a contemporary definition as ‘a brisk man, either fierce or gay, called so in contempt.’
88 Eighteenth-century military uniforms were often extremely ornate, with brightly coloured wool, gilded trim, knots, and lace, colour coded to indicate regiment.
89 Decorated with a knot of ribbons or rosette, often as a marker of office.
90 There were many fewer restrictions on premarital sexuality in Iroquois and Great Lakes cultures than in European ones. In most communities, a young woman’s body was her own until marriage, and sexual activity was not prohibited. Monelia’s language of virtue is obviously as explicitly ‘Christian’ as Chekitan’s language of love, despite her objections.
91 Agreeable and courteous.
92 Bearing and manners resulting from an appropriate upper-class education.
93 See note 72. The historical Hendrick was personally involved in the restoration of the Covenant Chain with Sir William Johnson.
94 Join the war on the same side.
95 Torax’s speech ends with a comma in the 1766 printing, perhaps indicating interruption rather than a full stop.
96 Suspect.
97 The fox is a trickster figure in Iroquois legend, so this reference is appropriate for the Mohawk Torax.
98 Perhaps a reference to Virgil’s ‘Fortune favors the brave’ (Aeneid 10.284).
99 On what Rogers terms conjurers or jugglers, see the excerpts from Concise Account in this volume: ‘Among the Chickesaws, Creeks, Cherokees, and others to the southward, you will find a conjuror in almost every village, who pretends to great things, both in politicks and physick … The conjuror, to prepare himself for these exploits, takes a sound sweat in a stove, and directly after it plunges into a river or lake, be it ever so cold’ (183). For the majority of First Nations, including the Iroquois Nations, the sweat is a sacred ceremony that purifies or cleanses the participant, in some cases to facilitate contact with the spiritual world. Hot stones are placed in the centre of a small structure sometimes known as a sweat lodge, and water is poured on them at regular intervals to produce steam. A sweat can last between several hours and several days, and usually also involves fasting and sexual abstinence.
100 Rogers makes this point on parallels among types of religious fraud more explicitly: ‘Religious impostures are not less frequent among the Indians of America, than among the Christians of Europe; and some of them are very successful in persuading the multitude that they are filled with a divine enthusiasm, and a kind of inspiration, few knowing better how to act their part in this sacred juggle than they. … They not only prescribe laws and rules, and persuade the populace to believe them; but undertake to unfold the mysteries of religion and a future state, to solve and interpret all their dreams and visions, &c.’ (Concise Account, this volume 170–1).
101 Apparently a misprint for ‘won’t.’
102 The French and Indian War had ended with the Treaty of Paris in February of 1763, by which the French lost nearly all of their territory in North America to the English. The Roman Catholic Church had thus also lost much of its influence over the continent, as the English were of predominantly Protestant denominations. Both would be expected to be pleased by news of Ponteach’s Rebellion against England.
103 The Cathedra Petri or Chair of Saint Peter is a particular chair preserved in St Peter’s Basilica, Rome. It was once used by the popes and was often thought to have been used by Saint Peter himself, though it actually dates from 875. The Chair of Saint Peter has come to signify the episcopal office of the Pope, to which Ponteach’s Priest aspires.
104 The Priest swears his plan for Monelia’s rape on Mary, the virgin mother of Jesus Christ.
105 The Journal of Pontiac’s Conspiracy records that the 27 April war council was attended by representatives from the Ottawas, Potawatomis, and the Huron Nations led by Takay (though not those led by Teata, who initially rejected the war belt). During the siege of Detroit, the Journal asserts that by June, ‘there were two hundred fifty Ottawas under Pontiac; one hundred fifty Pottawattamies under Ninivois; fifty Hurons governed by Takay; two hundred fifty Chippewas under Wasson; one hundred seventy of the Chippewas under Sekahos’ (160).
106 Though the Great Lakes Nations had not been greatly affected by large influxes of British colonists, their eastern allies the Shawnees and Delawares had experienced displacement like that described here, as the Thirteen Colonies pressed towards their territories in Ohio Country.
107 Tenesco uses the language of English common law on property access to describe parallel circumstances in North America. Common land included pasture, forests, rivers, and the like, and signified land to which members of a specific community shared access and rights. ‘Common rights’ included gleaning the field stubble for animal feed after harvest, grazing livestock on common land, collecting firewood, access to water, and even fishing rights. In England, the land’s actual owner held hunting rights, though this is not necessarily separate in Tenesco’s speech. Differences between European and Indigenous North American ideas of property use and ownership are one source of the contentious colonial misperception that much of America’s land was available for claims of ownership.
108 An echo of Pontiac’s speech to the French at Detroit 25 May 1763 as reported in the Journal of Pontiac’s Conspiracy: ‘When Mackinaw, the great chief of all these nations, said in his council that he would carry the head of your commander to his village, and devour his heart, and drink his blood, did I not take up your cause, and go to his village, and tell him that if he wanted to kill the French he would have to begin first with me and my men?’ See Appendix B.
109 See note 46.
110 ‘The Bear’ suggests a representative from the Huron Bear Clan.
111 The Bear’s use of the Lion to emblematize England’s king offers the tantalizing possibility that Rogers (or his editors) implies the levelling recognition that his own culture makes use of animal imagery in totemic ways nearly identical to those practised by many Indigenous cultures.
112 The very nature of a reference to a forgotten tribe of course makes this obscure, but The Bear may refer here to the Susquehannock Indians, depopulated by a smallpox outbreak in 1661 and subsequent wars with the Delawares, the Maryland, and the Iroquois League as land pressures grew. The tribe was not exterminated, but survivors merged with other nations and tribal identity was lost.
113 Given the content of this speech, the most likely identification of The Wolf is Neolin, the Delaware Prophet, who was a member the Delaware Wolf Clan (see Introduction pages 10–13). However, Burton’s annotations to the Journal of Pontiac’s Conspiracy assert that ‘Mahigam, the Wolf’ was one of the warriors involved in the attacks, citing Lanman’s History of Michigan, so the Neolin identification cannot be absolute. ‘The Wolf’ could also refer more generally to a representative of the Huron or Delaware Wolf clans.
114 Nevins reports that ‘Doubtful authority has it that a part of the far-western Jesuit catechism of the seventeenth century ran: ‘Q. Who killed Jesus Christ? A. The bloody English’ (225n). Typical of the character, the Priest’s account here serves his needs in the moment by literalizing and overstating the parallel cultural metaphors sometimes used by the Jesuits to explain Christianity. Such metaphors may have echoed for some time: the nineteenth-century English-Sioux activist Charles Eastman (as contradictory as his actions often were), records a discussion on religion with a Sioux elder in which the elder explains, ‘I have come to the conclusion that this Jesus was an Indian. He was opposed to material acquirement and to great possessions. He was inclined to peace. He was as unpractical as any Indian and set no price upon his labor of love. These are not the principles upon which the white man has fou
nded his civilization’ (143).
115 A lens that can be used to start fires by concentrating the sun’s light.
116 Canting here refers to the formal or affected use of religious language, with the concurrent implication of a sing-song tone, both of which can imply hypocrisy.
117 An English traditional song, first published in 1706 by Thomas D’Urfey with traditional courtship lyrics, and used in George Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer in the same year, with lyrics celebrating the freedom of the soldier from domestic responsibility as he goes off to battle in Portugal and Spain. It is also used in John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera in 1728, again with lyrics of courtship.
118 Rogers’ Concise Account describes a nation based north of Lake Superior called the Bulls. Rogers asserts that they ‘can raise about four thousand fighting men. They are originally of the Souties or Attawawas nation, as appears by the affinity between the two languages’ (158).
119 There are very few reports in eighteenth-century accounts of rapes of Indigenous women by Indigenous men. George Croghan claimed that an Indian man would ‘be putt to Death for Committing Rapes, which is a Crime they Despise.’ As Sharon Block notes, however, a knowable public sentiment seems to affirm that ‘rape was not unknown in Native American communities’ (225–6).
120 Lacking in sexual self-restraint.
121 Premarital chastity and marital monogamy were two of the major moral emphases of religious missionaries of all denominations.
122 An exemption from a law or requirement, granted under special circumstances. In the Church, a dispensation can be granted by the Pope, an archbishop, or a bishop to do something otherwise forbidden by ecclesiastical law. Ponteach’s Priest goes one step beyond this by claiming direct dispensation from Saint Peter, who, like most church figures before the fourth century, was married and a father. There is no historical evidence of anything resembling the permission the Priest claims.
123 There is no obvious reason that the Priest references and swears to Saint Peter so consistently. Peter did undertake missionary journeys, but it is more likely an indication of pride and ambition to the papacy.
Ponteach, or the Savages of America Page 27