Pontiac's actions contributed to the British Crown's issuance of the Proclamation of 1763,[citation needed] which prohibited any settlers west of the Appalachian Mountains to preserve an area for Native Americans.

Pontiac's influence declined around Detroit because of the siege but he gained stature as he continued to encourage the various tribal leaders to fight against the British.

[8][9][6] Rogers wrote a play about Pontiac called Ponteach: or the Savages of America (1765), which helped to make the Odawa leader famous and began the process of mythologizing about him.

Amherst also changed policies toward Native Americans, cutting back on the practice of gifts, which the French had customarily given to the Indians, but he considered to be bribes.

Contributing to the anti-British sentiment was a religious revival inspired by a Lenape prophet named Neolin, who called for Indians to reject European cultural influences and return to traditional ways.

[6] Pontiac may have been involved in a 1762 conference on the Detroit River in which leaders had apparently issued a call to arms to various Indian tribes.

[12][13] According to a French chronicler, Pontiac proclaimed in a second council: It is important for us, my brothers, that we exterminate from our lands this nation which seeks only to destroy us.

The French familiarized themselves with us, Studied our Tongue, and Manners, wore our Dress, Married our Daughters, and our Sons their Maids, Dealt honestly, and well supplied our Wants, Used no one ill, and treated with Respect Our Kings, our Captains, and our aged Men; Call’d us their Friends, nay, what is more, their Children.

[11] Pontiac continued to encourage militant resistance to British occupation among the Illinois and Wabash tribes, and to recruit French colonists as allies.

[16] According to historian Richard White, it was during this time that Pontiac exerted his greatest influence, developing from a local war leader into an important regional spokesman.

[17] After the failure of the siege of Fort Detroit, the British initially thought that Pontiac was defeated and would trouble them no longer, but his influence continued to grow.

The British further increased his stature by making Pontiac the focus of their diplomacy and not understanding the decentralized Indian approach to war.

[18] Pontiac met with Sir William Johnson, the British Superintendent of Indian Affairs, on July 25, 1766, at Fort Ontario in Oswego, New York, and formally ended hostilities when he signed a peace treaty stopping the rebellions.

Perhaps most importantly, these were the final major Indian rebellions against British control in the Ohio Country before the creation of the United States guaranteed a permanent white presence in the North American interior.

[19] He was summoned to Detroit in August 1767 to testify in the investigation of the murder of Elizabeth "Betty" Fisher, a seven-year-old English colonist.

In 1763 during the siege of Detroit, an Odawa war party had attacked the Fisher farm, killing Betty's parents and taking the girl captive.

[23] The attention paid to Pontiac by the British Crown encouraged him to assert more power among the Indians of the region than he possessed by traditional rights.

"By 1766 he was acting arrogantly and imperiously," wrote historian Richard White, "assuming powers no western Indian leader possessed.

Most accounts place his murder in Cahokia, but historian Gregory Dowd wrote that the killing probably happened in a nearby Indian village.

He was apparently avenging his uncle, a Peoria chief named Makachinga (Black Dog), whom Pontiac had stabbed and badly wounded in 1766.

But evidence and tradition suggest that his body was taken across the river and buried in St. Louis, recently founded by French colonists from New Orleans and the Illinois Country.

According to historian John Sugden, Pontiac "was neither the originator nor the strategist of the rebellion, but he kindled it by daring to act, and his early successes, ambition, and determination won him a temporary prominence not enjoyed by any of the other Indian leaders".

[6] The British assumed that chiefs were able to hold more authority than they usually did, and failed to recognize the decentralized nature of the Indian bands and tribes.

Pontiac was also the name of a popular automobile brand of General Motors, developed and originally based in Detroit, which was discontinued in 2010.