[10] In an incident that became well-known and frequently debated, British officers at Fort Pitt attempted to infect besieging Indians with blankets that had been exposed to smallpox.

Even before the war officially ended with the Treaty of Paris (1763), the British Crown began to implement policy changes to administer its vastly expanded American territory.

As early as 1761, Senecas began to send out war messages to the Great Lakes and Ohio Country tribes, urging them to unite militarily and rise against the British occupiers.

[37][38] General Jeffrey Amherst, the British commander-in-chief in North America, was in charge of administering policy towards American Indians, which involved military matters and regulation of the fur trade.

[39] Amherst and officers such as Major Henry Gladwin, commander at Fort Detroit, made little effort to conceal their contempt for Indians; those involved in the uprising frequently complained that the British treated them no better than slaves or dogs.

Senecas of the Ohio Country (Mingos) circulated messages ("war belts" made of wampum) calling for the tribes to form a confederacy and drive away the British.

[58][59] William Johnson held a large council with the tribes at Detroit in September 1761, which provided a tenuous peace, but war belts continued to circulate.

"[64][note 1] Rather than being planned in advance, modern scholars believe the uprising spread as word of Pontiac's actions at Detroit traveled throughout the pays d'en haut, inspiring discontented Indians to join the revolt.

[71] Middleton (2007) argues that Pontiac's vision, courage, persistence, and organizational abilities allowed him to activate an unprecedented coalition of Indian nations prepared to fight against the British.

He achieved this coordination through the distribution of war belts, first to the northern Ojibwa and Ottawa near Michilimackinac, and then to the Mingo (Seneca) on the upper Allegheny River, the Ohio Delaware near Fort Pitt, and the more westerly Miami, Kickapoo, Piankashaw, and Wea peoples.

Using the teachings of Neolin to inspire his listeners, Pontiac convinced a number of Ottawas, Ojibwas, Potawatomis, and Hurons to join him in an attempt to seize Fort Detroit.

Pontiac lifted the siege on October 31, 1763, convinced that the French would not come to his aid at Detroit, and removed to the Maumee River where he continued his efforts to rally resistance against the British.

[105][106] Before the war, Amherst had dismissed the possibility that Indians would offer any effective resistance to British rule, but that summer he found the military situation becoming increasingly grim.

"[107] To Colonel Henry Bouquet, who was preparing to lead an expedition to relieve Fort Pitt, Amherst wrote on about June 29, 1763: "Could it not be contrived to send the small pox among the disaffected tribes of Indians?

[114][115][note 6] During a parley at Fort Pitt on June 24, Captain Ecuyer gave representatives of the besieging Delawares two blankets and a handkerchief that had been exposed to smallpox, hoping to spread the disease to the Indians and end the siege.

[120][121] Historian and folklorist Adrienne Mayor (1995) wrote that the smallpox blanket incident "has taken on legendary overtones as believers and nonbelievers continue to argue over the facts and their interpretation.

[126] Ranlet (2000) wrote that previous historians had overlooked that the Delaware chiefs who handled the blankets were in good health a month later; he believed the attempt to infect the Indians had been a "total failure.

Prompted by rumors that a raiding party had been seen at the Susquehannock village of Conestoga Town, a group of 50 or more Paxton Boys rode there on December 14, 1763 and murdered the six individuals they found there.

The most notorious raid occurred on July 26, when four Delaware warriors killed and scalped a school teacher and ten children in what is now Franklin County, Pennsylvania.

Gage's one significant departure from Amherst's plan was to allow William Johnson to conduct a peace treaty at Niagara, giving Indians an opportunity to "bury the hatchet.

Although most Iroquois had stayed out of the war, Senecas from the Genesee River valley had taken up arms against the British, and Johnson worked to bring them back into the Covenant Chain alliance.

Bradstreet left Fort Schlosser in early August 1764 with about 1,200 soldiers and a large contingent of Indian allies enlisted by Sir William Johnson.

Bradstreet exceeded his authority by conducting a peace treaty rather than a simple truce, and by agreeing to halt Bouquet's expedition, which had not yet left Fort Pitt.

Gage may have been correct: the Ohio Indians did not return prisoners as promised in a second meeting with Bradstreet in September, and some Shawnees were trying to enlist French aid in order to continue the war.

According to historian Richard White, "such an act, roughly equivalent to a European ambassador's urinating on a proposed treaty, had shocked and offended the gathered Indians."

[152][153][154] Although the military conflict essentially ended with the 1764 expeditions,[155] Indians still called for resistance in the Illinois Country, where British troops had yet to take possession of Fort de Chartres from the French.

[159][160] Johnson's deputy, George Croghan, accordingly traveled to the Illinois country in the summer of 1765, and although he was injured along the way in an attack by Kickapoos and Mascoutens, he managed to meet and negotiate with Pontiac.

While Charlot Kaské wanted to burn Croghan at the stake,[161] Pontiac urged moderation and agreed to travel to New York, where he made a formal treaty with William Johnson at Fort Ontario on July 25, 1766.

[7] American Indian losses went mostly unrecorded, but it has been estimated at least 200 warriors were killed in battle,[8] with additional deaths if germ warfare initiated at Fort Pitt was successful.

Beginning with conferences hosted by Shawnees in 1767, in the following decades leaders such as Joseph Brant, Alexander McGillivray, Blue Jacket, and Tecumseh would attempt to forge confederacies that would revive the resistance efforts of Pontiac's War.