Hello and welcome to a history of the United States, Episode 124, Pontiac's War.

Last time, we set up Grenville as Prime Minister in London as Butte fell out of favour,

before turning our attention back to North America. We had an overview of the State of America

in the years after the capture of Canada and focused on events in Pennsylvania, as a group of Connecticut settlers attempted to colonize the Wyoming Valley.

Just when they seemed to have done it, to Diasgung was dead, and they could finally begin construction.

Word arrived of a huge Indian uprising exploding in the west in an area from the Ohio to northern Michigan, from Susquehanna to the Mississippi.

The origins of this conflict are rather interesting. If you think back to our very early episodes

on the Native Americans, an idea that we discussed was how Native American history and identity

shifted with the arrival of the Europeans. It led to changes in their creation stories. These changes really got

underway by the mid-18th century. What started out as preachings against the evils of alcohol

soon expanded. In the years before the seven years war, a prophetess in the Wyoming Valley and a few male

preachers had a new message, that Indians had been created in separation to other races, and that

by turning away from their special path, the Master of Life was punishing them with epidemics.

This message was taken up by a fourth prophet, Neeling, among the Western Delawares of the Ohio in 1759, 1760. Neelan added new ideas,

going even further than his predecessors. He argued that the Indians needed to be

completely independent from the Euro-Americans, and in order to do that, they needed to abstain

from not only alcohol, but all trade. They needed to return to their ancient traditions and relearn how to create

their classical weapons in order to defend themselves from the whites in an upcoming war.

This was when Amherst's Indian policies started to take effect, prohibiting gifts and the gunpowder trade, as well as the mass

increase in Westwood migration and continual epidemics. This was a startlingly pan-Indian view.

You have only to look several episodes ago to the Cherokee War, to see how Indians did not cooperate,

and the Kree were more than happy to team up with the British to gain an advantage over their northern neighbours.

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