The Seven Years’ War ended with the victory of the British over the French and the natives and, thus, secured ownership of almost all of North America east of the Mississippi River. Great Britain, Spain, and France signed the Paris Peace Treaty, ending the Seven Years’ War, known in America as the Franco-Indian War. The war has caused terrible damage to indigenous peoples. One-third of all Cherokees and Seminoles in India died from violence, starvation, and war-related diseases. The British took revenge on the Indian people who fought on the side of the French by cutting off their supplies and forcing the tribes to obey the rules of the new metropolis. In his essay in the book “The Scratch of a Pen,” Calloway illustrates in more detail how these events affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. He describes the lives of Native Americans, British Canadians, and American colonists. Colin Calloway reveals in this story how the Treaty set in motion a cascade of unexpected consequences. Indians and Europeans, settlers and settlers struggled to adapt to new borders, new worldviews, and new relationships.
A notable feature of this essay is that Calloway calls Pontiac’s war “The First War of Independence.” In a detailed description of this event, Calloway suggests that the Indians in the Ohio River Valley rebelled against Britain for some of the same reasons as the Thirteen Colonies. “Indians had never regarded the French presence and alliance as constituting any kind of dominion over them” (Calloway, 66). Namely, in both cases, London wanted to reduce management costs due to its vast demands that arose after accumulating a staggering debt during the Seven Years’ War. At the same time, it strengthened its power over people who were not accustomed to vigorous imperial supervision. The struggle for native lands only intensified as peace brought British soldiers and settlers into more regular contact with indigenous peoples. In the provinces, this new approach included parliament passing taxes that the colonists felt violated their rights as Englishmen, breaking the colonists’ supposed right to freedom of speech and assembly, and revoking political privileges that the colonial groups considered prerogatives.
In an Indian country, it included treating Indians who considered themselves independent as subjugated “subjects”. «Withholding gifts and sending in troops sent a clear message, reinforced by the language of British officers: Britain intended to “reduce” the Indians to submission and take over their land» (Calloway, 67). As soon as the British captured the French posts in the Great Lakes region and the Ohio River Valley, they stopped giving gifts to the native leaders, restricted the trade in gunpowder and shot, and appointed the military with obvious contempt for the so-called savages to conduct delicate operations. The indigenous people of Detroit, such as the Ottawas, Wyandots, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi, expected the British to fulfill the role of “father,” resolving Indian disputes, distributing generous gifts, and treating the natives with respect. Indians further east, such as the Delawares, Shawnees, and Senecas, also wanted the British to force their provincials to respect the boundaries of the indigenous lands. The British failed in all these respects, and the Indians, inspired by the nativist preaching of Delaware Neolin and the militant appeals of the Ottawa Pontiac, attacked almost all British Western posts in response (Calloway, 70). Pontiac’s rebellion collapsed almost as quickly as it began. The disease has affected some tribes. At Fort Pitt, British officers deliberately distributed smallpox-infected blankets to a group of Delaware residents. A few weeks later, the epidemic spread to the surrounding villages of North American Indians.
This hope became increasingly dim after 1763, but with the British adoption of the “Proclamation Line,” which placed colonial purchases of Indian lands under strict imperial supervision, many natives believed they had achieved something like a victory. They could see that, more than ever before, future relations with colonial Americans would focus on land negotiations. «Pontiac’s Revolt was not the last American war for independence. American colonists launched a rather more successful effort a dozen years later, prompted partly by the British government’s measures to prevent another war like Pontiac’s» (Calloway, 91). According to him, the revolutionary crisis arose not only because the parliament attempted to reduce its public debt after the Seven Years’ War and to force the colonies to respond more sensitively to imperial directives, especially in wartime. However, because of his unwillingness to allow these problems to continue to fester after he incurred the additional costs of fighting the Pontiac war and witnessed the ongoing provocations of Indian-hating settlers moving to the Indian country.
Calloway describes events that directly affected or affected Indigenous people or that were influenced by Indigenous people. According to him, the revolutionary crisis arose not only because the parliament attempted to reduce its public debt after the Seven Years’ War and to force the colonies to respond more sensitively to imperial directives, especially in wartime (Calloway, 73). Nevertheless, because of his unwillingness to allow these problems to continue to fester after he incurred the additional costs of fighting the Pontiac war, he witnessed the ongoing provocations of Indian-hating settlers moving to the Indian country. The determination of Great Britain to solve its “Indian problem” by increasing income from colonists, control over diplomacy, trade, and expansion to the west, as well as maintaining a standing army in America, which could suppress the Indians or (as it turned out) colonial uprising in the shortest possible time, played a decisive role. Role at the beginning of the war of the thirteen colonies for independence.
Thus, Calloway’s treatment of Pontiac’s war as the “First War of Independence” gives indigenous people power and freedom of action, avoiding the trap into which so many historians Have fallen, in which knowledge of the final result masks the unknown. Calloway’s main argument in favor of the “First War of Independence” is that the freedom of the Indians was threatened by a peace treaty signed between France and Great Britain. This argument is important because it lays the foundation for a backstory detailing the events that led to this particular war. The trigger was that France handed over Indian lands to Britain without their knowledge. Being ignored in all significant transactions, the natives felt they would be subdued and tamed. Technically, they will be enslaved people in their own country, even though they fought for autonomy on their land. Calloway reminds us that in 1763, there was no certainty about anything, least of all about the victory of Europe over a formidable enemy. When the chronological vision is limited and geographical and thematic horizons expand, as Calloway did here, one can see how difficult it was to predict the future at that time.
Reference
Calloway, C. G. (2007). The scratch of a pen: 1763 and the transformation of North America. Oxford University Press, 66-91.