Misplaced Pages

#849150

131-472: Michilimackinac ( / ˌ m ɪ ʃ ə l ə ˈ m æ k ə n ɔː / MISH -ə-lə- MAK -ə-naw ) is derived from an Ottawa Ojibwe name for present-day Mackinac Island and the region around the Straits of Mackinac between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan . Early settlers of North America applied the term to the entire region along Lakes Huron, Michigan, and Superior . Today it is considered to be mostly within

262-451: A noun phrase that is emphasized in the discourse, and obviative , indicating a less prominent noun phrase. Ottawa has a relatively flexible word order compared with languages such as English. Ottawa speakers are concerned that their language is endangered as the use of English increases and the number of fluent speakers declines. Language revitalization efforts include second language learning in primary and secondary schools. Ottawa

393-431: A call' and refrigeratoring 'in the refrigerator'. Loan words that have recently been borrowed from English are typically written in standard English orthography . The letter h is used for the glottal stop [ʔ] , which is represented in the broader Ojibwe version with the apostrophe. In Ottawa the apostrophe is reserved for a separate function noted below. In a few primarily expressive words, orthographic h has

524-611: A cause of the war. Dowd believes that the presence, attitude, and policies of the British Army, which the Indians found threatening and insulting, were more important factors. Also contributing to the outbreak of war was a religious awakening which swept through Indian settlements in the early 1760s. The movement was fed by discontent with the British as well as food shortages and epidemic disease. The most influential individual in this phenomenon

655-1154: A central role in Ottawa grammar. Noun inflection and verb inflection indicate grammatical information through prefixes and suffixes that are added to word stems. Notable grammatical characteristics marked with inflectional prefixes and suffixes include: Prefixes mark grammatical person on verbs, including first person, second person, and third person. Nouns use combinations of prefixes and suffixes to indicate possession . Suffixes on nouns mark gender , location , diminutive , pejorative , and other categories. Significant agreement patterns between nouns and verbs involve gender, singular and plural number, as well as obviation. Ottawa derivational morphology forms basic word stems with combinations of word roots (also called initials ), and affixes referred to as medials and finals to create words to which inflectional prefixes and suffixes are added. Word stems are combined with other word stems to create compound words. Innovations in Ottawa morphology contribute to differentiating Ottawa from other dialects of Ojibwe. These differences include:

786-414: A coordinated operation planned by Pontiac. Parkman's interpretation remains well known, but later historians argued there is no clear evidence the attacks were part of a master plan or overall "conspiracy." 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

917-600: A field near Fort Cumberland were killed. On June 14, about 13 settlers near Fort Loudoun in Pennsylvania were killed and their homes burned. 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 . Incidents such as these prompted the Pennsylvania Assembly, with the approval of Governor Penn, to reintroduce

1048-732: A greater extent than in English (which has few inflections, and relies mainly on word order). Preferred word orders in a simple transitive sentence are verb-initial, such as verb–object–subject (VOS) and VSO . While verb-final orders are avoided, all logically possible orders are attested. Ottawa word order displays considerably more freedom than is found in languages such as English, and word order frequently reflects discourse -based distinctions such as topic and focus . Verbs are marked for grammatical information in three distinct sets of inflectional paradigms, called Verb orders . Each order corresponds generally to one of three main sentence types:

1179-544: A group of 50 or more Paxton Boys rode there on December 14, 1763 and murdered the six individuals they found there. Pennsylvania officials placed the remaining 14 Susquehannock in protective custody in Lancaster , but the Paxton Boys broke into the workhouse on December 27 and killed them. Governor John Penn issued bounties for the ringleaders, but none of the Paxton Boys were arrested. The Paxton Boys then set their sights on

1310-607: A history of his people in English; an appended grammatical description of Ottawa and the Southwestern Ojibwe (Chippewa) dialect also contains vocabulary lists, short phrases, and translations of the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer . Accurate transcriptions of Ottawa date from linguist Leonard Bloomfield's research with Ottawa speakers in the late 1930s and early 1940s. A tradition of indigenous literacy in Ottawa arose in

1441-515: A language' + suffix -win 'nominalizer', with regular deletion of short vowels) 'speaking Ottawa' is also reported in some sources. The name of the Canadian capital Ottawa is a loanword that comes through French from odaawaa , the self-designation of the Ottawa people. The earliest recorded form is Outaouan , in a French source from 1641. Ottawa is a dialect of the Ojibwe language, which

SECTION 10

#1732852518850

1572-594: A large Iroquois force was attacked by the Odawa and Ojibwe as they tried to cross the straits near Michilimackinac. In 1658, the Iroquois attacked again, but were again defeated by the Anishinaabe. The French established trading posts and Jesuit Catholic missions. One of the oldest missions, St. Ignace Mission , was located on the north side of the strait at Point Iroquois , near present-day St. Ignace, Michigan . This mission

1703-408: A large contingent of Indian allies enlisted by Sir William Johnson . Bradstreet felt that he did not have enough troops to subdue enemy Indians by force, and so when strong winds on Lake Erie forced him to stop at Fort Presque Isle on August 12, he decided to negotiate a treaty with a delegation of Ohio Indians led by Guyasuta. Bradstreet exceeded his authority by conducting a peace treaty rather than

1834-613: A mixed pronoun set. The terms maaba 'this (animate)', gonda 'these (animate)', and nonda 'these (inanimate)' are unique to Ottawa. Ottawa interrogative pronouns and adverbs frequently have the emphatic pronoun dash fused with them to form a single word. In this table the emphatic pronoun is written as -sh immediately following the main word. A small number of vocabulary items are characteristically Ottawa. Although these items are robustly attested in Ottawa, they have also been reported in some other communities. Written representation of Ojibwe dialects, including Ottawa,

1965-565: A more formal peace conference with William Johnson, which was finalized in July 1765. Although the military conflict essentially ended with the 1764 expeditions, Indians still called for resistance in the Illinois Country, where British troops had yet to take possession of Fort de Chartres from the French. A Shawnee war chief named Charlot Kaské emerged as the most strident anti-British leader in

2096-431: A more salient noun phrase, and obviative indicates a less prominent noun phrase. Selection and use of proximate or obviative forms is a distinctive aspect of Ottawa syntax that indicates the relative discourse prominence of noun phrases containing third persons; it does not have a direct analogue in English grammar. Few vocabulary items are considered unique to Ottawa. The influx of speakers of other Ojibwe dialects into

2227-489: A proposed treaty, had shocked and offended the gathered Indians." Bradstreet also claimed the Indians had accepted British sovereignty as a result of his negotiations, but Johnson believed this had not been fully explained to the Indians and that further councils would be needed. Bradstreet had successfully reinforced and reoccupied British forts in the region, but his diplomacy proved to be controversial and inconclusive. Colonel Bouquet, delayed in Pennsylvania while mustering

2358-664: A simple truce, and by agreeing to halt Bouquet's expedition, which had not yet left Fort Pitt. Gage, Johnson, and Bouquet were outraged when they learned what Bradstreet had done. Gage rejected the treaty, believing that Bradstreet had been duped into abandoning his offensive in the Ohio Country. 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

2489-480: A tenuous peace, but war belts continued to circulate. Violence finally erupted after the Indians learned in early 1763 of the imminent French cession of the pays d'en haut to the British. The war began at Fort Detroit under the leadership of Pontiac and quickly spread throughout the region. Eight British forts were taken; others, including Fort Detroit and Fort Pitt, were unsuccessfully besieged. Francis Parkman's The Conspiracy of Pontiac portrayed these attacks as

2620-620: A tribe: Some Ottawa leaders chose to do so, while other Ottawa leaders denounced the war and stayed clear of the conflict. The tribes of the pays d'en haut consisted of three basic groups. The first group was composed of tribes of the Great Lakes region: Ottawas , Ojibwes , and Potawatomis , who spoke Algonquian languages , and Hurons , who spoke an Iroquoian language . They had long been allied with French habitants with whom they lived, traded, and intermarried. Great Lakes Indians were alarmed to learn they were under British sovereignty after

2751-660: A vigilante group known as the Paxton Boys , so-called because they were primarily from the area around the Pennsylvania village of Paxton (or Paxtang ). The Paxton Boys turned their anger towards the Susquehannock and the Moravian Lenape and Mohican who lived peacefully in small enclaves near white Pennsylvanian settlements. Prompted by rumors that a raiding party had been seen at the Susquehannock village of Conestoga Town,

SECTION 20

#1732852518850

2882-482: A vowel, but are devoiced in word-final position. The lenis consonants are subject to other phonological processes when adjacent to fortis consonants. Labialized stop consonants [ɡʷ] and [kʷ] , consisting of a consonant with noticeable lip rounding , occur in the speech of some speakers. Labialization is not normally indicated in writing, but a subscript dot is utilized in a widely used dictionary of Ottawa and Eastern Ojibwe to mark labialization: ɡ̣taaji 'he

3013-515: A wampum belt suggesting peace talks. Pontiac had become less militant after hearing of Bouquet's truce with the Ohio country Indians. 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

3144-900: Is a member of the Algonquian language family . The varieties of Ojibwe form a dialect continuum , a series of adjacent dialects spoken primarily in the area surrounding the Great Lakes as well as in the Canadian provinces of Quebec , Manitoba , and Saskatchewan , with smaller outlying groups in North Dakota , Montana , Alberta , and British Columbia . Mutual intelligibility is the linguistic criterion used to distinguish languages from dialects. In straightforward cases, varieties of language that are mutually intelligible are classified as dialects, while varieties of speech that are not mutually intelligible are classified as separate languages. Linguistic and social factors may result in inconsistencies in how

3275-563: Is a minor adaptation of a very similar one used for other dialects of Ojibwe in Ontario and the United States, and widely employed in reference materials and text collections. Sometimes referred to as the Double Vowel system because it uses doubled vowel symbols to represent Ottawa long vowels that are paired with corresponding short vowels, it is an adaptation attributed to Charles Fiero of

3406-420: Is afraid' and aaḳzi 'he is sick'. Ottawa has seven oral vowels , four long and three short . There are four long nasal vowels whose status as either phonemes or allophones (predictable variants) is unclear. The long vowels /iː, oː, aː/ are paired with the short vowels /i, o, a/ , and are written with double symbols ⟨ii⟩ , ⟨oo⟩ , ⟨aa⟩ that correspond to

3537-710: Is conventionally considered to be a single language with a series of adjacent dialects. Taking account of the low mutual intelligibility of the most strongly differentiated dialects, an alternative view is that Ojibwe "could be said to consist of several languages", forming a language complex. The Ottawa communities for which the most detailed linguistic information has been collected are in Ontario. Extensive research has been conducted with speakers from Walpole Island in southwestern Ontario near Detroit , and Wikwemikong on Manitoulin Island in Lake Huron . South of Manitoulin Island on

3668-491: Is known to its speakers as Nishnaabemwin 'speaking the native language' (from Anishinaabe 'native person' + verb suffix -mo 'speak a language' + suffix -win ' nominalizer ', with regular deletion of short vowels); the same term is applied to the Eastern Ojibwe dialect. The corresponding term in other dialects is Anishinaabemowin . Daawaamwin (from Odaawaa 'Ottawa' + verb suffix -mo 'speak

3799-412: Is matched to a corresponding lenis consonant with the same place of articulation and manner of articulation . Ottawa fortis consonants are voiceless and phonetically long, and are aspirated in most positions: [pːʰ] , [tːʰ] , [kːʰ] , [tʃːʰ] . When following another consonant they are unaspirated or weakly articulated. The lenis consonants are typically voiced between vowels and word-initially before

3930-498: Is not available, in part because Canadian census data does not identify the Ottawa as a separate group. One report suggests a total of approximately 8,000 speakers of Ottawa in the northern United States and southern Ontario out of an estimated total population of 60,000. A field study conducted during the 1990s in Ottawa communities indicates that Ottawa is in decline, noting that "Today too few children are learning Nishnaabemwin as their first language, and in some communities where

4061-432: Is taught in programs for Ojibwe language teachers. One of its goals is to promote standardization of Ottawa writing so that language learners are able to read and write in a consistent way. By comparison, folk phonetic spelling approaches to writing Ottawa based on less systematic adaptations of written English or French are more variable and idiosyncratic, and do not always make consistent use of alphabetic letters. While

Michilimackinac - Misplaced Pages Continue

4192-536: Is unknown. About 400 British soldiers were killed in action and perhaps 50 were captured and tortured to death. George Croghan estimated that 2,000 settlers had been killed or captured, a figure sometimes repeated as 2,000 settlers killed . The violence compelled approximately 4,000 settlers from Pennsylvania and Virginia to flee their homes. American Indian losses went mostly unrecorded, but it has been estimated at least 200 warriors were killed in battle, with additional deaths if germ warfare initiated at Fort Pitt

4323-431: The "Cherokee Rebellion" of 1761, in which Cherokee warriors took up arms against their former British allies. The Cherokee war effort had failed due to a shortage of gunpowder; Amherst hoped future uprisings could be prevented by limiting its distribution. This created resentment and hardship because gunpowder and ammunition helped Indians provide food for their families and skins for the fur trade. Many Indians believed

4454-462: The Bruce Peninsula are Cape Croker and Saugeen , for which less information is available. The dialect affiliation of several communities east of Lake Huron remains uncertain. Although "the dialect spoken along the eastern shore of Georgian Bay" has been described as Eastern Ojibwe , studies do not clearly delimit the boundary between Ottawa and Eastern Ojibwe. Other Canadian communities in

4585-484: The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) as needed. The most prominent feature of Ottawa phonology is vowel syncope , in which short vowels are deleted, or in certain circumstances reduced to schwa [ ə ] , when they appear in metrically defined weak syllables. Notable effects of syncope are: The table of consonants uses symbols from the modern orthography with the corresponding symbol in

4716-620: The Iroquoian -speaking Wyandot , who were the first group to establish relations with the French after Champlain 's arrival in 1608. The Anishinaabe used these relations to trade indirectly with the French. The French were the first Europeans to explore the area, beginning in 1612. After the fall of Huronia in the Beaver Wars , The Anishinaabe began to trade directly with the French, and started inviting French settlers to Michilimackinac. In 1654,

4847-573: The Lower Peninsula of Michigan has also been a central area for Ottawa speakers since the arrival of Europeans. Since the arrival of Europeans, the population movements of Ottawa speakers have been complex, with extensive migrations and contact with other Ojibwe groups. Many Ottawa speakers in southern Ontario are descended from speakers of the Southwestern Ojibwe dialect (also known as "Chippewa") who moved into Ottawa-speaking areas during

4978-651: The Ohio Country and Great Lakes region previously garrisoned by the French. 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. The French had long cultivated alliances amongst indigenous polities, but the British post-war approach essentially treated the indigenous nations as conquered peoples. Before long, Native Americans found themselves dissatisfied with

5109-598: The Seneca tribe , had become disaffected with the alliance. As early as 1761, Senecas began to send out war messages to the Great Lakes and Ohio Country tribes, urging them to unite in an attempt to drive out the British. When the war finally came in 1763, many Senecas were quick to take action. 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

5240-510: The fur trade . Amherst believed that, with France out of the picture, the Indians would have to accept British rule. He also believed the Indians were incapable of offering any serious resistance to the British Army. Therefore, of the 8,000 troops under his command in North America, only about 500 were stationed in the region where the war erupted. Amherst and officers such as Major Henry Gladwin , commander at Fort Detroit , made little effort to conceal their contempt for Indians; those involved in

5371-444: The grammatical object , and intransitive verbs encode the gender of the grammatical subject , creating a set of four verb subclasses. The distinction between the two genders also affects verbs through agreement patterns for number and gender. Similarly, demonstrative pronouns agree in gender with the noun they refer to. Ottawa has complex systems of both inflectional and derivational morphology. Inflectional morphology has

Michilimackinac - Misplaced Pages Continue

5502-432: The "Kiyasuta and Pontiac War," "Kiyasuta" being an alternate spelling for Guyasuta , an influential Seneca / Mingo leader. The war became widely known as "Pontiac's Conspiracy" after the 1851 publication of Francis Parkman 's The Conspiracy of Pontiac . Parkman's book was the definitive account of the war for nearly a century and is still in print. In the 20th century, some historians argued that Parkman exaggerated

5633-498: The "general meeting-place for all the French who go to trade with stranger tribes." In 1715, the French established a fort and settlement on the south side of the strait. It was called Fort Michilimackinac . The fort became a major trading post, attracting Native Americans from throughout the northern Great Lakes . After Great Britain defeated France in the Seven Years' War ( French and Indian War ), their colonial forces took over

5764-564: The 1980s and 1990s found that the differences between Ottawa, the Severn Ojibwe dialect spoken in northwestern Ontario and northern Manitoba, and the Algonquin dialect spoken in western Quebec result in low levels of mutual intelligibility. These three dialects "show many distinct features, which suggest periods of relative isolation from other varieties of Ojibwe." Because the dialects of Ojibwe are at least partly mutually intelligible, Ojibwe

5895-1030: The 19th century, as speakers of Ottawa on Manitoulin Island became literate in their own language. Manitoulin Island Ottawas who were Catholic learned to write from French Catholic missionaries using a French-influenced orthography, while Methodist and Anglican converts used English-based orthographies. Documents written in Ottawa by Ottawa speakers on Manitoulin Island between 1823 and 1910 include official letters and petitions, personal documents, official Indian band regulations, an official proclamation, and census statements prepared by individuals. Ottawa speakers from Manitoulin Island contributed articles to Anishinabe Enamiad ('the Praying Indian'), an Ojibwe newspaper started by Franciscan missionaries and published in Harbor Springs , Michigan between 1896 and 1902. It has been suggested that Ottawa speakers were among

6026-517: The British and generally left French colonists alone. Eventually more than 900 warriors from a half-dozen tribes joined the siege. After receiving reinforcements, the British attempted to make a surprise attack on Pontiac's encampment. Pontiac was ready and defeated them at the Battle of Bloody Run on July 31, 1763. The situation remained a stalemate at Fort Detroit, and Pontiac's influence among his followers began to wane. Groups of Indians began to abandon

6157-492: The British launched two military expeditions into the west. The first expedition, led by Colonel John Bradstreet , was to travel by boat across Lake Erie and reinforce Detroit. Bradstreet was to subdue the Indians around Detroit before marching south into the Ohio Country. The second expedition, commanded by Colonel Bouquet, was to march west from Fort Pitt and form a second front in the Ohio Country. Bradstreet left Fort Schlosser in early August 1764 with about 1,200 soldiers and

6288-651: The British occupation. Indigenous people involved in Pontiac's War lived in a vaguely defined region of New France known as the pays d'en haut ("the upper country"), which was claimed by France until the Paris peace treaty of 1763. Natives of the pays d'en haut were from many different tribal nations. These tribes were linguistic or ethnic groupings of anarchic communities rather than centralized political powers; no individual chief spoke for an entire tribe, and no nations acted in unison. For example, Ottawas did not go to war as

6419-529: The British were disarming them as a prelude to war. Sir William Johnson , the Superintendent of the Indian Department, warned Amherst of the danger of cutting back on presents and gunpowder, to no avail. Land was also an issue in the coming of Pontiac's War. While the French colonists had always been relatively few, there seemed to be no end of settlers in the British colonies. Shawnees and Delawares in

6550-501: The British. The Mingos, led by Guyasuta and Tahaiadoris, were concerned about being surrounded by British forts. Similar war belts originated from Detroit and the Illinois Country. The Indians were not unified, and in June 1761, natives at Detroit informed the British commander of the Seneca plot. William Johnson held a large council with the tribes at Detroit in September 1761, which provided

6681-440: The French gave presents (such as guns, knives, tobacco, and clothing) to village chiefs, who distributed them to their people. The chiefs gained stature this way, enabling them to maintain the alliance with the French. The Indians regarded this as "a necessary part of diplomacy which involved accepting gifts in return for others sharing their lands." Amherst considered this to be bribery that was no longer necessary, especially as he

SECTION 50

#1732852518850

6812-534: The French loss of North America. When a British garrison took possession of Fort Detroit from the French in 1760, local Indians cautioned them that "this country was given by God to the Indians." When the first Englishman reached Fort Michilimackinac, Ojibwe chief Minavavana told him "Englishman, although you have conquered the French, you have not yet conquered us!" The second group was made up of tribes from eastern Illinois Country , which included Miamis , Weas , Kickapoos , Mascoutens , and Piankashaws . Like

6943-462: The Great Lakes tribes, these people had a long history of close relations with the French. Throughout the war, the British were unable to project military power into the Illinois Country, which was on the remote western edge of the conflict. The Illinois tribes were the last to come to terms with the British. The third group consisted of tribes of the Ohio Country : Delawares ( Lenape ), Shawnees , Wyandots , and Mingos . These people had migrated to

7074-691: The Independent order is used in main clauses , the Conjunct order in subordinate clauses , and the Imperative order in commands . Ottawa distinguishes yes–no questions , which use a verb form in the Independent order, from content questions formed with the Ottawa equivalents of what , where , when , who and others, which require verbs inflected in the Conjunct order. Ottawa distinguishes two types of grammatical third person in sentences, marked on both verbs and animate nouns. The proximate form indicates

7205-399: The Indians responsible for the war. According to historian Fred Anderson , Gage's campaign, which had been designed by Amherst, prolonged the war for more than a year because it focused on punishing the Indians rather than ending the war. 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

7336-603: The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) following where the two vary, or to draw attention to a particular property of the sound in question. The plosive , fricative , and affricate consonants are divided into two sets, referred to as fortis and lenis . Fortis (or "strong") consonants are typically distinguished from lenis (or "weak") consonants by features such as greater duration or length , are voiceless where lenis consonants are typically voiced , and may be aspirated . In Ottawa, each fortis consonant

7467-649: The Mingo (Seneca) on the upper Allegheny River, the Ohio Delaware near Fort Pitt, and the more westerly Miami, Kickapoo, Piankashaw, and Wea peoples. Pontiac spoke at a council on the banks of the Ecorse River on April 27, 1763, about 10 miles (15 km) southwest of Detroit. 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 . On May 1, he visited

7598-611: The Moravian Lenape and Mohican, who had been brought to Philadelphia for protection. Several hundred Paxton Boys and their followers marched on Philadelphia in February 1764, but the presence of British troops and Philadelphia associators dissuaded them from committing more violence. Benjamin Franklin , who had helped organize the defense, negotiated with the Paxton leaders and brought an end to

7729-497: The Ohio Country had been displaced by British colonists in the east, and this motivated their involvement in the war. Indians in the Great Lakes region and the Illinois Country had not been greatly affected by white settlement, although they were aware of the experiences of tribes in the east. Dowd (2002) argues that most Indians involved in Pontiac's War were not immediately threatened with displacement by white settlers, and that historians have overemphasized British colonial expansion as

7860-411: The Ohio Indians return all captives, including those not yet returned from the French and Indian War. Guyasuta and other leaders reluctantly handed over more than 200 captives, many of whom had been adopted into Indian families. Not all of the captives were present, so the Indians were compelled to surrender hostages as a guarantee that the other captives would be returned. The Ohio Indians agreed to attend

7991-419: The Ohio valley earlier in the century to escape British, French, and Iroquois domination. Unlike the Great Lakes and Illinois Country tribes, Ohio tribes had no great attachment to the French regime, though they had fought as French allies in the previous war in an effort to drive away the British. They made a separate peace with the British with the understanding that the British Army would withdraw. But after

SECTION 60

#1732852518850

8122-454: The Ottawa area has resulted in mixing of historically distinct dialects. Given that vocabulary spreads readily from one dialect to another, the presence of a particular vocabulary item in a given dialect is not a guarantee of the item's original source. Two groups of function words are characteristically Ottawa: the sets of demonstrative pronouns and interrogative adverbs are both distinctive relative to other dialects of Ojibwe. Although some of

8253-625: The Ottawa-speaking area extend from Sault Ste Marie , Ontario along the north shore of Lake Huron: Garden River , Thessalon , Mississauga (Mississagi River 8 Reserve, Serpent River, Whitefish River, Mattagami , and Whitefish Lake . In addition to Wikwemikong, Ottawa communities on Manitoulin Island are, west to east: Cockburn Island , Sheshegwaning, West Bay , Sucker Creek, and Sheguiandah. Other Ottawa communities in southwestern Ontario in addition to Walpole Island are: Sarnia , Stoney and Kettle Point , and Caradoc (Chippewas of

8384-484: The Potawatomi migrants. As a result of the migrations, Ottawa came to include Potawatomi and Ojibwe loanwords. Two subdialects of Ottawa arise from these population movements and the subsequent language shift. The subdialects are associated with the ancestry of significant increments of the populations in particular communities and differences in the way the language is named in those locations. On Manitoulin Island, where

8515-629: The Thames) , near London , Ontario. Communities in Michigan where Ottawa linguistic data has been collected include Peshawbestown , Harbor Springs, Grand Rapids , Mount Pleasant , Bay City , and Cross Village . The descendants of migrant Ottawas live in Kansas and Oklahoma; available information indicates only three elderly speakers in Oklahoma as of 2006. Reliable data on the total number of Ottawa speakers

8646-455: The attempt was successful. Other scholars have expressed doubts about whether the attempt was effective. McConnell (1992) argued the smallpox outbreak among the Indians preceded the blanket incident, with limited effect, since Indians were familiar with the disease and adept at isolating the infected. Ranlet (2000) wrote that previous historians had overlooked that the Delaware chiefs who handled

8777-408: The blankets were in good health a month later; he believed the attempt to infect the Indians had been a "total failure." Dixon (2005) argued that if the scheme had been successful, the Indians would have broken off the siege of Fort Pitt, but they kept it up for weeks after receiving the blankets. Medical writers have expressed reservations about the efficacy of spreading smallpox through blankets and

8908-535: The boundaries of Michigan , in the United States. Michilimackinac was the original name for present day Mackinac Island and Mackinac County . Pottery first appears during this period in the style of the Laurel complex . The people of the area engaged in long-distance trade, likely as part of the Hopewell tradition . The Straits of Mackinac linking Lakes Michigan and Huron was a strategic area controlling movement between

9039-459: The conflict was a reflection of a growing racial divide between indigenous peoples and British colonists. The British government sought to prevent further racial violence by issuing the Royal Proclamation of 1763 , which created a boundary between colonists and Natives. The conflict is named after its most well-known participant, the Odawa leader named Pontiac. An early name for the war was

9170-452: The crisis. Afterwards, Franklin published a scathing indictment of the Paxton Boys. "If an Indian injures me," he asked, "does it follow that I may revenge that Injury on all Indians ?" Indian raids on frontier settlements escalated in the spring and summer of 1764. The hardest hit colony was Virginia, where more than 100 settlers were killed. On May 26 in Maryland , 15 colonists working in

9301-509: The departure of the French, the British strengthened their forts rather than abandoning them, and so the Ohioans went to war in 1763 in another attempt to drive out the British. Outside the pays d'en haut , the influential Iroquois did not, as a group, participate in Pontiac's War because of their alliance with the British, known as the Covenant Chain . However, the westernmost Iroquois nation,

9432-424: The difficulty of determining if the outbreak was intentional or naturally occurring. On August 1, 1763, most of the Indians broke off the siege at Fort Pitt to intercept 500 British troops marching to the fort under Colonel Bouquet. On August 5, these two forces met at the Battle of Bushy Run . Although his force suffered heavy casualties, Bouquet fought off the attack and relieved Fort Pitt on August 20, bringing

9563-439: The east, but they never took them. 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. He wrote the commander at Fort Detroit that captured enemy Indians should "immediately be put to death, their extirpation being the only security for our future safety." To Colonel Henry Bouquet , who

9694-539: The extent of Pontiac's influence in the conflict, so it was misleading to name the war after him. Francis Jennings (1988) wrote that "Pontiac was only a local Ottawa war chief in a 'resistance' involving many tribes." Alternate titles for the war have been proposed, such as "Pontiac's War for Indian Independence," the "Western Indians' Defensive War" and "The Amerindian War of 1763." Historians generally continue to use "Pontiac's War" or "Pontiac's Rebellion," with some 21st-century scholars arguing that Pontiac's importance

9825-554: The fort and territory. Fort Michilimackinac fell to an Ojibwa attack during the Native American uprising of 1763, sometimes called Pontiac's War . It was reoccupied by the British in September 1764. In 1780, during the American Revolution , British commandant Patrick Sinclair moved the British trading and military post to Mackinac Island , which was held by the British for some time, and abandoned Fort Michilimackinac after

9956-625: The fort with 50 Ottawas to assess the strength of the garrison. According to a French chronicler, in a second council Pontiac proclaimed: It is important for us, my brothers, that we exterminate from our lands this nation which seeks only to destroy us. You see as well as I that we can no longer supply our needs, as we have done from our brothers, the French.... Therefore, my brothers, we must all swear their destruction and wait no longer. Nothing prevents us; they are few in numbers, and we can accomplish it. On May 7, Pontiac entered Fort Detroit with about 300 men carrying concealed weapons, hoping to take

10087-465: The groups that used the Great Lakes Algonquian syllabary , a syllabic writing system derived from a European-based alphabetic orthography, but supporting evidence is weak. Although there is no standard or official writing system for Ottawa, a widely accepted system is used in a recent dictionary of Ottawa and Eastern Ojibwe, a collection of texts, and a descriptive grammar. The same system

10218-582: The hatchet." From July to August 1764, Johnson conducted a treaty at Fort Niagara with about 2,000 Indians in attendance, primarily Iroquois. 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. As restitution for the Devil's Hole ambush, the Senecas were compelled to cede

10349-424: The idea by February 1763. At an emergency council meeting, he clarified his military support of the broad Seneca plan and worked to galvanize other tribes into the military operation he helped to lead, in direct contradiction to traditional Indian leadership and tribal structure. He achieved this coordination through the distribution of war belts, first to the northern Ojibwa and Ottawa near Michilimackinac, and then to

10480-788: The language has increased in the context of second-language learning, where mastery of written language is viewed as a component of the language-learning process. Although there has never been a generally accepted standard written form of Ottawa, interest in standardization has increased with the publication of a widely used dictionary in 1985 and reference grammar in 2001, which provide models for spelling conventions. A conference held in 1996 brought together speakers of all dialects of Ojibwe to review existing writing systems and make proposals for standardization. 19th-century missionary authors who wrote in Ottawa include Catholic missionary Frederic Baraga and Anglican Frederick O'Meara (illustration, this section). Ottawa speaker Andrew Blackbird wrote

10611-465: The language was traditionally spoken, the number of speakers is very small." Formal second-language classes attempt to reduce the impact of declining first-language acquisition of Ottawa. At the time of first contact with Europeans in the early 17th century, Ottawa speakers resided on Manitoulin Island, the Bruce Peninsula, and probably the north and east shores of Georgian Bay. The northern area of

10742-453: The latter sound is converted to [ʔ] or deleted. A study of the Southwestern Ojibwe (Chippewa) dialect spoken in Minnesota describes the status of the analogous vowels as unclear, noting that while the distribution of the long nasal vowels is restricted, there is a minimal pair distinguished only by the nasality of the vowel: giiwe [ɡiːweː] 'he goes home' and giiwenh [ɡiːwẽː] 'so

10873-448: The linguistically oriented system found in publications such as Leonard Bloomfield's Eastern Ojibwa. Letters of the English alphabet substitute for specialized phonetic symbols , in conjunction with orthographic conventions unique to Ottawa. The system embodies two basic principles: (1) alphabetic letters from the English alphabet are used to write Ottawa, but with Ottawa sound values; (2)

11004-451: The long vowel is followed by word-final ⟨nh⟩ to indicate that the vowel is nasal; while n is a common indicator of nasality in many languages such as French, the use of ⟨h⟩ is an orthographic convention and does not correspond to an independent sound. One analysis treats the long nasal vowels as phonemic , while another treats them as derived from sequences of long vowel followed by /n/ and underlying /h/ ;

11135-432: The mid-19th century. Ottawa today is sometimes referred to as Chippewa or Ojibwe by speakers in these areas. As part of a series of population displacements during the same period, an estimated two thousand American Potawatomi speakers from Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana moved into Ottawa communities in southwestern Ontario. The non-Ottawa-speaking Ojibwes who moved to these areas shifted to speaking Ottawa, as did

11266-457: The militia, finally set out from Fort Pitt on October 3, 1764, with 1,150 men. He marched to the Muskingum River in the Ohio Country, within striking distance of a number of Indian villages. Treaties had been negotiated at Fort Niagara and Fort Detroit, so the Ohio Indians were isolated and, with some exceptions, ready to make peace. In a council which began on October 17, Bouquet demanded that

11397-499: The modern orthography is used in a number of prominent publications, its acceptance is not universal. Prominent Ottawa author Basil Johnston has explicitly rejected it, preferring to use a form of folk spelling in which the correspondences between sounds and letters are less systematic. Similarly, a lexicon representing Ottawa as spoken in Michigan and another based on Ottawa in Oklahoma, use English-based folk spellings distinct from that employed by Johnson. The Ottawa writing system

11528-505: The move. After the rebel Americans gained independence in the Revolutionary War, this site became part of a territory of the United States. The fort saw its only military action 17 July 1812 when Lieutenant Porter Hanks bloodlessly surrendered it to the British during the war of 1812. Today, Fort Michilimackinac is preserved as a tourist site. Re-enactors portray the historic activities of the French and English. An archeological dig at

11659-581: The next two years. The Natives were unable to drive away the British, but the uprising prompted the British government to modify the policies that had provoked the conflict. Warfare on the North American frontier was brutal; the killing of prisoners, the targeting of civilians, and other atrocities were widespread. 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 . The ruthlessness of

11790-424: The orthographic symbol and the primary phonetic values for each vowel. The long nasal vowels are iinh ( [ĩː] ), enh ( [ẽː] ), aanh ( [ãː] ), and oonh ( [õː] ). They most commonly occur in the final syllable of nouns with diminutive suffixes or words with a diminutive connotation, as well as in the suffix (y)aanh ([- (j)ãː] ) 'first person (Conjunct) Animate Intransitive'. Orthographically

11921-465: The phonetic value [h] : aa haaw 'OK'. Pontiac%27s War Native American Coalition Pontiac's War (also known as Pontiac's Conspiracy or Pontiac's Rebellion ) was launched in 1763 by a confederation of Native Americans who were dissatisfied with British rule in the Great Lakes region following the French and Indian War (1754–1763). Warriors from numerous nations joined in an effort to drive British soldiers and settlers out of

12052-456: The plan. As it turned out, officers at Fort Pitt had already attempted what Amherst and Bouquet were discussing, apparently without having been ordered by Amherst or Bouquet. 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

12183-425: The population is predominantly of Ottawa origin, the language is called Ottawa , and has features that set it off from other communities that have significant populations of Southwestern Ojibwe (Chippewa) and Potawatomi descent. In the latter communities, the language is called Chippewa but is still clearly Ottawa. Dialect features found in "Ottawa Ottawa" that distinguish it from "Chippewa Ottawa" include deletion of

12314-403: The reanalysis of person prefixes and word stems; the loss of final /-n/ in certain inflectional suffixes; a distinctive form for the verbal suffix indicating doubt; and a distinctive form for the verbal suffix indicating plurality on intransitive verbs with grammatically inanimate subjects. The most significant of the morphological innovations that characterize Ottawa is the restructuring of

12445-489: The region, temporarily surpassing Pontiac in influence. Kaské traveled as far south as New Orleans in an effort to enlist French aid against the British. In 1765, the British decided that the occupation of the Illinois Country could only be accomplished by diplomatic means. As Gage commented to one of his officers, he was determined to have "none our enemy" among the Indian peoples, and that included Pontiac, to whom he now sent

12576-551: The region. The war is named after Odawa leader Pontiac , the most prominent of many indigenous leaders in the conflict. The war began in May 1763 when Native Americans, alarmed by policies imposed by British General Jeffrey Amherst , attacked a number of British forts and settlements. Nine forts were destroyed, and hundreds of colonists were killed or captured, with many more fleeing the region. Hostilities came to an end after British Army expeditions in 1764 led to peace negotiations over

12707-439: The revolt. The attacks on British forts were not simultaneous: most Ohio Indians did not enter the war until nearly a month after Pontiac began the siege at Detroit. Early historians believed French colonists had secretly instigated the war by stirring up the Indians to make trouble for the British. This belief was held by British officials at the time, but subsequent historians found no evidence of official French involvement in

12838-682: The safety of Fort Pitt after the outbreak of the war. Nearly 550 people crowded inside, including more than 200 women and children. Simeon Ecuyer, the Swiss-born British officer in command, wrote that "We are so crowded in the fort that I fear disease... the smallpox is among us." Delawares and others attacked the fort on June 22, 1763, and kept it under siege throughout July. Meanwhile, Delaware and Shawnee war parties raided into Pennsylvania, taking captives and killing unknown numbers of settlers. Indians sporadically fired on Fort Bedford and Fort Ligonier , smaller strongholds linking Fort Pitt to

12969-515: The scalp bounties offered during the French and Indian War, which paid money for every enemy Indian killed above the age of ten, including women. General Amherst, held responsible for the uprising by the Board of Trade , was recalled to London in August 1763 and replaced by Major General Thomas Gage . In 1764, Gage sent two expeditions into the west to crush the rebellion, rescue British prisoners, and arrest

13100-471: The shorelines each year. Both natives and newcomers flocked to take advantage. Hundreds of Native Americans from around Lakes Michigan and Superior would make the voyage to the straits to meet French traders coming up from the St. Lawrence. In the words of a later French traveler, Michilimackinac became "the landing place and refuge of all the savages who trade their peltries." Consequently, Michilimackinac rapidly became

13231-572: The siege to an end. His victory at Bushy Run was celebrated by the British; church bells rang through the night in Philadelphia , and King George praised him. This victory was followed by a costly defeat. Fort Niagara , one of the most important western forts, was not assaulted, but on September 14, 1763, at least 300 Senecas, Ottawas, and Ojibwas attacked a supply train along the Niagara Falls portage. Two companies sent from Fort Niagara to rescue

13362-589: The siege, some of them making peace with the British before departing. 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. In 1763, before other British outposts had learned of Pontiac's siege at Detroit, Indians captured five small forts in attacks between May 16 and June 2. Additional attacks occurred up until June 19. Colonists in western Pennsylvania fled to

13493-688: The siege. William Trent , the fort's militia commander, wrote in his journal that "we gave them two Blankets and an Handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect." Trent submitted an invoice to the British Army, writing that the items had been "taken from people in the Hospital to Convey the Smallpox to the Indians." The expense was approved by Ecuyer, and ultimately by General Thomas Gage , Amherst's successor. Historian and folklorist Adrienne Mayor (1995) wrote that

13624-462: The simple deletion of vowels in the prefixes, Ottawa has created new variants for each prefix. Restructuring of the person prefixes is discussed in detail in Ottawa morphology . Syntax refers to patterns for combining words and phrases to make clauses and sentences . Verbal and nominal inflectional morphology are central to Ottawa syntax, as they mark grammatical information on verbs and nouns to

13755-477: The single symbols used for the short vowels ⟨i⟩ , ⟨o⟩ , ⟨a⟩ . The long vowel /eː/ does not have a corresponding short vowel, and is written with a single e . The phonological distinction between long and short vowels plays a significant role in Ottawa phonology, as only short vowels can be metrically weak and undergo syncope . Long vowels are always metrically strong and never undergo deletion. The table below gives

13886-893: The site is open for viewing. Ottawa language Ottawa is one of the Ojibwe dialects that has undergone the most language change , although it shares many features with other dialects. The most distinctive change is a pervasive pattern of vowel syncope that deletes short vowels in many words, resulting in significant changes in their pronunciation . This and other innovations in pronunciation, in addition to changes in word structure and vocabulary , differentiate Ottawa from other dialects of Ojibwe. Like other Ojibwe dialects, Ottawa grammar includes animate and inanimate noun gender , subclasses of verbs that are dependent upon gender, combinations of prefixes and suffixes that are connected with particular verb subclasses, and complex patterns of word formation . Ottawa distinguishes two types of third person in sentences: proximate , indicating

14017-416: The smallpox blanket incident "has taken on legendary overtones as believers and nonbelievers continue to argue over the facts and their interpretation." Peckham (1947), Jennings (1988), and Nester (2000) concluded the attempt to deliberately infect Indians with smallpox was successful, resulting in numerous deaths that hampered the Indian war effort. Fenn (2000) argued that "circumstantial evidence" suggests

14148-426: The sounds w and y between vowels, glottalization of w before consonants, changes in vowel quality adjacent to w , and distinctive intonation. Ottawa has seventeen consonants and seven oral vowels ; there are also long nasal vowels whose phonological status is unclear. In this article, Ottawa words are written in the modern orthography described below, with phonetic transcriptions in brackets using

14279-515: The stake, 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. It was hardly a surrender: no lands were ceded, no prisoners returned, and no hostages were taken. Rather than accept British sovereignty, Kaské left British territory by crossing the Mississippi River with other French and Native refugees. The total loss of life resulting from Pontiac's War

14410-411: The story goes'. Other discussions of Ottawa phonology and phonetics are silent on the issue. Ottawa shares the general grammatical characteristics of the other dialects of Ojibwe . Word classes include nouns , verbs , grammatical particles , pronouns , preverbs , and prenouns . Ottawa grammatical gender classifies nouns as either animate or inanimate. Transitive verbs encode the gender of

14541-483: The strategically important Niagara portage to the British. Johnson even convinced the Iroquois to send a war party against the Ohio Indians. This Iroquois expedition captured a number of Delawares and destroyed abandoned Delaware and Shawnee towns in the Susquehanna Valley , but otherwise the Iroquois did not contribute to the war effort as much as Johnson had desired. Having secured the area around Fort Niagara,

14672-462: The stronghold by surprise. The British had learned of his plan, however, and were armed and ready. His strategy foiled, Pontiac withdrew after a brief council and, two days later, laid siege to the fort. He and his allies killed British soldiers and settlers they found outside of the fort, including women and children. They ritually cannibalized one of the soldiers, as was the custom in some Great Lakes Indian cultures. They directed their violence at

14803-426: The supply train were also defeated. More than 70 soldiers and teamsters were killed in these actions, which colonists dubbed the " Devil's Hole Massacre ," the deadliest engagement for British soldiers during the war. The violence and terror of Pontiac's War convinced many Pennsylvanians that their government was not doing enough to protect them. This discontentment was manifested most seriously in an uprising led by

14934-495: The system is phonemic in nature, in that each letter or letter combination indicates its basic sound value, and does not reflect all the phonetic detail that occurs. Accurate pronunciation cannot be learned without consulting a fluent speaker. The Ottawa variant of this system uses the following consonant letters or digraphs : b, ch, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, sh, t, w, y, z, zh The letters f, l, and r are found in loan words, such as telephonewayshin 'give me

15065-532: The terms language and dialect are used. Languages spoken in a series of dialects occupying adjacent territory form a dialect continuum or language complex, with some of the dialects being mutually intelligible while others are not. Adjacent dialects typically have relatively high degrees of mutual intelligibility, but the degree of mutual intelligibility between nonadjacent dialects varies considerably. In some cases, speakers of nonadjacent dialects may not understand each other's speech. A survey conducted during

15196-722: The three person prefixes that occur on both nouns and verbs. The prefixes carry grammatical information about grammatical person (first, second, or third). Syncope modifies the pronunciation of the prefixes by deleting the short vowel in each prefix. The third-person prefix /o-/ , which occurs with both nouns and verbs, is completely eliminated in Ottawa. As a result, there is no grammatical marker to indicate third-person on inflected forms of nouns or verbs. For example, where other dialects have jiimaan 'a canoe' with no person prefix, and ojimaan 'his/her canoe' with prefix o- , Ottawa has jiimaan meaning either 'canoe' or 'his/her canoe' (with no prefix, because of syncope). Apart from

15327-659: The two lakes and much of the pays d'en haut . It was controlled by Algonquian Anishinaabe nations including the Ojibwa (called Chippewa in the United States) and the Odawa . The area was known to the Odawa as Michilimackinac , meaning "Big Turtle". For these people, "Michilimackinac is literally the birthplace and centre of the world" and is where the Three Fires Confederacy took place. The Anishinaabe had good relations with

15458-401: The uprising frequently complained that the British treated them no better than slaves or dogs. Additional Indian resentment came from Amherst's decision in February 1761 to cut back on gifts given to the Indians. Gift giving had been an integral part of the relationship between the French and the tribes of the pays d'en haut . Following an Indian custom that carried important symbolic meaning,

15589-503: The uprising, the war was launched by American Indians for their own objectives. 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. Tahaiadoris and Guyasuta originated the idea to gain independence for all Indians west of the Allegheny Mountains, although Pontiac appeared to embrace

15720-483: The uprising. According to Dowd (2002), "Indians sought French intervention and not the other way around." Indian leaders frequently spoke of the imminent return of French power and the revival of the Franco-Indian alliance; Pontiac even flew a French flag in his village. Indian leaders apparently hoped to inspire the French to rejoin the struggle against the British. Although some French colonists and traders supported

15851-499: The vocabulary items in each set are found in other dialects, taken as a group each is uniquely Ottawa. Ottawa uses a set of demonstrative pronouns that contains terms unique to Ottawa, while other words in the set are shared with other Ojibwe dialects. Taken as a group the Ottawa set is distinctive. The following chart shows the demonstrative pronouns for: (a) Wikwemikong, an Ottawa community; (b) Curve Lake, an Eastern Ojibwe community; and (c) Cape Croker, an Ottawa community that uses

15982-420: The war. Bradstreet continued westward, unaware his unauthorized diplomacy was angering his superiors. He reached Fort Detroit on August 26, where he negotiated another treaty. In an attempt to discredit Pontiac, who was not present, Bradstreet chopped up a peace belt Pontiac had sent to the meeting. According to historian Richard White , "such an act, roughly equivalent to a European ambassador's urinating on

16113-558: Was Neolin , known as the "Delaware Prophet," who called upon Indians to shun the trade goods, alcohol, and weapons of the colonists. Melding Christian doctrines with traditional Indian beliefs, Neolin said the Master of Life was displeased with Indians for taking up the bad habits of white men, and that the British posed a threat to their very existence. "If you suffer the English among you," said Neolin, "you are dead men. Sickness, smallpox, and their poison [alcohol] will destroy you entirely." It

16244-420: Was a powerful message for a people whose world was being changed by forces that seemed beyond their control. Although fighting in Pontiac's War began in 1763, rumors reached British officials as early as 1761 that discontented American Indians were planning an attack. Senecas of the Ohio Country (Mingos) circulated messages ("war belts" made of wampum ) calling for the tribes to form a confederacy and drive away

16375-556: Was established in 1671 by the Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette . In 1683, under pressure from the Odawa, the French established a presence on the North side of the straits at the St. Ignace Mission in an alliance with the Anishinaabe against the Iroquois. Between 1670 and 1700, Michilimackinac flourished and became one of the central sites of the fur trade. Soon, French visitors reported vast summer markets taking place along

16506-446: Was introduced by European explorers, missionaries and traders who were speakers of English and French. They wrote Ottawa words and sentences using their own languages' letters and orthographic conventions, adapting them to the unfamiliar new language. Indigenous writing in Ottawa was also based upon English or French, but only occurred sporadically through the 19th and 20th centuries. Modern focus on literacy and use of written forms of

16637-445: 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? We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them." Bouquet responded that he would try to spread smallpox to the Indians by giving them blankets that had been exposed to the disease. Amherst replied to Bouquet on July 16, endorsing

16768-424: Was successful. Pontiac's War has traditionally been portrayed as a defeat for the Indians, but scholars now usually view it as a military stalemate: while the Indians had failed to drive away the British, the British were unable to conquer the Indians. Negotiation and accommodation, rather than success on the battlefield, ultimately brought an end to the war. The Indians had won a victory of sorts by compelling

16899-531: Was the worldwide Seven Years' War , in which France lost New France in North America to Great Britain. Most fighting in the North American theater of the war, generally called the French and Indian War in the United States, or the War of Conquest (French: Guerre de la Conquête) in French Canada, came to an end after British General Jeffrey Amherst captured French Montréal in 1760. British troops occupied forts in

17030-416: Was under pressure to cut expenses after the war. Many Indians regarded this change in policy as an insult and an indication the British looked upon them as conquered people rather than as allies. Amherst also began to restrict the amount of ammunition and gunpowder that traders could sell to Indians. While the French had always made these supplies available, Amherst did not trust Indians, particularly after

17161-566: Was underestimated by 20th-century historians. 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. Nimwha, Shawnee diplomat, to George Croghan , 1768 In the decades before Pontiac's War, France and Great Britain participated in a series of wars in Europe that involved the French and Indian Wars in North America. The largest of these wars

#849150