Chief Pontiac, of the Ottawa

Digital History
Printable Version
The Proclamation of 1763
Digital History ID 159
Author: King George III
Date:1763
Annotation:
In 1773, Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) published a brief history of the British government's actions during the preceding decade. Its title: Rules by Which a Great Empire May be Reduced to a Small One. Beginning in 1763, successive British ministries made a series of political missteps that gradually stirred the colonists to assert American liberties against British oppression.
Before 1763, the colonists largely accepted Parliament's right to take actions on their behalf--and even the primacy of England's economic interests over their own. Prior to the Seven Years' War, however, almost all parliamentary actions had been designed to regulate trade, and while the colonies sometimes regarded these acts as unfair or inexpedient, they did not regard them as especially oppressive or burdensome.
After 1763, however, Parliament's actions appeared to clash with the colonists' interests. At the end of the Seven Years' War, France surrendered Canada and much of the Ohio and Mississippi valley--two-thirds of eastern North America--to British rule. Many colonists regarded these new lands as a godsend. But the Proclamation of 1763 reserved lands west of the Appalachian mountains for Indians and forbade white settlement there.
Equally disturbing, new British politics restricted Indian trade to traders licensed by the British government. For the first time, power over westward expansion was placed in the hands of British officials, outside the colonists' control. By preventing the colonial population from moving inland, the British ministry hoped to avoid costly Indian wars, protect the western fur trade, and keep western land speculation under the control of the crown. To enforce the proclamation, the British cabinet decided to station up to 10,000 troops along the frontier, at a cost of 250,000 pounds sterling annually. The colonists, who wanted to expand westward without the interference of British troops, deeply resented the proclamation. They feared that if they were walled in along the eastern coast, the results would be overpopulation, the growth of crowded cities, and social stratification along rigid class lines.
Document:
WHEREAS WE have taken into Our Royal Consideration the extensive and valuable Acquisitions in America, secured to Our Crown by the late Definitive Treaty of Peace, concluded at Paris...and being desirous that all Our loving Subjects...may avail themselves with all convenient Speed, of the great Benefits and Advantages which must accrue therefrom to their Commerce, Manufactures, and Navigation, We have thought fit...to issue this Our Royal Proclamation....
And whereas it is just and reasonable and essential to Our Interest and the Security of Our Colonies, that the several Nations or Tribes of Indians with whom We are connected, and who live under Our Protection should not be molested or disturbed...no Governor...in any of Our other Colonies or Plantations in America, do presume for the present...to grant Warrants of Survey, or pass Patents for any Lands beyond the Heads or Sources of any of the Rivers which fall into the Atlantic Ocean....
And whereas great Frauds and abuses have been committed in the purchasing Lands of the Indians, to the great Prejudice of Our Interests, and to the great Dissatisfaction of the said Indians; in order to prevent such Irregularities for the future, and to the End that the Indians may be convinced of Our Justice and determined Resolution to remove all reasonable cause of Discontent, We do...enjoy and require that no private Person do presume to make any Purchase from the said Indians of any Lands reserved to the said Indians....
Source: Gilder Lehrman Institute
Additional information: George III, Proclamation of 1763
Copyright 2014 Digital History

Chief Pontiac, of the Ottawa:

“These lakes, these woods and mountains were left us by our ancestors. They are our inheritances, and we will part with them to no one…you ought to know that He, the Great Spirit and Master of Life, has provided food for us in these spacious lakes and on the wood mountains…”

Advice from the Master of Life
Digital History ID 659

Author: Pontiac
Date:1763

Annotation:In this speech, Pontiac tells a number of assembled tribes that the Indian Master of Life has commanded them to stop drinking the white traders' alcohol, to take no more than one wife, and overcome their dependency on whites.

Document:I am the Master of Life, whom thou desirest to know and to whom thou wouldst speak. Listen well to what I am going to say to thee and all thy red brethren. I am he who made heaven and earth, the trees, lakes, rivers, all men, and all that thou seest, and all that thou hast seen on earth. Because [I have done this and because] I love you, you must do what I say and [not do] what I hate. I do not like that you drink until you lose your reason, as you do; or that you fight with each other; or that you take two wives, or run after the wives of others; you do not well; I hate that. You must have but one wife, and keep her until death. When you are going to war, you juggle, join the medicine dance, and believe that I am speaking. You are mistaken, it is to Manitou to whom you speak; he is a bad spirit who whispers to you nothing but evil, and to whom you listen because you do not know me well. This land, where you live, I have made for you and not for others. How comes it that you suffer the whites on your lands? Can you not do without them? I know that those whom you call the children of your Great Father supply your wants, but if you were not bad, as you are, you would well do without them. You might live wholly as you did before you knew them. Before those whom you call your brothers come on your lands, did you not live by bow and arrow? You had no need of gun nor powder, nor the rest of their things, and nevertheless you caught animals to live and clothe yourselves with their skins, but when I saw that you inclined to the evil, I called back the animals into the depths of the woods, so that you had need of your brothers to have your wants supplied and I shall send back to you the animals to live on. I do not forbid you, for all that, to suffer amongst you the children of your father. I love them, they know me and pray to me, and I give them their necessities and all that they bring to you, but as regards those who have come to trouble your country, drive them out, make war on them. I love them not, they know me not, they are my enemies and the enemies of your brothers. Send them back to the country which I made for them. There let them remain.

Source: Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan, Collections, 8 (1907), 268 ff

In the fall of 1763, a royal decree was issued that prohibited the North American colonists from establishing or maintaining settlements west of an imaginary line running down the crest of the Appalachian Mountains.
Purpose:
Colonial Reaction: