Ponteach, or the Savages of America
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One major note of conflict comes in the question of the singularity of Pontiac’s leadership in the rebellion that bears his name. The most common sense currently is that Pontiac did send war belts and call to council the nations involved in the attack on Detroit, that he likely planned and led those attacks, and that he was the public face of the conflict in the eyes of the British. But rather than individually orchestrating a multi-centred attack, Pontiac more likely sent messengers to other communities to convey the news of the attack, which may have motivated other nations to take up their own arms, leading to a cascade effect. As Richard White has documented, Algonquian societies like the Ottawas did not have a single chief or king in the way that the British imagined (Middle Ground 37), but rather had less conventionally formal systems of leadership organized around an ogema, or ‘most respected man,’ who would lead a grouping of extended families. Ogemas might come together to deal with the concerns of a community or collection of communities, but they did not impose their wills upon their villages.17 On a larger scale, as Peckham documents, there was no king or ‘principal chief’ presiding over the Great Lakes Nations (22). Ojibwas, Ottawas, and Potawatomis were all Algonquian-speaking, and they traded and intermarried in what Dowd calls ‘a fellowship,’ in which they called themselves collectively Anishinabeg (the plural form of Anishinabe), but that identity ‘implies strong senses of commonality and identity, not of political and social unity’ (9).
With those ethnographic caveats and scholarly contradictions in mind, a brief biography is challenging, but perhaps possible despite the lack of first-hand sources from within the Ottawa communities. Pontiac was born circa 1720, but there is no substantive documentation of his life before he came to British attention in the early 1760s. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography speculates that Pontiac might have been among the sixty Ottawas and Ojibwas taken to Montreal to fight the English in 1745; that he might have been involved in the 1747 conspiracy of Orontony, a rebellion near Sandusky, Ohio, over a rapid increase in the prices of goods; that he might have participated in the French and Ottawa attack on the village of Pickawillany in 1752; that he might have been one of the 800–1,000 Indigenous men to help to defeat Edward Braddock’s forces at Fort Duquesne in 1755; and that he was likely one of the thirty warriors from Pontiac’s village at Detroit who served Montcalm at Montreal and Fort William Henry. None of these possibilities can be confirmed. It is not until 1757 that the first printed record of Pontiac appears: Sir William Johnson’s French-language copy of a speech made by ‘Pontiague, Outava chief’ at Fort Dequesne.18
After the 1760 Capitulation of Montreal, Rogers began his journey to Detroit, and this is where Rogers and Pontiac appear to have met. Though some scholars find Rogers’ version of the encounter to be unreliable,19 it offers an intriguing vision of Pontiac and his response to the arrival of the British to the lands around Detroit. The report is included in the Concise Account (see pages 180–2 this volume). Whether the incident is exactingly historically accurate or a self-aggrandizing semi-fiction on Rogers’ part, it offers insight into what the highly knowledgeable Rogers would have thought was a plausible portrait of Pontiac as smart, powerful, and ambitious:
He attended me constantly after this interview till I arrived at Detroit, and while I remained in the country, and was the means of preserving the detachment from the fury of the Indians, who had assembled at the mouth of the strait with an intent to cut us off … He assured me, that he was inclined to live peaceably with the English while they used him as he deserved, and to encourage their settling in his country; but intimated, that, if they treated him with neglect, he should shut up the way, and exclude them from it; in short, his whole conversation sufficiently indicated that he was far from considering himself as a conquered Prince, and that he expected to be treated with the respect and honour due to a King or Emperor, by all who came into his country, or treated with him.
On 27 April 1763, Pontiac called a council to urge Anishinabeg leaders to act to drive out the British, who now claimed the Great Lakes lands as their own. The record of this council comes from the Journal of Pontiac’s Conspiracy, which reports that Pontiac and the Ottawas met with Potawatomis, led by Ninivois, and Hurons led by Takay (but not those led by Teata, who had rejected the war belt); a total of some 460 warriors were present. The first element of Pontiac’s argument for war seems to have been the highly dubious claim that he had received war belts from the ‘Great Father’ the king of France, asking that he attack the English in preparation for an imminent French return. The Journal records that Pontiac ‘also spoke of pretended insults which he and his nation had received from the Commandant and the English officers’ (20). Finally, Pontiac related the vision of Neolin, the Delaware (Wolf) Prophet, and the demand from the Master of Life that Indian nations rise up to rid their lands of the English.
After this successful council, Pontiac led a party into Fort Detroit on 1 May to assess its defences under the guise of dancing the calumet. Fort Commandant Gladwin had been warned about pending trouble, and he initially refused to let Pontiac and his men in; an appeal to interpreter Pierre La Butte was successful, and both the dance and the spying went as planned. Pontiac then called another council for 5 May at the camp of the Potawatomis. The Journal reports this speech, ostensibly verbatim, and it is reprinted here in Appendix B. He repeats his assertion that the French king seeks their assistance and that the English are disrespectful and trade in cheap goods at high cost. He argues, ‘It is important for us, my brothers, that we exterminate from our lands this nation which seeks only to destroy us … I have sent wampum belts and messengers to our brothers, the Chippewas of Saginaw, and to our brothers, the Ottawas of Michillimackinac, and to those of the Thames River to join us. They will not be slow in coming, but while we wait let us strike anyway. There is no more time to lose’ (196, this volume). The plan was to have Pontiac lead sixty warriors into Fort Detroit with weapons hidden under their blankets, and to have women and children in the fort with hidden weapons as well. Once again Gladwin had been warned, though by whom is still a matter of speculation. All of the garrison’s soldiers were armed, and Pontiac never gave the signal for attack. The Siege of Detroit began on 9 May, with upwards of 900 warriors on the site at the height of the conflict, with Pontiac controlling the French habitants’ entry and exit from the fort, blocking English movement and preventing the restocking of the fort by blockading river access. By 12 May, Pontiac felt successful enough in the siege to coerce the Huron clans who had so far refused to join the action: Teata and Baby agreed under Pontiac’s threats to enter the conflict.
On 25 May, senior members of the habitant community met with Pontiac with the reasonable complaints that their people had been injured, their livestock killed, and some homes burned. They pointed out that supposed requests for voluntary contributions of food to support the allied Indians had at times come with hatchets raised. Pontiac’s response is recorded in the Journal of Pontiac’s Conspiracy: he argues that he fights partly on behalf of the French, who have signed away their legacy – ‘a thing they could not do to us’ – and whom Pontiac and his people had protected from other attacks in the past. By the end of the meeting, the habitants had agreed to allow Native women to begin to plant corn on their lands. Pontiac’s reputation for rhetorical brilliance does not seem to be misplaced.
The groups maintaining the siege were not always in agreement, however, and several smaller conflicts eventually led to the withdrawal of support by several nations. On 30 May, a group of English captives taken from a ship were tortured to death, to the shock of some members of the camp. In the following weeks, the Potawatomis and some of the Hurons negotiated peace agreements and exchanged prisoners with the English. On 19 June, Kionchamek, son of the leader of the Chippewas (and perhaps the idea for Ponteach’s fictional sons) met in council with Pontiac and other leaders, only to chastize him for unnecessary violence: ‘Like you, we have undertaken to chase the English out of our territory and we h
ave succeeded. And we did it without glutting ourselves with their blood after we had taken them, as you have done.’ The Eries and Delawares are reported to have expressed similar concerns as well as a frustration at the abuse of the habitants, ‘our brothers, the French’ (Journal 172, 174).
Having lost the support of several Indian groups, Pontiac turned to the French. On 2 July, he summoned the heads of all of the local French families and attempted to persuade them to fight. He outlined the victories of the rebellion and listed the forts that had been burned or taken, asserting again, ‘when I began this war it was for your interests as well as ours.’ He argued that in a siege ostensible neutrality was the same as supporting the British, and so ‘there is only one way open today: either remain French as we are, or altogether English as they are. If you are French, accept this war-belt for yourselves, or your young men, and join us; if you are English we declare war upon you’ (Journal 194). A senior member of the French delegation actually produced a copy of the Capitulation of Montreal and argued that – because they were French – they were forbidden to fight the English, but a group of young men leaped up to accept the war belt. The meeting ended unhappily on both sides, and it was the next day that one of the young men took the war belt back to his father, who returned it to Pontiac with the warning that ‘those who have told thee that they are going to assist thee in capturing the Fort will be the first to run away.’ Pontiac accepted the war belt and did not again press the habitants to enter the fray (Journal 196).
The skirmishes continued, including the Indian victory at the Battle of Bloody Run on 31 July, but as the harvest season and then winter approached, most of the Ottawa and Ojibwa supporters trickled away. In late October, a letter arrived from the French Major de Villiers, addressed, as Peckham reports to the ‘French Children,’ advising them that the English and French kings had been inspired by the Master of Life to make peace, and that the hatchet should be buried (236). With no hope of either French or Indian support continuing through the winter, Pontiac lifted the siege.
Though Pontiac was more the instigator of the rebellion than its architect, he ironically gained great prominence in no small part due to the length of the Siege at Detroit, a result of the relative failure of the initial plan of attack compared with the utter devastation of the smaller forts that fell in May and June. After lifting the siege in October, Pontiac travelled to Illinois country, where he continued to encourage active resistance against the British. Because of the profile he had earned in the Siege of Detroit, and because he successfully turned that profile to his advantage in Illinois, Pontiac continued a face (if not a force) to be reckoned with. Sir William Johnson negotiated a formal peace with Pontiac at Oswego, New York, on 25 July 1766. This high profile was as dangerous as it was flattering, however, as Pontiac became embroiled in a series of conflicts with other Indigenous leaders, which led to his expulsion from the Ottawa community on the Maumee River in 1768, and possibly to his death at the hands of a Peoria man on 20 April 1769.
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY THEATRE
Ponteach does not appear ever to have been staged, and as the reviews in Appendix C demonstrate, the play was not well received when it appeared as a printed text. The Gentleman’s Magazine in particular objected to Rogers’ characterization (‘All the personages of the play may be considered as devils incarnate, mutually employed in tormenting one another; as their character excite no kindness, their distress moves no pity’), the dialogue (‘it cannot be read without disgust; damning and sinking, and calling bitch’), and its shocking content (‘who but would turn with abhorrence and disgust, from a scene in which Indian savages are represented as tossing the scalps of murdered Englishmen from one to the other’). Though the response was negative, however, it is clear that Rogers (and his likely collaborator/s) wrote the play in a style that aimed to meet the tastes of contemporary English audiences. The English-style courtship scenes between Chekitan and Monelia, for example, are highly conventional, echoing everything from the touching but doomed romance of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to the grand assertions of integrity and purity of Sir Richard Steele’s The Conscious Lovers (1722). Such scenes might well have pleased the typical theatergoer more than they did critical reviewers, and that these are not the scenes noted in the negative reviews might well suggest that they succeeded at least in some degree in touching their intended audience. Similarly, the untrustworthy French priest is a stock figure of English theatre, though his villainy seems both politically specific to North America and much more broadly pandering to anti-French and anti-Catholic sentiments at the end of the Seven Years’ War.
Among such fairly straightforward appeasements of contemporary taste, Rogers also offers a more unexpected appeal to the theatrical fashion of musicalization. Ponteach offers us a war song and dance at the close of Act III. The song is in quatrains made up of closed heroic couplets, and sung to the tune of ‘Over the Hills and Far Away,’ a popular tune that had already been used on stage in George Farquhar’s 1706 The Recruiting Officer and John Gay’s 1728 runaway hit (and repertory regular) The Beggar’s Opera. Farquhar was the first to alter the song’s original lyrics of courtship into a soldier’s song, though his version emphasized the joys of escaping the domestic (‘By getting rid of brats and wives / That scold and bawl both night and day’) in favour of public glory (‘Courage, boys, ‘tis one to ten, / But we return all gentlemen’).20 Rogers rewrites the lyrics again to redirect the song from its associations with Englishmen going into battle to a depiction of Indians going to battle against the English. In a gesture that will be repeated several times in several ways in Ponteach, Rogers makes political points by depicting an aspect of English culture put into flux by the colonial context, and then turned against its English originators.
Though to modern readers such a scene seems obviously out of place in the midst of a tragedy, there were several successful precedents that might have tempted Rogers. In terms of musical interludes in general, Shakespeare’s The Tempest was staged throughout the eighteenth century, and its Act IV masque scene provides perhaps the most immediately identifiable example of interpolated song and dance. Other examples are less expected: in 1664 William Davenant’s spectacular revision of Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth (widely derided by later critics) included songs and dances, ranging from the formally operatic to the more popular, as well as elaborate costumes and mechanically assisted flying witches. The vogue for musical elements is also clear in the mid-eighteenth-century genre of the afterpiece (a shorter play designed to run after the main play and perhaps a musical interlude). Fully half of the afterpieces published in the period employ some form of music or dancing. Rogers is thus not necessarily wrong in his understanding of the tastes of his audience, but it is ironic that it is his efforts to please that result in some of the weaker elements of the play.
One element of popular taste that Rogers’ play could not avoid, given its historical origins, was that ‘box-office receipts suggest that audiences preferred new comedy to new tragedy’ (Staves 87). The Revels History documents that only about 100 new tragedies were staged in the latter half of the eighteenth century (Davies 6: 153). Few were particularly successful, and even fewer are read today. The Licensing Act of 1737 had made staging new tragedies or serious political plays more difficult, and ‘whole seasons passed in the 1740s, 1750s, and 1760s without a new tragedy appearing’ (Bevis 201).21 New tragedies that were staged were often derivatives of classical Roman narratives or plays that located themselves in the exoticized Orient. The earlier vogue for domestic tragedy did not make a substantive reappearance as a genre, though as we will see, the domestic was an important part of the revisionist Shakespeare productions that were extremely popular. The tragedies aimed broadly at high nobility and heroic scope, but there were no new major schools or styles until perhaps the semi-tragic melodrama around the 1770s. Even much better known writers had trouble having tragedies produced around mid-century, as is most notably demonstrated in the well-do
cumented experiences of Samuel Johnson and Tobias Smollett in attempting to find stages for Irene and The Regicide, or, James the First of Scotland respectively. This audience preference, combined with the expense of producing a new stage tragedy, made it substantially less likely that Rogers’ play would be as successful as his other publications.
Perhaps because there is no identifiably conventional tragic style of the 1760s, and because few new plays were being produced in American theatres,22 Ponteach’s tragedy hearkens back to an earlier time. The play echoes the Restoration genre of blank verse heroic tragedy in the modes of John Dryden’s All for Love and Thomas Otway’s Venice Preserved in several ways: in the epic nature of the conflict, involving the fate of empires; in the love-versus-honour choice on which the second-generation subplot turns; in the public versus private demands faced by Ponteach; and in the elevated styles and long speeches. Julie Ellison narrows this generic category even more closely, arguing for republican tragedy, making Ponteach into a Roman play in the shadow of Addison’s Cato. In Roman plays, Ellison argues, ‘weeping men – especially the indifferent republican’s tenderhearted son – circle around stoic Romans framed by an imperial, international setting. The Roman republic configures tensions between political decision and indecision, cultural centrality and marginality, law and tears. These texts foreground the need for impersonal law while accompanying its stern tones with the outcry of deep-feeling masculine subjectivity’ (16). Though the play clearly alludes to the values of republican drama, it is a problematic fit with some of the conventions of the form. A typical summary of the genre notes that ‘these dramas present exemplary heroes who embody civic virtue and celebrate republican love of liberty and sacrifice of private desire for the public good. (Occasionally, as in Cato, the protagonists may die, but they do so in order not to compromise their exemplary virtue. Secondary characters, especially women, may also perish)’ (Staves 89). As the next section of this discussion will argue, Ponteach is not an exemplary hero, and he is driven as much by his private ambition as by any desire for public good. Since her argument is based on the definition of Roman drama embodied by Addison’s Cato, Ellison asserts that Ponteach’s (historically accurate and thus required) survival to the end of the play is an exception to ‘the habits of republican drama’ because he cannot commit battlefield suicide. Regardless of which specific elements of Roman drama one chooses to consider, though, Ponteach clearly engages not only the long-standing character and structural codes for heroic drama and its offshoots, but also the old-style forms of verse tragedy.23