Gary Zaboly’s depiction of a meeting in 1760 between the legendary Frontier Partisan Major Robert Rogers and a then-little-known Ottawa war leader named Pontiac.
Pontiac’s War is underway. The first episode of a new Frontier Partisan Podcast series on the conflict between the native peoples of the Great Lakes and Ohio Country and the ascendant British Empire in 1763-64 is now up. You can access it here or on Spotify and an array of other podcast sites.
This is the largest undertaking so far for the podcast, and I have greatly enjoyed this deep dive into one of the most important events in Frontier Partisan history. Pontiac’s War is one of the largest and most successful native insurgencies of the Age of Empires. It is a fascinating, horrifically violent event that had vast implications, not least of which was laying a powder train that would explode a little over a decade later in the American Revolution. While the explosion occurred in coastal New England, the powder train was laid in the backcountry in the turbulent 1760s. The cultural scars left by the violence of Pontiac’s War and the Anglo-American response to it set a pattern that would be reinforced and repeated across the continent for more than a century.
I hope you enjoy exploring this territory with me.
Matthew says
Great news! I look forward to listening to it!
Matthew says
Listen to it this morning. Glad it was a short one. Not because I dislike the long ones (they are often the more in depth ones), but because I could listen to it before work.
One of the lessons I take away from it is what happens when you rely to much on technology. If the Indians had been able to go back to bow and arrow (or the British allow them their ammo) so much bloodshed may be prevented. We, nowadays, are far more reliant on technology.
As for war not being rational, I think that is true since humans are not really rational. The problem with the Enlightenment was that it thought rationality could rule human kind. It doesn’t work that way. I mean good things came out of the Enlightenment too, but so did people getting their heads chopped off in France. Reason is a useful tool, but it is a tool not an end.
JimC says
Technology is almost always simultaneously liberating and shackling. The issue of Reason is an interesting one, because this was the era that emphasized its value so greatly. Amherst’s attitude toward the Indian trade can be seen as a drive to “rationalize” the relationship. Unfortunately, those who are convinced that they are operating out of “pure” Reason have a hard time recognizing that there are other points of view. It pretends that its own emotions are rational and that others are not. Which renders “Reason” a less than rational way of engaging with the world.
Matthew says
Yeah, technology has always been a double edge blade.
I’ve known people who talk a lot of reason who have made greatly irrational decisions.
JimC says
Brain science seems to be indicating that “Reason” is generally a post-event rationalization for complex emotional responses.