Pontiac and the Indian Uprising

"The most formidable Indian resistance that the English speaking people ever faced was set in motion by an astute and purposeful Ottawa chief on the Detroit River. This was Pontiac. He epitomized the gathering resentment of the native to the invaders. With his defeat, one era in Indian history ended and another began. Who was Pontiac? is a fair question from an American today. After all, Pontiac has been dead for 178 years. The enemy he fought no longer controls the territory he tried to wrest from them. His French friends have been absorbed into Canadian or American nationality. His tribe has diminished and no long inhabits the region it once knew intimately. The peculiar momentum of a superior culture, intensified by the attraction of the land's unbelievable resources, was irresistible. The savages were pushed aside or rolled over. And yet the problem Pontiac posed -- or rather inflamed with his burning arrows -- remains on our national conscience. True, it was erased by our application of force, but that victory was never a solution. We are not yet agreed on the centuries-old question of what to do about the Indian"--Foreword.