(MUSIC) Is Michigan history Indigenous history?

100%.

Michigan history is Indigenous history.

(MUSIC) We are at a place called Bay Shore.

The Odawa name for this place is Agaming, meaning across the bay.

This is an old Indian path going, you know, south from Harbor Springs and Petoskey to Charlevoix.

So this is the old path.

And I am i one of the most historic areas for Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians.

And these are legitimate crooked trees that the Odawa bent hundreds of years ago.

These trees are trail markers.

They signify a cultural area, a spiritual area.

And the Odawas purposely manipulated them, there was a science to this.

Bending these trees with weights, counterweights, rocks certai sizes, as the tree got bigger.

So that they are telling messages to the Anishinaabe.

One of the few standing cultural landmarks for the tribe is these trees.

In my mind they're witness trees.

They witness the change that the Odawa went through over the last coupl hundred years with the treaties, becoming minorities in our homelands, the wars, all of this.

So as we talk about these things that, you know, the Odawa were involved in, you know, our environment is, you know, tied with us, and these trees witness that.

It's possible that these trees were here during the French and Indian War.

(MUSIC) Michigan does not come to one's mind first when they think of the American Revolution.

You're thinking of everything happening out East.

You're thinking of Boston and Philadelphia and all of these really cool ways that the colonists were protesting, you know, the Boston Tea Party and, rebellion in Boston and all of that.

The Continental Congress getting together, nobody thinks of Michigan.

What happened in Michigan that leads to the precursor of the American Revolution?

Well, actually, quite a lot.

So many people look at 1776 as the start of the American Revolution.

However, going back to 1763, you got the implementation of the proclamation line, which is a result of Pontiac's Rebellion, which happens earlier that year, which is a result of the French and Indian War, which also ends that year.

Pontiac's rebellio and the story of the Indigenous folks who fought in the Midwest to preserve the land that they had, I think is key and it's central to the story of the founding of this country in general.

(MUSIC) For most of the, the first part of the 18th century, Michilimackinac was a small but growing community.

It was a French community.

Those were the Europeans who lived here, as well as of a huge variety of Indigenous people, mostly Anishinabek people.

So the Odawa and the Ojibw primarily, but there were also Indigenous peopl coming from all over the upper Great Lakes region, gathering here at Michilimackinac.

Because Michilimackinac was a gathering place.

It's a transshipment point.

It's location right here on the Straits of Mackinac means that it sat astride a giant crossroads, so it was easy to get to.

Everybody traveled by water.

It's one of the reasons why Indigenous people have always wanted to be in this spot.

Prior to the arrival of the British here in 1761, the French used this community not only as a military outpost and a diplomatic outpost, but also as, perhaps most importantly, an economic outpos for the Great Lakes fur trade.

Another reason that the Indigenous people have always wanted to b here is for religious reasons.

This area has great spiritual importance, especially Mackinac Island, so they may also have been participating in ceremonies for a little while before moving on, as part of that seasonal migration.

(MUSIC) The fact remains that this is a battleground.

Now this is a place where people did lose their lives.

So it is a little confusin the name French and Indian War.

The French and Indian War was the American theater of the Seven Years War that was going on in Europe between England and France.

(cannon booms) They were always fighting against each other.

(guns firing.

people yelling) You know, in face value, it looks like the French are fighting the Indians when that's the complete opposite.

It's the French and all their Indian allies against the British.

Really was a battle between the French and the British, and each allied themselves with various Indigenous Nations fighting against the other.

And it really was a wa for the region we are located in right now, sort of the interior of the continent.

(MUSIC) In order to conquer a group of people, you have to segregate them.

It makes it easier to pick off a group of people one by one.

It makes it easier to form alliances.

It makes it easier to pin groups of people against each other, regardles of what a greater good might be.

And then we started to be put into these categories when people came across the ocean and encountered us.

We became more defined in these groups as we had more contact with Europeans and Americans.

From my understanding, we don't even have the word for tribe in our language.

That's a very Western concept.

It's Anishinaabe the people, the real people, the good people.

We started to be labeled a tribes when Europeans came here.

So that's that's where we start.

Most Indigenous Nation end up fighting with the French because the French, unlike the British, (flag rustling) integrated themselves into Native lifestyles.

(MUSIC) They married into tribes.

Some even learned language.

The end of the French and Indian War, which ends about 1763.

The British come out the winners in this.

After the French and Indian War was concluded, the French acquiesced to the British.

They signed the treaty and none of the Native nations were at the treaty.

You may have signed this France, but we didn't.

We never gave up.

And it was a war which ultimately, after the fact, sort of completely expelle the French as an imperial power from the continent and made possible British expansion, which in turn made possible after the American Revolutio establishment of the colonies.

So it really is a reference to the fact that without the assistance of Indigenous people, Britain could not have won that war.

And so when the French and Indian War is fought and and concluded for the Native Nations, it leads to Pontiac's War.

(MUSIC) Pontiac was an Odawa leader, and he was one of the Indigenous leaders who did make a commitment to peace with the British as the French and Indian, or Seven Years War, was winding down.

Pontiac was one of the predominant diplomats who had interacted with the British when they first came in, and he was one of the firs to understand that promises that British had made to Indigenous people were not being kept.

(wind) They come in and they take a different approac to the Indigenous people here.

The British don't look at the Indigenous people as people.

(MUSIC) They see them as savages or heathens.

They have some pretty harsh ways of dealing with Indigenous folks.

One of the harshes is moving them off their land.

(MUSIC) So Pontiac was one of these leaders who saw the dangers of a continuing dependance, who saw the fact that the British felt they were victorious across the continent and may not have intended to keep up their side of their promises to Indigenous people.

Pontiac had a lot of influence, or knew people and other Indigenous leaders who had influence and their Nations.

What starts with a desire to sort of control the level of dependency on the British, more or less turns into a call to completely expel them.

Ultimately, what he wants to do was get the British out completely.

He was proactive and decided to gather Indigenous collective will behind him.

And so he's, kind of anoints himself as as the leader of this rebellion.

And they have a council and they get together and they're like, they're going to come an they're going to take our land.

We have to figure out a way that we can say, hey, you know, this is our land.

Pontiac was attempting to find out whether he had suppor from various Indigenous partners to go up militarily against the British.

And, whether or not that resistance could be maintained across time.

So he's able to rally some of the Tribal Nations, not just in the Great Lakes region but also along that lower part, I want you to think of Ohio and going into Pennsylvania.

He's abl to talk to those people and say, hey, we've got to form this coalition, so to speak.

I think it really shows the depth of dissatisfaction with the British and discontent with how things had changed.

That all Pontiac, all he had the power to do, was suggest.

He essentially said, I am going to attack Detroit.

If you believe that that is a good idea, you can either join me or you can attack the British wherever you find them.

And I guess it's tellin that everyone basically agreed.

You know that the Ojibwa up here, people, throughout the Great, Great Lakes region, took that message and acted upon it.

The Native Nations of the Great Lakes took it upon themselves to defend their homelands and way of life.

So I feel immens amount of pride that even though the French said, okay, we are going to end this war, the Native Nations, the Anishinaabeg and all their allies said, no we're going to continue to fight on for what is ours.

(MUSIC) The Fort was definitely dependent on trade with Indigenous people, and Detroit acted a a geographic sort of linchpin, because you could travel by water all the way from the Atlantic or the Saint Lawrence Valley, all the way to the Mississippi.

But how do you get into the Fort?

Pontiac devised a plan where they're going to enter Fort Detroit under the guise of peace.

But the Fort gets wor that Pontiac's already planning a rebellion.

So they're like, we're not trusting this.

We're not trusting this at all.

So when they open the Fort doors to let Pontiac in, he can see that the British soldiers are already armed because his plans already known.

(MUSIC) So part of what is interestin around the history of Pontiac's War, it' dominated by stories about men.

It's almost as if women weren't her or weren't part of this story.

Oftentimes in history, we only tend to hear the names of those who were, quote, successful or had a big presence.

And those names tend to be only men.

So when we think about, in terms of the revolution, you think of Washington and Jefferson and Adams.

In terms of Pontiac's Rebellion, you think of Pontiac because his name is literall in the name of this rebellion.

There were two women that were hovering aroun the edges of this historic story as having been the people who might have told the British in advance about Pontiac's efforts.

(MUSIC) So one woman, she's French, comes from a fur trading family and has been established in Detroit.

Her father was a very close associate of Pontiac.

His daughter's name was Angelique, so supposedly Angelique Cuillerier overheard a conversation between Pontiac and her father, and she had a fiancé who was a British trader.

She was worried about him and whether he'd survive such an onslaught, and she let the British know.

It's a simplified story of a much more complicated narrative.

It talks more about the fact that local French and Indigenous people had business to attend to, had lucrative trade networks, and they wanted these particular networks to remain in place.

So there was a clea establishment of trade between the Indigenous tribes in Detroit, Mackinaw area, and throughout Michigan, and the French, and sometimes even British.

That trade resulted in economic booms, sometimes for the Indigenous communities.

So there would have been some sort of hesitation, do we want to rock the boat a little bit?

Yes, Pontiac we understand what you are doing and protection of our land, and that's really important, but we're also thinking about our economic future at the same time.

(MUSIC) The other woman, that sort of part of the story, her name was Katherine.

She was Anishinaabe, and she was purported to have visite the British commandant, to have brought back elk skin moccasins she had made for him.

And she's about to tell him that Pontiac is planning an attack on the Fort.

She' giving the British forewarning.

It has been rumored, speculated, alleged, that the British were able to find out about the attacks on the Fort because of a rumored romance between Katherine, who is an Anishinaabe woman, and the British commander.

However, there were probably economic reasons.

She was producing good for the commander and the Fort, and informed him that because of this possible rebellion, she would not be able to get said goods to him in time.

Purely economic reasons.

Was there a romance?

We don't know for sure, but I think that's a story people like to tell themselves.

(MUSIC) What we do know about Anishinaabe women is that Anishinaabe women controlled trade in their Nations.

They controlled whether or no their Nations would go to war.

So it's very possible that this woman is coming to the British commandant's house, not out of some romantic obligation, but because she want to maintain the trade networks that she's in control of as an Anishinaabe woman.

(MUSIC) So the women of Pontiac's era, who I've come to discover played a pivotal role, were from families of chief or leaders in their community.

So they might have bee daughters or nieces of chiefs.

So they were used to operating in their own Nations in these roles of responsibility.

(MUSIC) So Michilimackinac has always bee an important strategic location, perhaps most importantly, an economic outpos for the Great Lakes fur trade.

The British cared about the Fort because of its location.

It is on the water.

It overlooks the, th the lakes, the connecting lakes over the Straits of Mackinac as what we would call them.

And it fortifies them and connects them to British Canadian settlements as well.

So because of its strategic location and water being a defense mechanism, the British were very interested in it.

This one was one of the larger forts, high walls, lots of soldiers, so they just couldn't take it by force.

They had to use a ruse or a trick, and what they did was pick the day that was strategic.

It was the King's birthday.

So they said, well, we want to honor the king with a lacrosse game.

And lacrosse hundreds of years ago was a very violent game.

It's often called the little brother of war, because sometimes people died when they played lacrosse.

So the game is going on.

It's getting heated.

There's a group of Anishinaabe women who are watching and they're like, right against the backs, against the fort.

And they all have blankets on.

They had weapons under the blankets.

Spears, clubs, knives.

And as the Warrior throw the ball through the door, the British cracked the door a little bit wider so they can let the warrior go and get the ball.

The warriors run by the women and the women hand off all the weapons and so they're armed instantly.

(swords clashing) I mean, it completely overwhelmed the British and it was instantaneously hand-to-hand combat.

And they have the Fort.

They seized it, and it puts the British on notice that we just can't come in in and push these people around like we thought we could.

You know, they fight back and they fight well.

So they establish this peace after Pontiac's War.

(MUSIC) All these events are, are connected.

Like a chain reaction.

When the French and Indian War is fought and concluded.

It leads to Pontiac's War.

And when Pontiac's War happens, the results are this proclamatio line is created by the British, and that line is the Appalachian Mountains.

So if you look at a map of the United States and you look at the eastern seaboard, you have the 13 colonies, then you have the Appalachian Mountains, and then you have wilderness territory.

And so the proclamation line itself states that those in the 13 colonies, you can't settle past this line.

This land over her is designated for our Indigenous brethren.

It was a, an effort on the part of British authorities to try and keep the peace, not necessarily because they felt any altruistic impulse towards the Indigenous people, but they realized that if more white settler kept moving out into the West, antagonizing the native people who lived in the Ohio River valley up here in the Great Lakes, there would be more violence on both sides.

And that was all bad for business.

That is truly what drove, almost all of this, was the desire to be able t continue the fur trade out here.

When British colonists are feeling so victorious, feeling that they've helped their king win this war, that they turn around and and say to each other, we should have what we want for having assisted in this endeavor.

So they turn around, look at this line that their government i attempting to establish and say, why are you preventing me from moving further west?

Why are you preventing me from taking land and establishing my family?

Also, after the- what was perceived as the treachery of Indigenous nations against the British, British settlers are asking their British government, why should we maintain these allegiances with Indigenous nation if they were just our enemies?

And so this sparks anger in the colonists.

And so you have people like Washington and Jefferson who are actually buying land on the other side of the mountains when they shouldn't be.

So they're going against royal proclamation.

They thought it was their literally, God given right, to go and colonize and go west and have land.

This leads to th colonists saying, you know what?

We need to be free.

We need to be our own country.

This leads the colonists and Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence.

This leads to that line in the 27th, and grievance of the Declaration of Independence that refers to Indigenous people as merciless Indian savages.

(MUSIC) (MUSIC) Pontiac's rebellion and the story of the Indigenou folks who fought in the Midwest is key, and it's central to the story of the founding of this country in general, (flag rustling) Pontiac's War or Pontiac's Rebellion.

But I think gives us a different light in how we think about the start of the American Revolution.

(MUSIC) A lot of people go to what they learned in eighth grade history, right?

Taxation without representation.

The colonists being oppressed by the crown, people just wanting their freedom, right?

But when you boil it down to the mos simplistic explanation of all, the revolution was about land.

And it was specifically about land that wealthy white men could own.

(MUSIC) And that land beyond the mountains was profitable, and it was fertile.

And it was it was untouchable.

It was something they couldn't get to.

And so they wanted it.

And it was something that Pontiac and the Indigenous people were trying to protect.

They were trying to keep it as a home for themselves, for their people, for their language, for their ceremony.

At its core, though, we like to paint it in a whole other light.

The American Revolution was a war about land that the colonists couldn't get to, and that they wanted.

(MUSIC) So this portrait is a portrait of Chief Pontiac by John McStanley.

There's almost somewhat of a, of a, of a Eurocentric feel to the painting and also to the, to the look of Pontiac.

I think some of his features look a little European.

But also, there's also no known drawings of Pontiac, so we're not actually really sure what he looked like.

So Stanley could have taken a lot of liberties her in, in the portrayal of Pontiac.

So not even just Pontiac, but art.

And the way we interpret things has reshape indigenous history in general.

So when we think abou whether it is a Stanley painting or a photograph by George Catlin or anything like that, Indigenous history is interprete through a different lens, mostly a Eurocentric lens.

(MUSIC) Today, we see more contemporary indigenous artists and photographers that portray our histories and our people as who we truly are and not some creatures of myth or the past.

(MUSIC) As somebody who is a citizen of the Oneida Nation, who fought on the side of the Patriots during the American Revolution, as- as a woman who descends from women who treated the sick and nursed soldiers, and as a public historian from a community that historically has been underrepresented.

It is important now more than ever that these stories come forth.

(MUSIC) Michigan history is Indigenous history.

You know, I came here as a really young kid with elders and my mom saying, this is a special spot.

Remember it.

Now as I'm getting to that age, likw this is a special spot.

Remember it.

So you pass it on.

They're still here, which is really remarkable, which I think reflects the Odawa still being in this area as well.

All of our stories make u the fabric of the United States, and it all should be considered U.S history.

(MUSIC) (MUSIC TAG)