In April 1763, the American Indian War for Independence (1763-1766) — also called Pontiac’s Rebellion or Pontiac’s Uprising for the Ottawa Nation leader who organized a coalition against European colonial powers — started with the siege of Fort Detroit.
In July 1764, an English colonial force that included 500 Native fighters departed from Oswego for operations against Pontiac’s forces to the west. Attacks by Native forces spread east and south as a result of continued European colonists’ trespassing and settlement on Native lands.
In response to the renewed conflict on it’s North American border, on October 1763 King George III unilaterally issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, intended to establish a boundary between British eastern seaboard colonies and an “Indian Reserve” in the North American interior.
The proclamation prohibited English settlement west of a “proclamation line” that ran along the Eastern Continental Divide through the Appalachian Mountains. The proclamation line bisected what would become New York state; Oswego and the emerging trading settlement at Fort Niagara and what is now Buffalo were within the Indian Reserve area.
However, the proclamation line did not consider the Native nations that continued to reside on their traditional lands east of the proclamation line, nor did it stop land speculators and English colonists already pushing into the Ohio Valley.
Pontiac’s Rebellion continued into 1764, although representatives from more than 20 Native nations and Tribes signed the Treaty of Niagara in August 1764; this treaty is considered the foundation of English-Native American political relations within North America by many of the signing tribes.
Pontiac refused to attend the summer 1764 conference at Fort Niagara, and skirmishes continued across the Ohio Valley throughout 1765.
In July 1766, Pontiac and Sir William Johnson, the British Superintendent of Indian Affairs Northern Department who previously negotiated the Treaty of Niagara, signed a peace treaty at Fort Ontario which effectively ended the conflict, although tensions remained.
Johnson and his counterpart in the Southern Department, John Stuart, petitioned the British Board of Trade for treaties to be negotiated to formalize the boundary line established by the Royal Proclamation of 1763 and to resolve concerns of colonial settlers, officials, and land speculators.
Meanwhile, hostilities among Native nations complicated plans for such a negotiation. In March 1768, the Treaty of Johnson Hall ended hostilities between the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and the Cherokee Nation.
Also in 1768, the British Board of Trade approved Johnson and Stuart’s request to establish a boundary according to the Royal Proclamation of 1763.
The board stipulated that the boundary line would start at Fort Stanwix in today’s Rome, Oneida County, NY, proceed south and west to the confluence of the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers near present day Point Pleasant, West Virginia, then south on the Kanawha River to its headwaters near today’s Kanawha Falls, West Virginia, then south to Spanish East Florida.
First, British Indian Affairs Southern Department Superintendent Stuart conducted a council with the Cherokee in October 1768. They negotiated the Treaty of Hard Labor, which drew a boundary line from the confluence of the Ohio and Kanawha Rivers to the headwaters of the Kanawha River, then south to Spanish East Florida.
Then, Northern Department Superintendent Johnson invited Native nations to Fort Stanwix, which at that time was dilapidated after abandonment by the British Army in 1765. A council house, living quarters for colonial officials, and other buildings were constructed in advance of the negotiations. Negotiating representatives began arriving in September, and eventually Johnson recorded over 3,000 Native attendees to the council.
On November 5, 1768, representatives from the Mohawk, Oneida, Tuscarora, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca Nations (the Six Nations) signed the Boundary Line Treaty, also on behalf of Shawnee, Delaware, Mingo, and other nations, and ceded interests in land east and south of the boundary line to Great Britain.
Oswego and Fort Ontario were north of the boundary line within Indian lands, not British colonial lands.
The boundary line drawn at Fort Stanwix varied from the Board of Trade’s instructions by continuing much farther west down the Ohio River to its confluence with the Tennessee River (then known as the Cherokee or Hogohege River) near today’s Paducah, Kentucky, rather than turning south to Spanish East Florida at the headwaters of the Kanawha in present day West Virginia.
The 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix delineated the boundary between English territory and Native reservation land, although controversy continued. The Oneida Nation and Johnson disagreed about whether the boundary line started on the east or west end of the Oneida Carrying Place that Fort Stanwix protected during the French and Indian War.
If the line started on the east end, then the carry was controlled by the Oneida; if it started on the west end, the carry was controlled by the British and their New York colony.
Stuart’s relationship with the Cherokee to the south was made more difficult by the final boundary line, and aspects of the Treaty of Hard Labor boundary were later amended by the 1770 Treaty of Lochaber with the Cherokee and the Pennsylvania 1773 Purchase Line.
In sum, the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix facilitated significant colonial westward expansion into lands that became parts of western Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and northeast Tennessee, and the future states of Kentucky and parts of Virginia that later became West Virginia.
In addition, in direct defiance of the treaty, White settlers continued to illegally settle north and west of negotiated boundary lines.
Read more about Pontiac’s Uprising.
This essay was drawn from the National Park Service’s 2024 Fort Ontario Special Resources Study, available in it’s entirety with footnotes here.
Illustrations, from above: In a famous council on April 27, 1763, Pontiac urged listeners to rise up against the British (19th century engraving by Alfred Bobbett); Johnson Hall “Sir William Johnson Presenting Medals to the Indian Chiefs of the Six Nations at Johnstown, NY, 1772” by Henry L Edward, 1903; and “Map of the Frontiers of the Northern Colonies with the Boundary Line Established… at Fort Stanwix in November 1768” (NPS).
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