In 1754, a young, wealthy Virginia militia officer named George Washington was sent to the Ohio River Valley Region by Virginia’s governor. His mission was to settle border issues between the British and French colonies there. Washington and his soldiers, with the help of their Indigenous allies from the Seneca Cayuga Nation, attacked the French soldiers. Washington’s Indigenous allies were said to have killed all the wounded soldiers including the French leader, Joseph Coulon de Villiers, Sieur de Jumonville. This conflict, which came to be known as Jumonville Glen, was a major cause of the French and Indian War. The French and Indian War was a war between the French and British colonies as well as the Indigenous tribal nations that were forced to support either side.

The French and Indian War was the name given to the American side of a much larger global war between Great Britain and France. Across Europe, the war was called The Seven Years’ War and was the climax of nearly one-hundred years of fighting that had begun in 1689. The French and Indian War, which was fought from 1754 until 1763, ended in a major victory for Great Britain and its allies. Great Britain took most of North America’s French colonies, known as New France. This included Canada and all of its land east of the Mississippi River, including the Ohio Valley.

Consequences of the French and Indian War

Tense Relationships

Great Britain’s new territories in North America were valuable additions to the British Empire, but ruling them proved difficult. The people living on the land were mainly French or Indigenous people. Neither of them wanted to be ruled by Great Britain.

The relationship with the Indigenous people living in the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes became tense. While these Indigenous nations had traded with the French for years, not many French settlers, other than trappers and traders, had actually moved into these areas. After France was defeated, British settlers began crossing the Appalachian Mountains in large numbers looking for good farmland. Some Indigenous people viewed these settlers, who wanted to claim the land as their own, differently than the French fur traders who they had traded with for many years.

Also during the war, the chiefs of Indigenous nations received generous gifts from the British government. Gift giving was considered to be an important part of keeping a good relationship with the tribal nations. After the war, the British no longer gave gifts and stopped trading gunpowder with the Indigenous peoples. The Indigenous people felt that the British were treating them as if they conquered them and not like former allies.

In May 1763, an Ottawa leader named Pontiac led an uprising of Indigenous tribal nations. They attacked the frontier from the Great Lakes region. Hundreds died in the conflict that ended with a 1766 peace treaty. The treaty promised that British settlers would not move into Indigenous lands. These settlers were angry because they thought they had the rights to this land. Pontiac’s Rebellion was an important reason why Great Britain decided to keep soldiers in the American colonies, even after the French and Indian War was over.

Costs of Conflict