"When Captives Don't Want to Return Home" Topic

"An Unexpected Outcome of the 1764-65 Return of Captives by the Lenape, Seneca, and Shawnee Tribes

The French and Indian War ended with the 1763 Treaty of Paris, with Britain receiving all French and Spanish-claimed territories between the Mississippi River and the British-American Colonies. Afterwards, the British instilled the Proclamation Line of 1763, a boundary along the Appalachian Mountains to prevent Colonists from expanding westward into Native lands. Instead, many Colonists migrated into Native lands, including veterans who were promised frontier land grants for their service before the Proclamation Line was announced. Consequently, Pontiac's War erupted in 1763, with 14 tribes raiding frontier settlements and sieging forts to assert territorial holdings. Fighting took place in what is now Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

During the war, Colonists and Native Americans both committed atrocities, with Native attacks resulting in 500 Colonial deaths, thousands displaced, and abductions. However, the Colonists and British military experienced battlefield victories under Britain's Colonel Henry Bouquet in the Ohio region and Pennsylvania. These victories led to Lenape, Seneca, and Shawnee (LSS) tribe representatives meeting with Bouquet in October 1764 to request peace. In response, Bouquet told them, "Deliver…all the prisoners captured in your possession, without exception; Englishmen, Frenchmen, women, and children; whether adopted in your tribe, married, living amongst you." …"

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Armand

Not surprising – my great-great-grandpappy was one of the 6,000 Germans serving with the Brits in the AWI who decided at the end of hostilities not to return to Europe but to farmstead the Ohio Valley