Reviewed by David L. Preston | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 63.4

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Reviewed by David L. Preston | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 63.4 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

David L. Preston, The Citadel

Never Come to Peace Again: Pontiac's Uprising and the Fate of the British Empire in North America. By David Dixon. Campaigns and Commanders. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005. 371 pages. $34.95 (cloth).
Fred Anderson has written that, until recently, the Seven Years' War appeared in historical literature as a "quaint mezzotint prelude to our national history." Similarly, Pontiac's war was often treated as a mere appendage or violent aftershock of the Seven Years' War without a proper understanding of its uniqueness, spontaneity, explosiveness, and ferocity. Many works, however, have broadened and deepened our understanding of Pontiac's war, including Anderson's Crucible of War, William R. Nester's "Haughty Conquerors," Gregory Evans Dowd's War under Heaven, and Colin G. Calloway's The Scratch of a Pen.¹	1
David Dixon's Never Come to Peace Again argues that the war was "a transcendent episode in the struggle of Native Americans to retain their identity and sovereignty" (275) and became "the bridge that linked [the] two bitter encounters" (xii) of the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. Dixon's well-researched book explores the war's intense human suffering and how it shaped larger debates about the status of Indians and colonists in the British Empire. Though it does not offer an entirely new interpretation, the book succeeds as a readable narrative of Pontiac's war that eloquently captures its human drama. Dixon's accounts of the siege of Detroit, the battle of Bushy Run, and the British defeat at Devil's Hole near Niagara are compelling. The author also has a keen grasp of the unique personalities caught up in the maelstrom of war, such as Keekyuscung, a Delaware warrior whose body was found after Bushy Run in 1763, who had prophesied in 1758 that there "would be a great war, and never come to peace again" (41) if the British army did not leave the Ohio Country, and Sir Robert Davers, a dreamy British aristocrat who came to America to live among the Indians he admired only to be killed and beheaded by them near Detroit.	2
The narrative focuses on the Ohio valley, a "cauldron of unrest and awful violence" (3) and the "last sanctuary" (17) for the Delaware, Shawnee, and Mingo who lived there. They had fought in the Seven Years' War to preserve their lands from colonial interference, and they expected that the British would honor their legal and verbal commitments to withdraw their forces afterward. Dixon traces the war's origins through the establishment of British outposts across the Ohio valley, renewed settlement expansion and violence, Neolin's religious teachings that made the conflict a "holy war" (184), and the "conceited and foolish" (100) policies of Major General Jeffrey Amherst. The British commander in chief is contrasted with beneficent Sir William Johnson, superintendent of Indian affairs. Dixon's interpretation of Johnson and the Iroquois Confederacy is inaccurate in light of scholarship: Johnson was as much an imperialist as Amherst, he had no unilateral authority to "send Iroquois war parties" (220) against the western nations, and there was no such thing as "Iroquois hegemony" (243) over the independent Ohio valley peoples.	3
Dixon's interpretation of the natives' formidable military campaign emphasizes the "forceful character of Pontiac" and his "personal magnetism" (131) over diverse western nations who had "forged an identity as one people" (88). Warriors quickly captured and destroyed smaller British forts such as Sandusky, Michilimackinac, Venango, and Presque Isle. Large native contingents unsuccessfully besieged the formidable British garrisons at Detroit, Pitt, and Niagara. Though the Indians' victories were sudden and dramatic, many of the dilapidated British stockades they captured contained only puny garrisons. Far more significant was the human toll the Indians exacted on Euroamerican farmers: probably one thousand or more were killed or captured. The author's descriptions of warriors "lurking" (145) around and "butchering" (112) unfortunately detract from the strategic nature of the Indians' attacks on the farms that supplied British posts.	. . .

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