Boojum, the treaty was in response to the absolute savagery that Pontiac and their people displayed. Christians were afraid, they had never seen that ruthlessness towards women and children. Don't pretend the native Americans weren't murderous to eachother and towards the settlers on a whole different level that cringed the white Christians of the time. Despite what they teach you in school. The treaty was based on absolute fear.
Of course the narrative that Native Americans all lived peacefully with each other is complete BS (I'm a little surprised by your use of a strawman argument). And it is true that Native Americans were known to respond ruthlessly to invaders. But European history up to the 18th Century was drenched in blood and full of the merciless slaughter of innocents, so White Christians were hardly in a position to claim any moral superiority.
Hell, the Pilgrims - who have (absurdly) been elevated to the status of paragons of Christian virtue in the mythology of America - did their fair share of slaughtering Native Americans in the most savage ways and taking them as slaves, and they sometimes turned on tribes who considered themselves allies of the invaders.
And, yeah, I suppose you could say that the royal proclamation of 1763 (it wasn't a treaty) was based on fear. The Crown accepted that it couldn't afford to properly defend new settlements to the west of the Appalachians. So it drew a line, promised the natives that any advancement of White settlers to the west of the line would be done only following the signing of treaties and the "voluntary" ceding of land, and hoped that things would settle down to the east of the line. So there was fear on the part of the Crown, but in a similar sense to what the USA has been feeling when it has looked at what's been going on in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As for what the settlers felt personally, I'm sure there was a lot of fear on their part. They had to understand that they were invaders surrounded by hostile, often invisible people whom they knew virtually nothing about. So they probably often felt much like American ground troops have felt in places like Viet Nam and Afghanistan. But no matter how hard you try to twist the history of the USA to make it conform to the fantasy that it was a noble, enlightened endeavour blessed by God from the start, the fact remains that North America was not unoccupied when European settlers arrived. The natives were forced to give up their claims to the land, sometimes figuratively at the point of a gun, but very often literally so.
But American history books discuss a plethora of problems. For one thing, the settlers were taxed by the Crown, but were not English citizens. They organized a Continental Congress that got shut down. And, the huge problem was GUN CONTROL. This issue started fighting before the Declaration of Independence was even written.
Can you imagine winter provisions running out with no flintlock rifle for the family to hunt for deer? The point is the FRUSTRATION with the Crown became irreversible. The famous lines that preface our Declaration of Independence and Constitution reflect frustration, and self-determination. If you are interpreting this as an arrogant attempt at noble intent, you are misreading the whole thing. Anyone that thought that would have gone back to England.
To be clear, we were salty bastards, and are still known internationally for our bad manners. (I've tried to clean up my manners for international business trips, but I'm sort of an exception.)
When did America really lose it's innocence?
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Boojum, the treaty was in response to the absolute savagery that Pontiac and their people displayed. Christians were afraid, they had never seen that ruthlessness towards women and children. Don't pretend the native Americans weren't murderous to eachother and towards the settlers on a whole different level that cringed the white Christians of the time. Despite what they teach you in school. The treaty was based on absolute fear.
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Boojum
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Of course the narrative that Native Americans all lived peacefully with each other is complete BS (I'm a little surprised by your use of a strawman argument). And it is true that Native Americans were known to respond ruthlessly to invaders. But European history up to the 18th Century was drenched in blood and full of the merciless slaughter of innocents, so White Christians were hardly in a position to claim any moral superiority.
Hell, the Pilgrims - who have (absurdly) been elevated to the status of paragons of Christian virtue in the mythology of America - did their fair share of slaughtering Native Americans in the most savage ways and taking them as slaves, and they sometimes turned on tribes who considered themselves allies of the invaders.
And, yeah, I suppose you could say that the royal proclamation of 1763 (it wasn't a treaty) was based on fear. The Crown accepted that it couldn't afford to properly defend new settlements to the west of the Appalachians. So it drew a line, promised the natives that any advancement of White settlers to the west of the line would be done only following the signing of treaties and the "voluntary" ceding of land, and hoped that things would settle down to the east of the line. So there was fear on the part of the Crown, but in a similar sense to what the USA has been feeling when it has looked at what's been going on in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As for what the settlers felt personally, I'm sure there was a lot of fear on their part. They had to understand that they were invaders surrounded by hostile, often invisible people whom they knew virtually nothing about. So they probably often felt much like American ground troops have felt in places like Viet Nam and Afghanistan. But no matter how hard you try to twist the history of the USA to make it conform to the fantasy that it was a noble, enlightened endeavour blessed by God from the start, the fact remains that North America was not unoccupied when European settlers arrived. The natives were forced to give up their claims to the land, sometimes figuratively at the point of a gun, but very often literally so.
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dude_Jones
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But American history books discuss a plethora of problems. For one thing, the settlers were taxed by the Crown, but were not English citizens. They organized a Continental Congress that got shut down. And, the huge problem was GUN CONTROL. This issue started fighting before the Declaration of Independence was even written.
Can you imagine winter provisions running out with no flintlock rifle for the family to hunt for deer? The point is the FRUSTRATION with the Crown became irreversible. The famous lines that preface our Declaration of Independence and Constitution reflect frustration, and self-determination. If you are interpreting this as an arrogant attempt at noble intent, you are misreading the whole thing. Anyone that thought that would have gone back to England.
To be clear, we were salty bastards, and are still known internationally for our bad manners. (I've tried to clean up my manners for international business trips, but I'm sort of an exception.)