Odawa Central Ohio; the Shawnee in Southwest Ohio; and the Delaware (Lenape) in Southeast and Eastern Ohio." In the mid-18th century, the Odawa allied with their French trading partners against the British in the Seven Years' War, known as the French and Indian War in the North American colonies. They made raids against Anglo-American colonists. The noted Odawa chief Pontiac has historically been reported to have been born at the confluence of the Maumee and Auglaize rivers, where modern Defiance, Ohio later developed. In 1763, after the British had defeated France, Pontiac led a rebellion against the British, but he was
Siege of Fort Pitt become by 1763 and how far British officers were willing to go in ignoring their own soldiers' code of warfare. A devastating smallpox epidemic plagued Native American tribes in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes area through 1763 and 1764, but the effectiveness of these instances of efforts to spread smallpox remain unknown. After extensive review of surviving documentary evidence, historian Francis Jennings concluded the attempt at biological warfare was "unquestionably effective at Fort Pitt"; Barbara Mann deduced "it is important to note that the smallpox distribution worked"; Howard Peckham noted the resulting fatal epidemic "certainly affected their vigorous prosecution