Pontiac (Ottawa leader) On May 9, he laid siege to the fort, and was eventually joined by more than 900 warriors from a half-dozen tribes. While Pontiac was besieging Fort Detroit, messengers spread word of his actions. Indians made widespread attacks against British forts and Anglo-American (but not French) settlements, and at one point controlled nine of eleven British forts in the Ohio Valley. They destroyed Fort Sandusky. In July 1763, Pontiac defeated a British detachment at the Battle of Bloody Run, but he was unable to capture the fort. In October, he lifted the siege and withdrew to the Illinois Country, where
Fort Detroit by the British after the French surrendered Montreal in 1760 during the French and Indian War (part of the Seven Years' War). The British held it until the American Revolutionary War, and it was taken over by the United States afterward. They built Fort Lernoult to the north along the river in 1779. This was later renamed as Fort Shelby and was abandoned by the US military in the 1820s. The city of Detroit demolished Fort Shelby in 1827. Cadillac ordered Fort Detroit built on the west side of the Detroit River in an effort to prevent British colonists from