Israel Putnam to the capture of Havana. Major Putnam is believed to have brought back Cuban tobacco seeds to New England, which he planted in the Hartford area. This reportedly resulted in the development of the renowned Connecticut Wrapper. In 1763 during Pontiac's Rebellion, Putnam was sent with reinforcements to relieve Pontiac's siege of Fort Detroit. After the war, he returned to his farm in Brooklyn, Connecticut. Putnam publicly professed his Christian faith following the Seven Years' War in 1765, and joined the Congregational Church in his town. He was among those who objected to British taxation policies. For instance, around the
Illinois campaign the region. When the American Revolutionary War began, in 1775, the Ohio River marked the border between the Illinois Country and Kentucky, an area recently settled by American colonists. The British had originally sought to keep American Indians out of the war, but in 1777 Lieutenant Governor Hamilton received instructions to recruit and arm Indian war parties to raid the Kentucky settlements, opening a western front in the war with the rebel colonists. "From 1777 on," wrote historian Bernard Sheehan, "the line of western settlements was under almost constant assault by white-led [Indian] raiding parties that had originated at Detroit."