Fort Sandusky present-day Erie County. A European-American town later developed near there. During Pontiac's Rebellion in 1763, when a regional coalition of American Indians, primarily Wyandot, tried to expel the British, they first attacked and then laid siege to Fort Detroit. The Wyandot and allies then attacked other forts in the region, taking control of Fort Sandusky. On May 16, 1763, a group of Wyandot gained entry to the fort under the pretense of holding a council with the British, the same stratagem that had failed in Detroit nine days earlier. Alone with the commander, chiefs seized him while warriors killed 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."