Indiana give up: they captured Fort Ouiatenon and Fort Miami during Pontiac's Rebellion. The British royal proclamation of 1763 designated the land west of the Appalachians for Native American use, and excluded British colonists from the area, which the Crown called "Indian Territory". In 1775, the American Revolutionary War began as the colonists sought self-government and independence from the British. The majority of the fighting took place near the East Coast, but the Patriot military officer George Rogers Clark called for an army to help fight the British in the west. Clark's army won significant battles and took over Vincennes and
Tecumseh along the Thames Valley. Tecumseh sought continued British support in order to defend tribal lands against the Americans. However, a much reinforced Harrison led an invasion of Canada. The siege began on May 5, 1813, when a small British force of less than 1,000 men under the command of Major-General Procter, the British commander on the Detroit frontier, and an estimated 1,250 Indian warriors led by Tecumseh and the Wyandot leader, Roundhead, attempted to capture Fort Meigs in northwestern Ohio. The British hoped that the effort would delay an American offensive attack against Detroit, which the British had captured in