On June 2, 1763, the Ojibwe captured Michigan’s Fort Michilimackinac from the British. Ojibwe warriors from villages on Mackinac Island and along the Cheboygan River had surprised the unsuspecting garrison while playing a game of baggatiway. On the heels of the capture, Odawa from nearby L’Arbre Croche arrived to rescue British prisoners, setting into motion a complicated series of negotiations among Ojibwe, Odawa, and Menominee and other Indians from Wisconsin. Because nearly all Native people in the Michilimackinac borderland had allied themselves with the British before the attack, they refused to join the Michilimackinac Ojibwe in their effort to oust the British from the upper country; the turmoil effectively halted the fur trade. Beyond Pontiac’s Shadow examines the circumstances leading up to the attack and the course of events in the aftermath that resulted in the regarrisoning of the fort and the restoration of the fur trade. At the heart of this discussion is an analysis of French-Canadian and Indian communities at the Straits of Mackinac and throughout the pays d’en haut. An accessible guide to this important period in Michigan, American, and Canadian history, Beyond Pontiac’s Shadow sheds invaluable light on a political and cultural crisis.

Mémoires of Michilimackinac offers corrected, unabridged, and properly annotated and edited transcriptions and translations of three important documents related to the French presence and French–Native American relations in the Great Lakes region before 1715. The Relation du sieur De lamotte Cadillac; d’Aigremont’s Mémoire of November 14, 1708; and Bégon’s Mémoire on the Establishment of Michilimackinac of September 20, 1713, are thoroughly examined, with an introduction that places these documents in context; summarizes major findings about Michilimackinac, Native American cultures, and French imperial ambitions in the Great Lakes region; and includes a critical exploration of the documents’ authorship. All three mémoires provide windows into Michilimackinac’s centrality to the French imperial and trade network and the place of Native Americans in French policy during this period, and ultimately contribute to understanding trends, enduring and new, in the scholarship of French and Indians in the upper Great Lakes.