Talk:Pontiac (Odawa leader)

Conflicting information
In http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illiniwek#History the notion that Pontiac was murdered by a Peoria warrior is dismissed (with citations), and yet in this article it is stated as fact.

Which is it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.66.231.5 (talk) 21:37, 14 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Read it again: what is dismissed in the other article (and in this one too) is that a war of retaliation was waged against the Peorias because of Pontiac's murder. That legend was once repeated as fact, but it never happened. That Pontiac was murdered by a Peoria is not doubted in either article. —Kevin Myers 00:47, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Incorrect article title?
I keep reading Pontiac's tribe as being the "Odawa", yet the article's title describes it as "Ottawa": is this right? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rpot2 (talk • contribs) 21:01, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Pontiac's burial place
there is a plaque on my daily parking garage (in downtown St Louis, MO) that says it is the burial place of Ottawa chief Pontiac. Has anyone seen proof that this is actually true? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.145.168.100 (talk) 19:05, 19 September 2007 (UTC)


 * Peckham's book discusses Pontiac's burial place. He says that the burial place is unknown, and may have been at Cahokia, but evidence and tradition point to an area in St. Louis south of Market Street between Broadway and Fourth (street locations circa 1947, of course). Perhaps that's the location of your parking garage. —Kevin Myers 02:12, 21 September 2007 (UTC)


 * In the 1980s, the library on the 1st floor southeast corner of the Old Courthouse downtown had quotes from St. Louis history posted on the walls. One of these was an excerpt from a letter an early St. Louis female resident, whose name I unfortunately don't remember, had written to a relative in which she described attending Pontiac's funeral. She wrote that he was buried in the rain with full military honors wearing a French officer uniform jacket with few people in attendance. I was surprised I'd never heard of this before and asked a Park Service ranger about it. He said Pontiac was buried in the Old Pioneer Cemetery (not to be confused with the Pioneer Cemetery) and pointed out the window to the intersection of 4th and Market Street. He said that for many years the location wasn't known until workers laying sewer lines began finding very old desiccated graves there. Frank Prchal (talk) 20:00, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

cheif pontiac is buried on apple island in the middle of orchard lake near pontiac, MI. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.211.133.157 (talk • contribs)


 * There is a local tradition that Pontiac lived on or was buried on Apple Island. There's no actual evidence for this. That factoid is relevant to the Apple Island article, but probably too trivial to mention in this article. —Kevin Myers 08:11, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Move
I think 's recent move should be undone. By adding "Native American" as a qualifier it breaks with the general practice for parenthetical disambiguations which do not usually include racial or ethnic categories. (We do not for example have an article on "John Smith (White soldier)" or "John Smith (Anglo-Saxon settler)". By adding this to a Native American politician, but not to European or Euro-American counterparts the usage actually introduces a layer of discrimination. I think here the right title is simply "Pontiac", since all other things called Pontiac are named after this individual making him the primary topic. Some people might object to this for example if they interpret the primary topic policy differently and so a disambiguation might be warranted. In that case I think it should be "Pontiac (war leader)", "Pontiac (Ottawa leader)" or "Pontiac 18th century war leader".·maunus · snunɐɯ· 01:39, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
 * You should move it to wherever you want. I just thought Pontiac (person) was an indescript disambiguation for this highly notable man. RO (talk)  01:43, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I consider discussing moves when they may be controversial to be good form.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 02:08, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
 * also note that your moves created a bunch of double and even triple redirects. When you move you should use the "what links here tool" to visit all the pages that links to the original name and bypass the redirects. I fixed a small number, but there are many more - particularly many links go to the title Chief Pontiac, which I have now redirected to here, but which redirected to Pontiac (person) which in turn redirected to "Pontiac (Native American leader)".·maunus · snunɐɯ· 03:15, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
 * , a bot goes around and fixes those, so there's no need to do it manually. RO (talk)  18:31, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
 * It does not actually fix all of them, particularly not the ones that have two or three levels of redirection - which is why there was already a network of redirects before your moves.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 18:33, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
 * The diff above fixed a double redirect, but I hear you and will be more careful about this. RO (talk)  18:36, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Particularly the fact that there are so many links to "Chief Pontiac" is annoying (not your fault of course), I fixed a bunch of them in prominent articles yesterday, but there are still many.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 18:39, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Can we make Chief Pontiac redirect here so it's not a double? RO (talk)  18:46, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I believe I did that.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 19:36, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks. Sorry to make work for you. I'll try to be better about moves, but I didn't know that double and triple redirects were even a problem. RO (talk)  19:13, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Where is the Ghost Dance information?
I'm not going to change this article myself, because I'm not one of Wikipedia's habitual editors, but it boggles the mind that it omits the most important fact about Pontiac: that he was a spiritual, religious leader! He brought the tribes together after what he claimed had been a mystical journey, followed by wide travel with exhortations of moral reform at each. This is all well-documented. See e.g. some of the sources in "The Ghost Dance Religion" by James Mooney (1892, available at archive.org). Where is any mention of the hide map? This article presents Pontiac as just another general and chief dissatisfied with the British. That's like writing about Muhammed without mentioning Islam!

Marriage
The article says he was married in 1716. But he was born between 1712 and 1725? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.167.192.102 (talk) 23:46, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * and it says they "had two children, both sons. And a daughter"  huh?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.167.192.102 (talk) 23:49, 14 December 2023 (UTC)