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Pontiac was recognized as the greatest Indian warrior of his time, and all eyes were turned towards him. He had hoped for increased power and prominence under the British, but as the months sped by he saw how vain was his hope, and his early feigned friendship turned to the intensest hate. Pontiac now began to plot the destruction of the British in the Indian country. He sent messengers with war-belts to the widely distributed tribes scattered from the western plains to the mouth of the Mississippi. The savages began to settle in large numbers in the immediate vicinity of the forts and made ready to seize the opportune moment to make a simultaneous attack on the British posts. Meanwhile the French were at work. They spread a report among the savages that the armies of the king of France were advancing up the St Lawrence and the Mississippi to recover the lost territory. Gifts of arms, ammunition, clothing and provisions were liberally bestowed on the Indians, and everything done in a covert manner to set them against the English.

In 1761 there was a rumour of an Indian rising, but Captain Campbell, then in command at Detroit, acted with such promptness and wisdom that it was prevented from coming to a head. Again in the summer of 1762 another outbreak threatened, but it too was checked in time. Early in 1763, shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Paris, Pontiac had all his preparations made for a general uprising at all the forts. So stealthily had he done his work that at not a single fort were the troops aware of the threatened danger.

Pontiac made his summer headquarters on an island at the entrance to Lake St Clair. He was thus in touch with the strongest position of the British in the Indian country. Near Fort Detroit were three populous Indian villages: the Ottawas, four miles above the fort; the Pottawatamies, one mile below; and the Wyandots, on the eastern side of the river. Each shore was dotted with the homes of French settlers, friendly to the savages either through fear or a desire for vengeance. Pontiac no doubt thought that with the downfall of Detroit, which he fully expected to accomplish, British power in the West would be broken.

Pontiac was an astute, ambitious, crafty savage, with a marvellous influence over the Indians. He had all the primitive savage's characteristics. There was little of the heroic about him. His personal acts of cruelty and the manner in which he permitted the torture of prisoners, and even cannibal orgies, among his confederates showed that he was lacking in those noble traits of character for which Tecumseh, the great Shawnee chief, was afterwards distinguished. But he had fine organizing power, and while the British commander-in-chief hopelessly failed to grasp the Western situation, and the British troops lived in a false security within their palisaded forts, he had planned an uprising that was intended with one swift stroke to put an end to British power in the Indian country. This uprising against forts hundreds of miles apart was to take place simultaneously. The forts were to be seized and the garrisons slaughtered. Pontiac had little doubt but that he would succeed. At the forts were barely men enough to keep them in repair, and so widely scattered were the posts that no one fort could be of material assistance in time of danger to any of the others. At the beginning of 1763 Pontiac was ready to commence his work of destruction. His war-belts had been effective. It has been computed that fully fifty-six thousand warriors were ready to answer his call to arms.