ABSTRACT
Preaching a return to traditional customs, Neolin the Enlightened, otherwise known as the Delaware Prophet, influenced subsequent Native American prophets and the warriors of Pontiac’s Uprising (1763-66). In 1762, the Delaware Prophet arose during a time of demoralization among the Eastern Indian nations, such as the Odawa (Ottawa), Delaware, Seneca, Shawnee, Wyandot (Huron), Potowatomi, Erie, and Ojibwa. For two centuries, European encroachment had disrupted Native economic systems, transforming once selfsufficient peoples into dependent trading partners who were dangerously entangled in the imperialist wars between the French and English. Subsistence hunting and horticulture had been transformed into commercial enterprises, where Native peoples bartered furs and corn for numerous trade goods including metal axes, kettles, flint, paint pigments, food stuffs, cloth, beads, guns, rum, and whiskey. A combination of liquor and trade had eroded Indian power and precipitated the loss of homelands.
