New France
New France () was the area colonized by France in North America during a period beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Great Britain and Spain in 1763 under the Treaty of Paris (1763).
Pontiac's War
In the decades before Pontiac's Rebellion, France and Great Britain participated in a series of wars in Europe that also involved the French and Indian Wars in North America. The largest of these wars was the worldwide Seven Years' War, in which France lost New France in North America to Great Britain. Peace with the Shawnee and Lenape who had been combatants came in 1758 with the Treaty of Easton, where the British promised not to settle further beyond the ridge of the Alleghenies – a demarcation later to be confirmed by the Royal Proclamation of 1763, though it was little respected. Most fighting in the North American theater of the war, generally referred to as the French and Indian War in the United States, came to an end after British General Jeffrey Amherst captured Montreal, the last important French settlement, in 1760.