Benjamin Franklin and the Wendigo Plague

 

"I have communed with The Master of Life."  Neolin's eyes glowed.  "He took the form of a clear fountain, and allowed me to drink from its waters.  I was granted knowledge, and eternal youth.  I have lived with more than a hundred different peoples, including the Olmecs, the Maya, and the Anasazi.  I understand conflict and war.  What I see is a spreading blight.

​

The year is 1763 in an alternate history of North America.  In this universe Pontiac's Rebellion is an overwhelming success.  Westward expansion is halted when an immortal sachem uses his medicine to render gunpowder unuseable and unleash a plague that turns Europeans into man-eating monsters.  Can even Benjamin Franklin, one one of the greatest minds of the enlightenment, preserve England's thirteen colonies on the continent?