I took a baseball-inspired road trip in June 2024 to Cleveland, Toronto and Pittsburgh. Larry Harder suggested I visit the Fort Pitt Museum while in Pittsburgh and I subsequently added the Heinz History Center to my agenda because it was rated highly in TripAdvisor.
When I arrived at the Fort Pitt Museum I was happy to meet a docent, Mrs. Hutchinson, who was about to lead a free tour. She started the tour with just me and soon gathered a dozen or more other visitors with her enthusiastic and informative description of the fort, the city and its history. She was quite excellent and I commended her after the tour. Her tour took nearly an hour, hitting highlights of the museum but leaving room for further exploration on our own. After the tour I spent another couple of hours going through the exhibits and watching several good videos in more detail. I took lots of photos of the museum signage to try to reconstruct and understand the convoluted sequence of events.
The Heinz History Center is not, as one supposes, just about pickles and condiments though those are covered. It’s an excellent Smithsonian-affiliated general history museum of Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania named for Senator John Heinz. I ended up spending more than 10 hours at the two museums over two days and spent many more hours trying to digest and make sense of what I learned. This post is an effort to consolidate my understanding.
Pittsburgh, George Washington and the French and Indian War
Fort Pitt played a prominent role in the early history of Pittsburgh and the French and Indian War. The French and Indian War morphed into the global Seven Years’ War between Britain and France which in turn helped prompt the American Revolution. I knew George Washington was involved in sparking the French and Indian War but the specifics were fuzzy for me. I learned a great deal in my few hours at the Fort Pitt Museum but was still confused; I took pictures of most of the displays to try to make more sense of events later. The Heinz History Center had an exhibit “Wars of Empire and Liberty” which helped contextualize the material I’d seen at the Fort Pitt Museum. I took photos of those displays as well. The result below is a mix of both, supplemented liberally by Wikipedia.
To set the scene, British and French colonies in North America both began in the early 1600s but by 1750 the British population of 1.5 million far outstripped the French presence of less than 100,000. Meanwhile, indigenous Native American populations across the continent were decimated by disease, wars and displacement. The Ohio Valley, encompassing western Pennsylvania, Ohio, and beyond became a depopulated wilderness, a hunting ground and new home for displaced tribes from all directions of North America. Native Americans traded with the French and British: beaver, deer and other hides in exchange for European/American goods including metal tools, glass beads, wool clothing, rum and firearms. “A secure supply of European firearms became vital to each tribe’s survival, especially in struggles with other Indian foes. Over time, trade with Europeans escalated traditional rivalries. Native Americans judged British goods superior to French-made items, but soon learned the British wanted land far more than furs. To protect their interests, Native Americans had to choose sides.”
Visiting Pittsburgh is a reminder of the central role of rivers in pre-industrial life. One can easily imagine the Ohio Valley — and indeed most of the eastern half of the continent — as a trackless, green-forested, rumpled wilderness sculpted by rivers and streams. Native Americans were more mobile and migratory than we give them credit for, trading up and down the waterways. That, unfortunately, is how European diseases reached so far into the continent over the 15th-16th centuries, wiping out large populations. The displacement of Native Americans from other regions, pushed by European colonists with their penchant for fences and farms, amplified conflicts as groups moved to carve out new homelands. Those conflicts, in turn, were amplified by access to European weapons and goods. It was a volatile mix.
For decades, these overlapping rivalries spawned a series of small French and Indian Wars, usually tied to a European war and subsequent peace treaty. The most recent, King George’s War (1744-1748), ended without resolving the North American issues but the British made inroads in trading with Ohio Valley natives, including an Irish-born fur trader George Croghan. Croghan was not directly mentioned at the museums but I learned of him through Wikipedia, a fascinating character with blurred allegiances to England’s colonists and the Native Americans, a colleague and rival to George Washington and an adopted Mohawk/Seneca and member of the Grand Council of the Iroquois League.
By the early 1750s the French, seeking to expand beyond the St. Lawrence Valley and Great Lakes, eyed the combined Ohio and Allegheny rivers as “La Belle Riviere”, a Beautiful River that linked the Mississippi River nearly to Lake Erie. They already viewed any land that drained into the Mississippi as French territory. The French started building forts near Lake Erie to secure a fordable pathway uniting the St. Lawrence with the Gulf of Mexico.
In Virginia, two of George Washington’s brothers, Lawrence and Augustine, along with Thomas Lee organized the Ohio Company in 1748 with the goal of settling and colonizing the Ohio Country. Investors included Royal Governor Robert Dinwiddie, 16-year old George Washington and a host of Virginia’s colonial elite. The following year, notwithstanding the fact that England’s King George had no sovereignty over the land, the Ohio Company secured a royal grant for 500,000 acres of Ohio Country; 200,000 immediately and 300,000 more if they could settle 100 families and garrison a fort in the territory within seven years. For the next several years the Ohio Company sent traders to scout the region and built small posts along the Potomac River as far as Cumberland, Maryland.
During these years, teenage George Washington became a surveyor in Culpepper County, the Shenandoah Valley, and parts of Western Virginia but was not directly part of the Ohio Company project (other than as an investor). His brother Lawrence contracted tuberculosis and George frequently accompanied Lawrence to the warm baths at Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. The two also sailed to Barbados in 1751 for Lawrence’s health but George contracted and survived a case of smallpox. This was George’s only voyage outside North America. When Lawrence died in 1752, 20-year old George leased and subsequently inherited Mount Vernon from Lawrence’s widow, Anne Fairfax. Inspired by Lawrence’s military career, George sought a commission in the British Army; as a stepping stone, Governor Dinwiddie appointed him a major in the Virginia militia in early 1753.
The village of Logstown, about 14 miles downstream from the confluence of the Ohio River, had become a significant gathering point and trading post for a mix of Native American tribes. It hosted a series of interactions between Native Americans, British and French traders, as both the British and French tried to gain the favor of the natives. In 1749, French commander Celeron posted his lead plates claiming the territory and watershed for New France. That same year, George Croghan succeeded in striking a deal with the Onondaga Council to purchase 200,000 acres in western Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia save for two acres at the Forks of the Ohio for a British fort. Croghan came to fear that the potential western expansion of the colony of Pennsylvania threatened his claims so within a couple of years he elected to throw his lot in with the Ohio Company of Virginia.
Thus, in 1752, with Croghan’s assistance, the Ohio Company succeeded in striking the Treaty of Logstown which granted the right to settle 200,000 acres and build a fort at the confluence of the three rivers, the Forks of the Ohio which would become Pittsburgh. The local leader on the Native American side, Tanacharison (or Tannaghrisson), was evidently reluctant to make these concessions and didn’t have final authority to grant the treaty. His title “Half King” meant that while he was a sachem/chief of his Mingo tribe, he was considered a spokesman but not ultimate authority for the broader Seneca/Iroquois. It seems that Tanacharison was even more hostile to the French than the British; he was taken captive by the French as a boy and later claimed they boiled and ate his father. Tanacharison had been on the Onandaga Council that granted George Croghan’s 1749 land purchase and had a long relationship with Croghan.
Learning that the French were building forts near Lake Erie on land claimed by Virginia, Pennsylvania and several Native American nations, the Ohio Company and Governor Dinwiddie, in consultation with the British government in London, decided to send an emissary to warn the French to desist. Dinwiddie chose Major George Washington for the task. His small delegation left Williamsburg in October 1753. After a few weeks they reached the site of the proposed fort at Pittsburgh which Washington viewed for the first time and deemed it well chosen. The delegation proceeded to Logstown and managed to convince Tanacharison and a few other natives to accompany them to meet the French. The delegation took six wintry weeks to get to Fort LeBoeuf near Erie in December where the French politely but firmly rebuffed Washington and his comrades. Washington headed back to Williamsburg to report on his mission, passing a small troop of Virginia forces under William Trent, a trader, Ohio Company employee and partner of George Croghan’s dispatched by Dinwiddie to build a stockade at the Forks of the Ohio.
In February 1754, with Tanacharison’s participation, Trent and his men began building Fort Prince George at the Forks. Just six weeks later in April, the French arrived with a much larger force, scattered Trent’s men and began construction of Fort Duquesne.
Upon Washington’s return to Williamsburg and publication of his report, Dinwiddie promoted Washington to Lieutenant Colonel and tasked him with raising a force to help Trent complete construction of Fort Prince George. Washington gathered 160 men and set out on April 2 to build a support road to the new fort. A few weeks later, near Cumberland, Maryland, Washington connected with remnants of Trent’s company and learned their attempt to build Fort Prince George was abandoned and the French were starting their own fort. Rather than turn around, and to ensure Tanacharison’s continued support (not to mention his own investment in the Ohio Company), Washington chose to press forward, getting as far as Great Meadows in southern Pennsylvania, about 37 miles south of the Forks and the French. Here he began to construct Fort Necessity and await further news or instructions.
On May 23, the French commander at Fort Duquesne, Contrecouer, sent Ensign Joseph Coulon de Jumonville, with 35 French Canadians to scout Washington’s location and deliver a message for the Virginians to desist, not unlike the mission Washington undertook six months earlier. On May 27, Tanacharison and his scouts found the Canadian camp and informed Washington. Washington went with 40 Virginians to meet Tanacharison and his small party of warriors/scouts. Together they decided to attack the Canadians the next morning in what became the 15-minute Battle of Jumonville Glen. I was surprised to learn the depth of uncertainty (detailed in the Wikipedia account of the battle) about what actually happened in this skirmish. All agree that ultimately the French were routed, with ten Canadians including Jumonville killed and the rest captured except for one that made it back to Fort Duquesne (I have not figured out what ultimately happened to the two dozen captured prisoners).
One of the main questions centers around whether Jumonville was killed in the first volley (the American/British answer, supported by Washington’s somewhat vague account of the day) or whether he was captured and subsequently killed by Tanacharison by a hatchet to the head or a gunshot during interrogation and/or when he was delivering his warning (the French version given credence at the Fort Pitt Museum). There’s an even more gruesome sequence of actions attributed to Tanacharison (a ritual slaying to avenge his father) but it’s hard to know how much is later propaganda. What appears clear is that the Canadian dead were all scalped and left in shallow or no graves, found a month later by the French. This 15-minute unauthorized skirmish was the spark that set the world ablaze, according to commenters from Walpole (or was it Voltaire?) to Churchill. That Washington acquiesced to desecration of the dead seems indictment enough of his command, but it may be more accurate to credit/blame Tanacharison for sparking the global conflict that ensued.
Anticipating a French reprisal, Washington quickly tried to strengthen Fort Necessity and requested more men from Virginia. He also appealed to Tanacharison for more fighters and assistance building the road toward the Forks of the Ohio. Tanacharison at first obliged, requesting assistance from other native tribes, but soon derided the strategic location of Washington’s “fort” and claimed that Washington treated his warriors like slaves in building the road. Tanacharison withdrew his forces and by the end of the year died of pneumonia at George Croghan’s plantation in central Pennsylvania. By the end of June, several hundred Virginia militia and a company of 100 British regulars arrived but without any Native American support, Washington halted work on the road and retreated to Fort Necessity.
On June 28, a month after the Battle of Jumonville Glen and the same day Washington stopped working on the road, a force of 600 French/Canadians and 100 Native Americans left Fort Duquesne under the command of Jumonville’s brother, Captain Louis Coulon de Villiers. Early in the morning of July 3, the French arrived at Jumonville Glen and discovered the scalped bodies of Canadians from the earlier battle, presumably including Coulon’s brother. By 11am the French advanced upon Washington’s forces at the Battle of Fort Necessity, ultimately surrounding them and forcing a parlay. Negotiations went through Jacob Van Braam, a Dutch Captain on Washington’s side who spoke French and English, though perhaps not as well as Washington hoped. The French insisted on the Virginians’ surrender and destruction of Fort Necessity but would allow them to return to Virginia, a very magnanimous offer considering the scalped bodies the French discovered just that morning. Washington agreed and signed the French terms without realizing he was admitting to the “assassination” of Jumonville. This admission further stained Washington’s budding reputation and fed French propaganda for years. (I find an interesting parallel in the problem of poor translations between this episode and the Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand.)
Though our Fort Pitt guide Mrs. Hutchinson certainly discussed events leading to the French and Indian War and its aftermath, she did not spend much time at all on George Washington’s involvement. I was able to glean more from the museum displays as I went through the second time and much more from wading through various accounts on Wikipedia. It’s interesting to me how Washington’s full life has not seen a pop culture reconsideration in the past few decades, not like his cohorts Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton and so on. There’s a lot to consider in his full career as a privileged colonial youth, surveyor, speculator, plantation owner, slave holder, soldier, and eventual politician, commander, statesman and demigod. A plunge into Washington’s actions and motivations during this crucial early stage of his adulthood is eye opening and not very favorable. Popular American history seems to whitewash Washington actions as uniformly heroic but there is room for argument and a more honest evaluation of his character and track record. It’s probably a poor time to tarnish the last of America’s founding demigods but there is room for a much darker look at his life and legacy. An interesting angle might be through a deeper examination of colleagues and contemporaries such as Croghan and Tanacharison.
When Washington returned to Virginia, Governor Dinwiddie supported him publicly but also reorganized the Virginia militia in such a way that would demote Washington. Rather than accept a demotion, Washington resigned his commission marking the early end of his military career. Dinwiddie and the government in London requested British regular troops to make an attempt to reclaim the Ohio and Fort Duquesne the following year. The British government under the Duke of Newcastle decided to raise the stakes in North America and formulated multiple prongs of attack on French forces timed to start in spring of 1755. The French got wind of the plans and sent substantial forces to Canada. The French and Indian War was underway, even if it was never formally declared.
General Edward Braddock was was named commander of British forces in North America and tasked with taking the Ohio Country and Fort Duquesne. Braddock’s campaign began in Alexandria, Virginia in the spring of 1755, merging 1,400 British Army regulars with 700 colonial militiamen. Through Governor Dinwiddie’s mediation, Braddock accepted Washington as an unpaid volunteer aide on the expedition since he knew the territory. Washington hoped this role would help rehabilitate his military career.
Braddock’s expedition got underway in April and moved up to Fort Cumberland on May 10. From there, the army set to clearing and expanding the road toward Fort Duquesne that Washington started the year before. On July 9, having just crossed the Monongahela about 10 miles from Fort Duquesne, elements of Braddock’s expedition encountered French and Indian forces. The Battle of the Monogahela was underway. Both sides were surprised but the French and Indians quickly gained the upper hand, firing from behind cover of the woods as the British scrambled and fled. Braddock reorganized the British troops despite having two horses shot from under him, but after three hours of intense battle Braddock was shot in the lung, mortally wounded. Despite having no direct authority, and with more than half of the British officers dead or wounded, Washington organized the British retreat to Fort Cumberland (though Croghan was also there and may have been more instrumental in leading the retreat). Washington also survived having two horses shot from under him and four bullets pierced his coat, earning him the sobriquet “Hero of the Monongahela”. Braddock died four days later and was buried near the site of Fort Necessity.
The other prongs of British attack in North America fared little better. For the next two years skirmishes and small battles flared from Ticonderoga to Nova Scotia but little ground was gained. In May, 1756 the British declared war on France formally initiating the Seven Years’ War. The war spread through Europe with its entangled alliances and featured battles as far afield as India and Manila.
The tide in North America turned in 1758 with William Pitt initiating three major offensives: to dislodge the French from Fort Louisbourg in Nova Scotia, from Fort Carillon (Fort Ticonderoga) in New York, and from Fort Duquesne. For the Fort Duquesne effort, the Forbes Expedition was much larger than Braddock’s attempt with 2,000 British troops supplemented by 5,000 colonial militia; George Washington was again involved leading the Virginia contingent. The English methodically carved a supply road and built forts across western Pennsylvania (to Washington’s consternation; he lobbied for the Braddock Road because it more closely aligned with his and Virginia’s interests).
In September, the French repulsed the first English attack at the Battle of Fort Duquesne. A French counterattack in early October failed to deter the English in the Battle of Fort Ligonier. A few weeks later, the English, with Croghan’s involvement, managed to effectively neutralize most of France’s Native American allies with the Treaty of Easton. The chiefs of 13 Native American nations agreed to no longer ally with the French in return for British promises not to settle lands west of the Appalachians and to withdraw British and American troops after the war.
The French defenders at Fort Duquesne decided that without Native American allies and little hope of resupply, their situation was hopeless. As the British advanced near Fort Duquesne in November, the French blew up the fort and retreated down the Ohio toward Illinois. The following spring, the British began constructing Fort Pitt adjacent to the site of the French fort. Before he died, General Forbes named the budding town Pittsburgh (technically, Pittsbourough).
English success in Ohio Country was bolstered by the successful Siege of Louisbourg in the summer of 1758 and led to the climactic Battle of Quebec in September 1759. Most of the fighting in North America ended in 1760 with the French capitulation of Montreal. English and French attention turned to other fronts in the continuing Seven Years’ War which finally concluded in February, 1763 with the Treaty of Paris. England’s victory gave it a vast new empire to exploit, manage and defend.
Within a few years of the fall of Fort Duquesne and arrival of the British in Pittsburgh, Native Americans had growing doubts about the sincerity of British promises made in the Treaty of Easton.
Native American frustrations let to Pontiac’s War in 1763, an uprising against British forts and interests across the Great Lakes region. On May 30 the battle came to Pittsburgh as Native warriors started a siege of Fort Pitt. In July, the British commander in chief for North America, Lord Jeffrey Amherst, in an exchange of letters with Colonel Henry Bouquet, controversially endorsed distributing smallpox-infested blankets to Native Americans, a rare official condoning of germ warfare…notwithstanding that Fort Pitt commander, Captain Ecuyer, had already done the deed on his own initiative.
The two-month siege at Fort Pitt was broken on August 1 when the Native Americans left to intercept a relief column of British forces let by Bouquet coming from the east on Forbes Road. They met on August 5 at the Battle of Bushy Run which was won after a fierce fight by the larger British force. The column relieved Fort Pitt, marking the end of organized Native American resistance to the fort and the British in the region.
Following the Treaty of Paris in February, the British government turned its attention to managing their newly acquired French territories in North America. The October Royal Proclamation of 1763 formally designated lands west of the Appalachians as “Land Reserved for the Indians” and set restrictions on colonists settling west of the Atlantic watershed. The proclamation made for a nice map but ignored facts on the ground: many colonial settlers, including George Washington, already held land west of the line and more came daily. The line was not meant as a permanent boundary but a way to manage the territory “in an orderly fashion”. The British did not have the will or manpower to enforce restrictions on the colonists.
As an aside, the map below was displayed prominently at the Fort Pitt Museum and caught my eye during our tour with Mrs. Hutchinson. I could tell it was a display of British forces in North America in October 1765, but I couldn’t, at first glance, figure out the meaning of that red line winding down from Pennsylvania to Georgia. Was it meant to be a road? I asked Mrs. Hutchinson and she didn’t know either. The display caption below mentioning the Stamp Act and General Gage didn’t help much. It wasn’t until later as I went back through the museum taking photos that I recognized it as designating Lands Reserved for the Indians.
In the aftermath of Bushy Run and establishment of the settlement at Pittsburgh, there were various attempts to subdue local Native American tribes and seek the return of captives taken into those tribes. In many cases, captured Europeans were reluctant to leave their Native American villages and lifestyles.
Regardless of the Royal Proclamation of 1763, the seaboard colonies pressed their claims on western territories. These claims became became part of the grievances that fed into the American Revolution.
A further attempt to clarify competing claims was made with the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, negotiated in 1768 with the Iroquois nations by Sir William Johnson (another fascinating character with blurred allegiances between the British and Native American sides) and his deputy, George Croghan. This treaty relinquished Iroquois claims on large tracts of central Pennsylvania in exchange for territory south of the Ohio River roughly including much of today’s southwest Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky. Croghan and Johnson were investors in the Grand Ohio Company, an effort by investors including Benjamin Franklin and his son, along with remnants of Virginia’s Ohio Company, to found a 14th colony in a territory to be called Vandalia. Other Native American tribes in the territory, notably the Shawnee, vigorously (and brutally) opposed the treaty and colonial incursions on their hunting grounds. The Vandalia project became moot with the start of the Revolutionary War in 1775 but it was an intriguing “might have been”.
In an effort to cut costs to the Crown, Fort Pitt was sold in 1772 to Virginian colonists who renamed it Fort Dunmore in honor of the new governor of Virginia. Dunmore sought to quell Shawnee and other native resistance in what became Lord Dunmore’s War in 1774. These actions somewhat subdued the Shawnee but did not settle matters fully.
English Crown and colonial forces across North America were soon embroiled in the American Revolution. Fort Pitt served as an American headquarters for the western theater of the war.
The story of Fort Pitt somewhat peters out after the Revolution as the new United States quickly demobilized its military forces and the focus of expansion shifted westward. Only West Point and Fort Pitt remained active bases, but they were mainly military depots with skeleton forces. The Continental Congress formed the Northwest Territory in 1787. American forces fought Native Americans in Ohio and beyond in the Northwest Indian War (1785-1795). During this action, Fort Pitt was replaced in 1792 by nearby Fort Lafayette.
George Washington came to the region once more, marching at the head of 13,000 man army to quell the anti-tax Whiskey Rebellion in 1794, one of the first true assertions of Federal power in the United States, and the only time an American president actually led a military force.
While the role of the Fort faded, Pittsburgh became a boom town after the Revolution, a major gateway to the West and a new center of transportation, manufacturing and innovation. The Heinz History Center picked up the story from this point, and is the subject of a separate (shorter, I promise) post.
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