A history of Canada, 1763-1812

by Sir Charles Prestwood Lucas

Next came the turn of the forts which connected Lake Erie with the Ohio. On the 15th of June Presque Isle was attacked; on the 17th it surrendered. It was a strong fort, and in the opinion of Bouquet—a competent judge—its commander, Ensign Christie, showed little stubbornness in defence. Fort le Bœuf fell on the 18th, Venango about the same date, and communication between Fort Pitt isolated. the lakes and Fort Pitt was thus cut off. Fort Pitt itself was threatened by the Indians, and towards the end of July openly attacked, while on Forbes’ and Bouquet’s old route from that fort to Bedford in Pennsylvania, Fort Ligonier was also at an earlier date assailed, though fortunately without success.

Dalyell sent to the relief of Detroit.

Amherst now realized the gravity of the crisis, and his first care was the relief of Detroit. A force of 280 men, commanded by Captain Dalyell, one of his aides de camp, and including Robert Rogers with 20 Rangers, was sent up from Niagara, ascended on the 29th of July the Detroit river by night, and reached the fort in safety. Long experience in North American warfare had taught the lesson which Wolfe always preached, that the English should, whenever and wherever it was possible, take the offensive. Accordingly Dalyell urged Gladwin, against the latter’s better judgement, to allow him to attack Pontiac at once; and before daybreak, on the morning of the 31st, he led out about 250 men for the purpose. Less than two miles north-east of the fort, a little stream, The fight at Parents Creek. then known as Parents Creek and after the fight as Bloody Run, ran into the main river; and beyond it was Pontiac’s encampment, which Dalyell proposed to surprise. Unfortunately the Indians were fully informed of the intended movement, and there ensued one more of the many disasters which marked the onward path of the white men in North America. The night was dark: the English advance took them among enclosures and farm buildings, which gave the Indians cover. As the leading soldiers were crossing the creek they were attacked by invisible foes; and, when compelled to retreat, the force was beset on all sides and ran the risk of being cut off from the fort. Death of Dalyell. Dalyell[9] was shot dead; and, before the fort was reached, the English had lost one-fourth of their whole number in killed and wounded. The survivors owed their safety to the steadiness of the officers, to the fact that Rogers and his men seized and held a farmhouse to cover the retreat, and to the co-operation of two armed boats, which moved up and down the river parallel to the advance and retreat, bringing off the dead and wounded, and pouring a fire from the flank among the Indians.

Pontiac had achieved a notable success, but Detroit remained safe, and meanwhile in another quarter the tide set against the Indian cause.

Fort Pitt.

After General Forbes, in the late autumn of 1758, had taken Fort Duquesne, a new English fort, Fort Pitt, was in the following year built by General Stanwix upon the site of the French stronghold. The place was, as it had always been, the key of the Ohio valley, and on the maintenance of the fort depended at once the safety of the borderlands of Virginia and Pennsylvania, and the possibility of extending trade among the Indian tribes of the Ohio. In July, 1763, Fort Pitt was in a critical position. The posts which connected it with Lake Erie had been destroyed: the road which Forbes had cut through Pennsylvania on his memorable march was obstructed by Indians; and the outlying post along it, Fort Ligonier, about fifty-five miles east of Fort Pitt, was, like Fort Pitt itself, in a state of siege. The Indians were, as in the dark days after Braddock’s disaster, harrying the outlying homesteads and settlements, and once more the colonies were exhibiting to the full their incapacity for self-defence, or rather, the indifference of the residents in the towns to the safety of their fellows who lived in the backwoods.

The route to Fort Pitt.

Forbes’ road to Fort Pitt ran for nearly 100 miles from Bedford or Raestown, as it had earlier been called, in a direction rather north of west, across the Alleghany Mountains and the Laurel Hills. The intermediate post, Fort Ligonier, stood at a place which had been known in Forbes’ time as Loyalhannon, rather nearer to Bedford than to Fort Pitt. Bedford itself was about thirty miles north of Fort Cumberland on Wills Creek, which Braddock had selected for the starting-point of his more southerly march. It marked the limit of settlement, and 100 miles separated it from the town of Carlisle, which lay due east, in the direction of the long-settled parts of Pennsylvania.

Insecurity of the frontier.

There was no security in the year 1763 for the dwellers between Bedford and Carlisle: ‘Every tree is become an Indian for the terrified inhabitants,’ wrote Bouquet to Amherst from Carlisle on the 29th of June.[10] Pennsylvania Difficulties with the Pennsylvanian legislature. raised 700 men to protect the farmers while gathering their harvest, but no representations of Amherst would induce the cross-grained Legislature to place them under his command, to allow them to be used for offensive purposes, or even for garrison duty. The very few regular troops in the country were therefore required to hold the forts, as well as to carry out any expedition which the commander-in-chief might think necessary. A letter from one of Amherst’s officers, Colonel Robertson, written to Bouquet on the 19th of April, 1763, relates how all the arguments addressed to the Quaker-ridden government had been in vain, concluding with the words ‘I never saw any man so determined in the right as these people are in their absurdly wrong resolve’;[11] and in his answer Bouquet speaks bitterly of being ‘utterly abandoned by the very people I am ordered to protect’.[11]