Fort Duquesne Part 2

Revolutionary Period.

During the struggle for independence the settlements west of the Alleghanies had little to fear from the invading armies of Great Britain; but, influenced by the English, the Indians again began their ravages.

Fort Pitt at that time was under the command of Capt. John Neville, and was the center of government authority. Just two days after the Declaration of Independence, but long before the news of it could have crossed the mountains, we read of a conference at Fort Pitt between Maj.

Trent, Maj. Ward, Capt. Neville and other officers of the garrison, with the famous Pontiac, Guyasuta, Capt. Pipe and other representatives of the Six Nations. Guyasuta was the chief speaker. He produced a belt of wampum, which was to be sent from the Six Nations to other western tribes, informing them that the Six Nations would take no part in the war between England and America and asking them to do the same. In his address Guyasuta said: "Brothers:--We will not suffer either the English or the Americans to pa.s.s through our country. Should either attempt it, we shall forewarn them three times, and should they persist they must take the consequences. I am appointed by the Six Nations to take care of this country; that is, of the Indians on the other side of the Ohio"

(which included the Allegheny) "and I desire you will not think of an expedition against Detroit, for, I repeat, we will not suffer an army to pa.s.s through our country." The Six Nations was the most powerful confederacy of Indians in America, and whichever side secured their allegiance might count on the other tribes following them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAJ. GEN. ARTHUR ST. CLAIR.]

Instigated by the agents of Great Britain, it was not long before a deadly struggle began. Scalping parties of Indians ravaged the frontier, sparing neither age nor s.e.x, and burning and destroying all that came in their path. Companies were formed to protect the settlements, whose headquarters were at Fort Pitt, and expeditions were made into the enemy's country, but with no very great success.

On June 1, 1777, Brig. Gen. Edward Hand took command of the post and issued a call for two thousand men. He did not receive a very satisfactory response to this call. After considerable delay, he made several expeditions against the Indians, but was singularly unfortunate in his attempts. These fruitless efforts only emboldened the savages to continue their ravages.

In 1778, Gen. Hand, at his own request, was recalled, and Brig. Gen.

McIntosh succeeded him. Gen. McIntosh planned a formidable expedition into the enemy's country. He marched to the mouth of the Beaver, where he built a fort and called it Fort McIntosh; then he advanced seventy-five miles farther, built another fort, and called it Fort Laurens; but on hearing alarming reports of the Indians and for want of supplies, he left Col. John Gibson with one hundred and fifty men there and returned to Fort Pitt. The depredations of the Indians continued, and Gen. McIntosh, utterly disheartened from the want of men and supplies, asked to be relieved of his command. He was succeeded by Col.

Daniel Brodhead, who, like his predecessor, planned great things, but never had the means of carrying out his plans.

By this time Fort Pitt was badly in need of repairs, and the garrison, half-fed and badly equipped, was almost mutinous. In November, 1781, Gen. William Irvine took command of the post. He describes the condition of the fort and of the soldiers as deplorable. He writes: "The few troops that are here are the most licentious men and worst behaved I ever saw, owing, I presume, in a great measure to their not hitherto being kept under any subordination or tolerable degree of discipline."

The firmness of the commander soon restored order, but not without the free application of the lash and the execution of two soldiers.

The winter of 1782 and 1783 was comparatively quiet, and October 1st, 1783, Gen. Irvine took his final leave of the western department. The State of Pennsylvania acknowledged her grat.i.tude for this service by donating him a valuable tract of land.

In 1790 there was another Indian outbreak. Maj. Isaac Craig was then acting as Quartermaster in Pittsburgh. On May 19th, 1791, he wrote to Gen. Knox, representing the terror occasioned by the near approach of the Indians, and asking permission to erect another fortification, as Fort Pitt was in a ruinous condition. This request was granted, and Maj.

Craig erected a fortification occupying the ground from Garrison Alley to Hand (now Ninth) Street, and from Liberty to the Allegheny River.

This he named Fort Lafayette.

The expeditions of Gen. Harmar and of Gen. St. Clair against the Indians had been ineffectual and disastrous. In 1794, Gen. Anthony Wayne was more successful, and defeated and scattered the Indians so effectually that they never again gave trouble in this region.

FOOTNOTES:

[C] There is a wide discrepancy in the authorities as to the cost of Fort Pitt; some state the cost as six hundred pounds, others give it as sixty thousand pounds.

THE OLD BLOCK HOUSE

Mrs. Mary E. Schenley's Gift to the Daughters of the American Revolution of Allegheny County.

The close of the century found Port Pitt in ruins, and this spot over which had waved the flags of three nations, and the banners of two States, was left to the peaceable possession of the mechanic and artisan, the trader and farmer. The little Redoubt built by Col. Bouquet in 1764, and the names of the streets in Pittsburgh, are all that is left as reminders of the struggle for the "Forks of the Ohio,"--the only relics of the contest of the courtly Frenchman with the intrepid British, of the daring of the indomitable colonist and the craft and cruelty of the Indian. This Redoubt was not built by Gen. Stanwix when the Fort was erected in 1759 and 60, but by Col. Bouquet in 1764. At the time of Pontiac's War, when Col. Bouquet came to Pittsburgh, he found that the moat which surrounded the fortifications were perfectly dry when the river was low, so that the Indians could crawl up the ditch and shoot any guard or soldier who might show his head above the parapet. To prevent this, Col. Bouquet ordered the erection of the Redoubt, or Block House, which completely commanded the moat on the Allegheny side of the fort. The little building is of brick, five-sided, with two floors, having a squared oak log with loop holes on each floor. There were two underground pa.s.sages, one connecting it with the Fort, and the other leading to the Monongahela River.

The ground from Fort Pitt to the Allegheny River was sold in 1784 to Isaac Craig and Stephen Bayard, and, after pa.s.sing through various hands, was purchased by Gen. James O'Hara, September 4, 1805. When Gen.

O'Hara died in 1819, the property pa.s.sed to his daughter Mary, who in 1821 married William Croghan. Mrs. Croghan died in 1827, and her daughter, Mary Elizabeth, an infant barely a year old, became her sole heir. She married Capt. E. W. H. Schenley, of the English army, and to Mrs. Mary E. Schenley, who might be called Pittsburgh's "Fairy G.o.dmother," the Daughters of the American Revolution of Allegheny County are indebted for the gift of the old Block House and surrounding property.

While the property was in possession of Craig and Bayard, a large dwelling house was built and connected with the Block House. This was occupied one year by Mr. Turnbull, and for two years subsequently by Maj. Craig. From that time, 1785, until it came into the possession of the Daughters of the American Revolution, April 1, 1894, it continued to be used as a dwelling house. Time and decay had done their work in one hundred and thirty years, and the "Daughters" found the old Block House fast crumbling away. If it had been left much longer without repairs it would soon have been nothing but a heap of broken brick. Mrs. Schenley's gift to the Daughters of the American Revolution was the Block House, with a plot of ground measuring one hundred by ninety feet, and a pa.s.sageway leading to Penn Avenue of ninety feet by twenty.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BLOCK HOUSE USED AS A DWELLING.]

As soon as the Daughters of the American Revolution received the deed for the property, the work of clearing away the tumble-down tenements which covered the ground was commenced. It was not without great difficulty, and no little expense, that the occupants of these houses were induced to give them up.

While the Block House was used as a dwelling the stone tablet placed over the door with the inscription,

COLL. BOUQUET 1764

was removed and inserted in the wall of the staircase of the City Hall.

The Daughters of the American Revolution pet.i.tioned Councils for permission to restore it to its original position. The pet.i.tion was granted, and the tablet now fills the s.p.a.ce which it occupied one hundred and thirty-eight years ago.

"I do love these ancient ruins.

We never tread upon them but we set Our foot upon some rev'rend history."

Pittsburgh September 1898.

MATILDA WILKINS DENNY.

NAMES OF PITTSBURGH STREETS.

Their Historical Significance.

By Julia Morgan Harding. (From the Pittsburgh Bulletin, February 15, 1893.)

We are told in his Autobiography that Benjamin Franklin "ever took pleasure in obtaining any little anecdotes of his ancestors," and in these days of reawakened interest in things of the past, many people may be found who, like the great prototype of American character, Pennsylvania's apostle of common sense, take pleasure in looking into the old records of their family history. A still richer inheritance is the story of the lives of the men who conquered the wilderness and subdued the Indians, French and British; and this inheritance is held in common by all good citizens of Pittsburgh, whether or not their ancestors fought with Braddock or Bouquet, or marched with Forbes. In the stir and bustle of the busy city, above the noise of the trolley and the iron wagon, one faintly hears the names of streets whose unfamiliar sound recalls to our minds these ill.u.s.trious dead. With but little effort the inward eye quickly sees an impenetrable forest clothing hills and river banks--dark, mysterious, forbidding, crossed by occasional narrow and obstructed paths; war parties of painted savages; a few scattered settlers' and traders' cabins; here and there a canoe on the swift and silent rivers; a silence too often broken by the war whoop of the Indian and the scream of his tortured victim.

From the eastern slopes of the Endless Hills to the unknown and unbounded "Indian Country" that lay beyond the Forks of the Ohio, such was the region into which Washington, Braddock, Forbes and Bouquet led their "forlorn hopes," In days when a less utilitarian spirit prevailed, and a.s.sociation was still powerful, the City of Pittsburgh acknowledged its debt of grat.i.tude to the soldiers, statesmen and early settlers who made its unexampled prosperity possible, by naming for them many of its streets and suburbs. Its early history can be traced thereby, much as the historian and archaeologist discovers the successive Roman, Saxon, Danish and Norman occupations of London and other English towns.

Aliquippa, Mingo, Shannopin, Shinghiss, Guyasuta and Killbuck recall the Indian tribes and chiefs who once possessed the country; Gist, Montour, Girty, McKee, Chartiers, and Van Braam the guides and traders who first penetrated the wilderness. Dinwiddie brings to mind the crusty but far-seeing Scotch Governor of Virginia, who first comprehended the value of the disputed land. Forbes, Bouquet, Ligonier, Halket, Grant, Stanwix, Neville, Crawford, Hay, Marbury, Ormsby, Tannehill, O'Hara, Butler, Wayne, Bayard, Stobo, Steuben, St. Clair, Craig, Smallman and Irwin recall, or did recall, the soldiers and commandants who won the West.

Duquesne, St. Pierre, and Jumonville speak of the French governor of Canada, the officer who received Washington at Fort Le Boeuf, and the Captain who fell at Great Meadows. Smithfield owes its name to Devereaux Smith, prominent in colonial and revolutionary days; and Wood Street was called for George Woods, surveyor.

In Penn avenue, or street, as it used to be and still ought to be called, the name of the founder of the Commonwealth, the Quaker feudal proprietor, is preserved; and the great city itself, as well as two shabby, sooty little streets, forever immortalizes William Pitt, the friend of America, and makes him a splendid and enduring monument.

But let us dig into the lowest historical stratum, and discover the real local relationships of names and places with the first occupants of the land. Aliquippa tells of the great queen of the Delawares, who lived at the mouth of the Youghiogheny, where McKeesport now is, and whom it must be remembered Washington visited on his first memorable journey to the Ohio. From what he relates to us she could not have been a very temperate sovereign lady, but she was a celebrity and a power in her day, with a prestige that long survived her; and when, in full savage regalia, surrounded by her warriors, she granted an audience to the young Virginian, she was doubtless most impressing and condescending.

Shinghiss, who bore a name that suggests a subject of Queen Wilhelmina rather than a North American Indian was a mighty warrior in his day, and a king of the Delawares. Some of the chroniclers give him a very bad name and tell us that his exploits in war would "form an interesting though shocking doc.u.ment"; others, among them Christian Post, give him a much better character. Nevertheless, it is true that the colony of Pennsylvania offered a thousand dollars for his scalp. Washington met him on his first visit to Ohio, and speaks of him in his Journal. This brave and much-feared chief was small in stature for an Indian and lived near the Ohio on Chartiers Creek.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRONZE TABLET AT ENTRANCE TO BLOCK HOUSE GROUNDS

THE BLOCK HOUSE OF FORT PITT A REDOUBT BUILT BY COLONEL HENRY BOUQUET OF THE BRITISH ARMY IN 1764, PURCHASED WITH THE SITE OF FORT PITT BY GENERAL JAMES O'HARA SEPTEMBER 4th 1805.

INHERITED THROUGH HER MOTHER MARY O'HARA CROGHAN BY HIS GRANDDAUGHTER MARY ELIZABETH SCHENLEY AND BY HER PRESENTED TO THE DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION OF ALLEGHENY COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA JUNE 10th 1892]

A chieftain as renowned as Shinghiss, and more frequently mentioned in the histories of the olden time, was Guyasuta, or Kiashuta, a Seneca, who first appears on the scene as one of the three Indians who accompanied Washington to Fort Le Boeuf. He was a conspicuous figure in all the Indian wars and treaties which followed that event, and was present at the treaty Col. Bouquet held with the Shawnees, Delawares and Senecas on the Muskingum. We hear of him again in Lord Dunmore's war. He was frequently at or in the neighborhood of Fort Pitt, and had unbounded influence with his people, an influence he generally exerted for good and in the interest of the colonies, though finally won over to the British during the Revolution. His speeches at the various councils he attended were eloquent, and his language that of an autocrat who had unquestioning confidence in the power of his people and in his own might. He was deeply concerned in the conspiracy of Pontiac, and is believed to have inspired the attack on Hannahstown. Guyasuta found his last resting place near the banks of the Allegheny on Gen. O'Hara's farm, which is still called by his name.

The stray visitor who from time to time threads his devious way through the alleys and courts which surround the Block House may find himself perhaps in Fort Street, on historic ground once trodden by Washington, Forbes, Bouquet and the Indian kings of whom we have just been speaking.

The echoes of the English drums, Scottish bagpipes and clash of arms have long since died away from the scarred sides of Mt. Washington and Duquesne Heights, and in their stead we hear the steam whistle and hollow reverberations from neighboring boiler shops. Hibernians and Italians inhabit the fields and the river banks where Killbuck, White Eyes, Shinghiss and Cornstalk once lit their camp-fires and held eloquent councils with Jumonville, De Ligneris and Bouquet. Squalid tenements crowd the narrow promontory where Robert de la Salle stood at the headwaters of the Ohio, in all probability the discoverer of the three rivers. The fort that Pontiac besieged has disappeared. The painted post to which the Indian tied his victim, the wigwam, the wampum belts, have vanished; the tomahawk is buried forever, though the readiness once observed among the residents of the "Point" to draw knives on each other on occasions of superhilarity may be but the survival of the good old customs which prevailed in that neighborhood more than one hundred years ago.