Siege of Fort Pitt

More than 500 British troops and perhaps a couple thousand settlers had died in the Ohio Valley, and of more than a dozen British forts, only Detroit, Niagara and Pitt remained standing at the height of this uprising.[6] On October 7, 1763, the Crown issued Royal Proclamation of 1763, which forbade all settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains—a proclamation ignored by British settlers, and unenforced by the British military. Fort Pitt would remain in British hands, and would become a central hub for migrant settlers as they pushed west in ever larger numbers over the next decade.

Sometime in the spring of 1763, a smallpox epidemic broke out near Fort Pitt and subsequently spread there. A smallpox hospital was then also established there to treat sick troops.[8][9][10][11] There had also been an earlier epidemic among Ohio tribes in the early 1750s,[12][11] as smallpox outbreaks occurred every dozen or so years.[13] According to John McCullough, who was held captive, some of the Mahoning village warriors raiding a Juniata settlement caught smallpox from there that then killed some of them.[14]

In 1924 the Mississippi Valley Historical Review published a journal written by William Trent, a fur trader and merchant commissioned as a captain at Fort Pitt. For June 24, 1763, Trent wrote about a meeting with two Delaware Indians at the fort. "Out of our regard to them we gave them two Blankets and an Handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect."[15] The two blankets and the handkerchief from the infirmary were seemingly wrapped in a piece of linen.[16] The blankets and handkerchief were unwashed and dirty.[17] In 1955 a record of Trent's trading firm was found. It had an invoice for the handkerchief, two blankets and the linen to be given to the Natives, and the expense was signed by Ecuyer.[15] Ecuyer was relatively inexperienced, having only been a captain since April the year before and having taken over the command of the fort the same November.[17] Trent was likely the main orchestrator of the idea, considering he had more experience with the disease and had even helped out setting the smallpox hospital.[18] Half-Native Alexander McKee also played a part in parlaying messages,[19] but he possibly didn't know about the items.[17][20] This plan was carried out independently from General Amherst and Colonel Bouquet.[21][22][23][24]

The meeting happened on June 24. The night before "Two Delawares called for Mr. McKee and told him they wanted to speak to him in the Morning." The conference took place just outside of Fort Pitt. The participants were Ecuyer, McKee, Turtle's Heart, and another Delaware, "Mamaltee a Chief." The two Delaware men tried to coax the people holed up in the fort to leave, an option that Ecuyer promptly rejected and stated that reinforcements were coming to Fort Pitt and that the stronghold could easily hold out. After conferring with their chiefs, the two "returned and said they would hold fast of the Chain of friendship", but they were not genuinely believable. The messengers had asked for presents such as food and alcohol, "to carry us Home." Requesting gifts was common, but Ecuyer in this case seemed especially generous. Turtle's Heart and his companion received food in "large quantities", some "600 Rations." Included among this was the linen bundle containing the handkerchief and two blankets.[25]

A month after meeting on July 22, Trent met with the same delegates again and they seemingly had not contracted smallpox: "Gray Eyes, Wingenum, Turtle's Heart and Mamaultee, came over the River told us their Chiefs were in Council, that they waited for Custaluga who they expected that Day."[27][16]

Gershom Hicks, who was fluent in the Delaware language and also knew some Shawnee, testified that starting from spring 1763 up to April 1764 around a hundred Natives from different tribes such as Lenni Lenape (Delaware) and Shawnee died in the smallpox epidemic, making it a relatively minor smallpox outbreak.[11][28] After visiting Pittsburgh a few years later, David McClure would write in his journal published in 1899, "I was informed at Pittsburgh, that when the Delawares, Shawanese & others, laid siege suddenly and most traitorously to Fort Pitt, in 1764, in a time of peace, the people within, found means of conveying the small pox to them, which was far more destructive than the guns from the walls, or all the artillery of Colonel Boquet's army, which obliged them to abandon the enterprise."[29]

A month later in July Colonet Bouquet discussed Pontiac's War in detail with General Amherst via letters,[30] and in postscripts of three letters in more freeform style Amherst also briefly broached the subject of using of smallpox as a weapon. Bouquet brought up blankets as a means without going into specifics, and Amherst supported the idea "to Extirpate this Execreble Race".[10][31]

Bouquet himself probably never had the opportunity to "Send the Small Pox."[22] He was very concerned about smallpox, having never had it.[32] When Bouquet wrote to Ecuyer, he didn't mention the disease.[21] He died only two years later in 1765 of yellow fever.[32]

This event is usually described as an early attempt at biological warfare.[33][34][35][36] However the plan's effectiveness is generally questioned.[33][1][2][16][14]

The account of the British infecting Natives with smallpox during Pontiac's War of 1763 originated with nineteenth century historian Francis Parkman.[12] His account has been relied on by later writers.[23][15] He described Amherst's reply to Bouquet as a “detestable suggestion” and concluded "There is no direct evidence that Bouquet carried into effect the shameful plan of infecting the Indians though, a few months after, the small-pox was known to have made havoc among the tribes of the Ohio."[23] Parkman had the impression that Amherst had planned the gifting, although Amherst approached the matter only a month later.[24][23] Following Parkman was Howard Peckham who was more interested in the overall war and paid only cursory glance to the incident, briefly describing Ecuyer handing over the handkerchief and blankets from the smallpox hospital. He quoted a testimony of a smallpox outbreak and stated that it certainly affected the Natives' ability to wage war.[37] Bernhard Knollenberg was more critical and pointed out that both Parkman and Peckham hadn't noticed that the smallpox epidemic among the tribes had been reported to have begun in the spring of 1763, quite some time before the meeting.[38][11][9] Knollenberg even doubted the authenticity of the documents at first before he was contacted via letter by historian Donald H. Kent who had found a record of Trent's sundries list signed by Ecuyer.[11]

Francis Jennings, a historian who extensively studied Parkman's writings, had a more damning view. He indicated that the fighting strength of the Natives was greatly compromised by the plan.[39] Microbiologist Mark Wheelis says the act of biological aggression at Fort Pitt is indisputable, but that at the time the rare attempts to transmit infection rarely worked and they were probably made redundant with natural routes of transmission. The practice was restrained by lack of knowledge.[40] Elizabeth A. Fenn writes that "the actual effectiveness of an attempt to spread smallpox remains impossible to ascertain: the possibility always exists that infection occurred by some natural route."[33] Philip Ranlet describes as a clear sign that the blankets had no effect the fact that the same delegates were met a month later,[16] and that nearly all of the met natives were recorded to have lived for decades afterwards.[41] He also questions why Trent didn't gloat about any possible success in his journal if there was such.[16] David Dixon holds likely that the transmission happened via some other route and possibly from the event described by John McCullough.[14] Barbara Mann holds that the distribution worked, describing that Gershom Hick's testimony of the epidemic starting by spring is explainable by Hicks lacking a calendar.[42] Mann also estimates that papers related to the incident have been destroyed.[43]

Researchers James W. Martin, George W. Christopher and Edward M. Eitzen writing in a publication for the US Army Medical Department Center & School, Borden Institute, found that "In retrospect, it is difficult to evaluate the tactical success of Captain Ecuyer's biological attack because smallpox may have been transmitted after other contacts with colonists, as had previously happened in New England and the South. Although scabs from smallpox patients are thought to be of low infectivity as a result of binding of the virus in fibrin metric, and transmission by fomites has been considered inefficient compared with respiratory droplet transmission."[2] In an article published in the journal Clinical Microbiology and Infection researchers Vincent Barras and Gilbert Greub conclude that “in the light of contemporary knowledge, it remains doubtful whether his hopes were fulfilled, given the fact that the transmission of smallpox through this kind of vector is much less efficient than respiratory transmission, and that Native Americans had been in contact with smallpox >200 years before Ecuyer’s trickery, notably during Pizarro’s conquest of South America in the 16th century. As a whole, the analysis of the various ‘pre-microbiological” attempts at BW illustrate the difficulty of differentiating attempted biological attack from naturally occurring epidemics.”[1]