Quaint and Historic Forts of North America. John Martin Hammond
across the portage country which lay between the western lakes and the headwaters of the navigable tributaries of the Mississippi and then down the Mississippi to its mouth, thus hemming in the English to their coast possessions east of the Appalachian range, and ensuring the vast major part of the American continent to the French. The other three of La Salle’s fortifications at this date were Fort Frontenac, now Kingston, Ontario, Canada; Fort Niagara, commanding the passage from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie, and Detroit, commanding the passage from Erie to Michigan.
The foundation of the city of Detroit thus needs no further pointing out. Where La Salle’s tentative fortifications were the city now presents a busy water-front, with steamers and factories and great buildings where Indian canoes and the palisades of the French once were.
Developments of this plan of La Salle’s, which was adhered to tenaciously by the French for almost a century, until they fell before the slow-growing mass of the English, were Michillimackinac and a chain of posts along the Ohio River. Of this Ohio series the most important element was the much fought over Fort Duquesne—the objective of Braddock’s fateful march—later Fort Pitt, and now the city of Pittsburgh.
Copyright, Detroit Publishing Co.
WATER-FRONT OF PRESENT-DAY DETROIT
Where Indian canoes and the palisades of the French were
The visitor to Pittsburgh to-day will find on Fourth street, midway between the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers, a little block-house, more correctly a redoubt, sixteen by fifteen feet in lateral dimensions and twenty-two feet high. The structure is constructed of brick covered with clapboards and with a layer of double logs, and contains thirty-six port-holes in two layers. This little block-house is all that remains to-day of Fort Pitt. It was built by Colonel Boquet in 1764 and was purchased by private parties in the early days of Pittsburgh. In 1894 the property was deeded by its owner of that generation, Mrs. Mary E. Schenley, of London, to the Pennsylvania Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and is maintained by this organization to-day for the benefit of the public.
The situation of Fort Pitt and its predecessor, Fort Duquesne, was of immense strategic importance in the early days of the American nation, the considerations which gave it value having operated in the field of commerce in late years to make Pittsburgh notable as a manufacturing and distributing centre. It stood at the gateway to the Ohio River and the rich country which the Ohio waters, and since it commanded the Ohio it commanded the key to the West.
These considerations were appreciated by the Colonial Virginians, and in 1754 Captain William Trent was commissioned by Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, to erect a fort at the juncture of the Monongahela and the Allegheny Rivers at the expense of the Ohio Company. Captain Trent commenced his work in February, 1754, but in April, 1754, surrendered to a detachment of French under Le Mercier.
The French then commenced the erection of a fort of their own on the extreme neck of land between the rivers. They finished their work in the summer of that year and named it Fort Duquesne in honor of Governor-General Duquesne, of Canada.
In the same year a force of English colonists, about 150 strong, made a tentative advance against the work under the leadership of our own George Washington, then a young man. Washington found the post too strong for attack and became himself the object of hostile attention from the French, being forced to fall back to Great Meadows and to erect a temporary triangular earth fortification there which he named Fort Necessity.
In 1755 it was the plan of the British ministry to concentrate its forces in the colonies in three directions of attack against the French. One blow was to be struck at Acadia; a second blow was to be struck at Crown Point, and a third, under General Braddock, an English-born officer of wide Continental experience, at Fort Duquesne.
From a painting in the collection of the Pennsylvania Historical Society
OLD BLOCK-HOUSE, FORT PITT, PITTSBURGH, PA.
Braddock’s unfortunate march began May 27, 1755, from Fort Cumberland, Maryland (Cumberland, to-day), and of the details of that disastrous journey little need be told in these pages as the story is already familiar. Braddock had the bravery of his calling and the arrogance and presumption of the European brought into contact with provincials. He did not believe that anything very good could come out of the colonies and did not hesitate to show this attitude of mind. On the line of march he scorned to send out scouts ahead as was necessary in fighting Indians. He insisted on sending his Continental troops in solid order against an enemy who fought behind trees and stumps in any kind of order that suited his purpose. He committed all of the stupidities that vanity and overweening self-confidence could dictate, and, when the French in a despairing last-minute effort against overwhelming numbers had found easy victory, gave up his life on the field of battle. He was buried beneath the feet of the retreating troops so that their steps should obliterate from the fiendish enemy the location of his last resting place.
The English loss in this battle was 714 men killed and a shattering of their military prestige with all of the Indian people of the borderland. The French loss was 3 white men killed and 27 Indians. The access to their influence amongst the savage tribes because of their unexpected victory was much.
Fort Duquesne fell to the English in 1758 when 7,000 men under Brigadier General John Forbes slowly and circumspectly proceeded against it. The French deserted the post after attempting to destroy it and the English took possession November 25 of that year. A new fort was commenced under Forbes which stood on the Monongahela side of the city at the south end of the present West Street and between West and Liberty Streets. It was occupied in 1760 and was completely finished in the summer of 1761. The stone bomb-proof magazine stood until 1852 when the Pennsylvania Railroad built its freight terminal here.
Of the remainder of the line of French forts along the Ohio River there are no relics left, though memorials have been established at several points. The first of this Ohio River chain was Presque Isle on Lake Erie, now the little city of Erie, Pennsylvania. For some years after French domain in the New World Presque Isle was of importance and, indeed, for some years after the Revolution.
The post was taken by the English in 1759, and in 1763 fell a victim to Indian attack as a corollary to the Pontiac conspiracy which had as its object the complete extinction of English life in the West. The fort, a rectangle of earth and wooden palisades, stood on the west bank of Mill Creek and at the intersection with the shore of the lake. Here the veteran Indian fighter, General Wayne, died in 1796. In 1876 the State of Pennsylvania erected a block-house on the site of the old fort as a memorial. This block-house is now included in the grounds of the Pennsylvania Sailors and Soldiers’ Home.
From Presque Isle there was a portage to Fort Le Bœuf, now the little city of Waterford, Pennsylvania. Fort Le Bœuf stood at High and Water Streets, Waterford, though there is at this point no sign of its existence. It was erected in 1753 and fell before Pontiac’s far-reaching conspiracy in 1763.
Venango, the next of the French line of forts east of Pittsburgh (Duquesne), was the fore-runner of Franklin, Pennsylvania, and stood at Elk and Eighth Streets. Of Venango, too, no sign remains. It fell to the Indians in 1763.
South of Pittsburgh the English had a post at Brownsville, on the Ohio River, Pennsylvania, built in 1754, and known as Redstone Old Fort. The French had Fort Massac to which about one thousand troopers retired after the evacuation of Fort Duquesne. Later years also saw small fortifications developed on the Ohio River, some holding the potentialities of future greatness such as that at the falls of the Ohio River, which was to be the nucleus of the settlement of the present-day city of Louisville, Kentucky.
At the south end of Lake Erie during the French occupancy of the West stood Fort Sandusky which has given its name to the City of Sandusky of to-day. On the Maumee River, Indiana, was Fort Miamis, Miami of to-day.
In the early days of the French there had been a trading post at the site of the