Siege of Fort Pitt: "A Debt is Honored" 1959 US Army The Big Picture TV-420

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'Filmed in Philadelphia, this episode in THE BIG PICTURE series tells the story of an historic incident that took place in 1763 when the forerunners of Philadelphia's 111th Infantry Regiment (Pennsylvania National Guard) were besieged by Indians at Fort Pitt in the midst of the French and Indian War. They were rescued by the tough troops of Britain's Black Watch--the soldiers who, because of their kilts and ferocity, were nicknamed the "ladies from hell" in World War I. Since that time in 1763, the descendants of the 111th and the Black Watch Regiment have maintained a close and friendly association. Each year the 111th in Philadelphia reserves a vacant chair at the table during the annual ceremonial mess. The vacant chair is held in honor of the Black Watch Regiment. A 25-man camera crew from the Army Pictorial Center filmed the many activities that took place in conjunction with the ceremonial mess which was held at the Union League. Coverage was also given to the first professional football game to be played in the U.S. by two teams from across the border in Canada.'

Originally a public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Fort_Pitt

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The Siege of Fort Pitt took place during June and July 1763 in what is now the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The siege was a part of Pontiac's War, an effort by Native Americans to remove the British from the Ohio Country and Allegheny Plateau after they refused to honor their promises and treaties to leave voluntarily after the defeat of the French. The Native American efforts of diplomacy, and by siege, to remove the British from Fort Pitt ultimately failed.

This event is best known as an early instance of biological warfare, where the British gave items from a smallpox infirmary as gifts to Native American emissaries with the hope of spreading the deadly disease to nearby tribes. The effectiveness is unknown, although it is known that the method used is inefficient compared to respiratory transmission and these attempts to spread the disease are difficult to differentiate from epidemics occurring from previous contacts with colonists...

Background

Fort Pitt was built in 1758 during the French and Indian War, on the site of what was previously Fort Duquesne in what is now the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The French abandoned and destroyed Fort Duquesne in November 1758 with the approach of General John Forbes's expedition. The Forbes expedition was successful in part because of the Treaty of Easton, in which area American Indians agreed to end their alliance with the French. American Indians—primarily the Six Nations, Delawares and Shawnees—made this agreement with the understanding that the British would leave the area after their war with the French. The hostilities between the French and English declined significantly after 1760, followed by a final cessation of hostilities and the formal surrender of the French at the Treaty of Paris in February 1763. Instead of leaving the territory west of the Appalachian Mountains as they had agreed, the British remained on Native lands and reinforced their forts while settlers continued to push westward.

The attacks led by Pontiac against the British in early May 1763, near Fort Detroit, mark what is generally considered to be the beginning of Pontiac's War. The siege of Fort Pitt and numerous other British forts during the spring and summer of 1763 were part of an effort by American Indians to reclaim their territory by driving the British out of the Ohio Country and back across the Appalachian Mountains. While many of the forts and outposts in the region were destroyed, the Indian effort to remove the British from Fort Pitt ultimately failed...

Aftermath

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...