Fort Pitt Campaign Analysis

A fundamental element to any research project is the interest the researcher has about the topic. This interest must manifest in the specific topic of study such as military history. The Fort Pitt Campaign, consisting of the siege of Fort Pitt and the Battle of Bushy Run representing a little studied and understood event during Pontiac’s War. Having lived over twenty years near the battlefield, yet never visiting the battlefield until the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Bushy Run, introduced an event that was important to the growth of the United States and the continuing demise of the Native American Indian strength in America. In the field of military history, one can ask what went wrong when compared with similar battles …show more content…
Through the study of what can be considered as the Fort Pitt Campaign, a more complete understanding of how the Indians and the British fought can better be understood. There has been little scholarly work dedicated to the battle. Of scholarly works available, most are older articles written by men with an Anglocentric viewpoint of the event. Some of the earlier works about the siege and the battle were by men like Cyrus Cort, a minister from Greensburg, Pennsylvania. His book, Col. Henry Bouquet and His Campaigns of 1763 and 1764, has no direct link to sources and is of limited scholarly value. There are several types of sources to be considered. The early type of analysis of the Fort Pitt Campaign was late nineteenth and early twentieth century histories such as Cort’s biased book. This Anglocentric viewpoint portrays the Indians in a negative view as racist, “The Shawnees, Delawares, Senecas, Wyandot and Miamis, who considered themselves the exclusive masters of the territory, being moved by their hatred and fear of their Anglo-Saxon foemen, joined together in a common cause, in order to wipe out at once, by a simultaneous movement, the further progress of civilization.” Firsthand accounts such as Robert Kirkwoods experience brings a contemporary …show more content…
There exist ample sources explaining the battle from Colonel Bouquet’s report on the battle to the analysis provided by historians Leroy Eid, John Mahon, Niles Anderson, and Don Daudelin. This helps to not only lay out the battle for analysis but also provides different aspects of the battle which bring the all elements of the battle into focus much like a three-dimensional view. Eid is an example of this different aspect as he uses other battles such as Braddock’s defeat to analyze the tactics of the Indians at the Battle of Bushy Run. These articles along with Patrick Malone’s The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics among the New England Indians allows the constructing of the battle and showing how and why tactics are applied. Adding to the difficulty is an article currently being shipped from the United Kingdom, “Unless Something Extraordinary Should Happen on the Way’: The Forty-second Regiment of Foot’s Forgotten Battle” by Ian Davidson. The reason for the difficulty is the complexity of the reconstructing of the battle and piecing all of the elements together in order to analyze the

Show More

Essay Terrorism: Terrorism and Pm est Mmm

Physical Education And Nutrition In The Budget Crisis

Fort Pitt Campaign Analysis

Related Documents: Fort Pitt Campaign Analysis

Essay Terrorism: Terrorism and Pm est Mmm

Physical Education And Nutrition In The Budget Crisis