Bushy Run was a key victory for the British
By 1763, the British settlements and forts along what was then the Western frontier in Western Pennsylvania and Ohio were either captured, destroyed or besieged by an unprecedented coordinated assault by Native American tribes.
Although the British were victors of the Seven Years War concluded that year, their efforts to integrate former French and Spanish territories in Florida, Canada and the Great Lakes into their colonial holdings, wrote Bryan Rindfleisch of Marquette University, aroused the enmity of the Native Americans living in what had been New France.
Rindfleisch wrote the British Governor General of North America Jeffrey Amherst, who described the Native Americans as “the Vilest Race of Beings that Ever Infested the Earth,” ended the practice of gift-giving to Native American tribes which considered the practice as cementing the political relationships between two parties. Coupled with the encroachment of tribal lands by colonists, British restrictions on trade and the stationing of British troops in the Great Lakes and Ohio River Valley, it didn’t take much to convince Native American leaders such as Ottawa headman Pontiac, for whom “Pontiac’s War” was named, to go on the offensive.
Pontiac’s War came as an unwelcome surprise to the British who discounted the possibility the disparate tribes could mount a coordinated offensive.
Initially, the coalition of tribes were successful. Rindfleisch notes by May 1763, the Native American tribes overran Britain’s Western fortifications from Fort Edward Augustus in what is now Wisconsin to Fort Presque Isle in Western Pennsylvania.
By June only three forts remained in British hands, Niagra, Detroit and Fort Pitt. Fort Pitt and Niagra were under siege by the Native Americans who also attacked the colonists’ settlements attached to the forts. An estimated 500 settlers died in the conflict which stretched across the present states of Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and parts of Maryland and West Virginia.
According to the Bushy Run Battlefield Museum, in late June, an expedition was organized to march west to Fort Pitt to end the siege there and then to proceed north and west to retake the captured forts in the Ohio River Valley.
Colonel Henry Bouquet, a Swiss-born professional soldier, commanded the expedition as it left Carlisle, Pa., on July 18, 1763.
According to the Adventures in Historyland website writer Josh Provan, Bouquet led a force of 460 men made up of Highland and Royal American troops, a company of rangers, a train of packhorses and a small herd of cattle.
Native American scouts observed Bouquet’s army marching west along Forbes Road, a military road that connected Carlisle with Fort Pitt, and reported this to the large force of their comrades surrounding Fort Pitt. The tribes decided to temporarily end their siege and attack the British expedition in the open. The battle took place one mile east of Bushy Run Station, an abandoned military outpost, and 30 miles east of Fort Pitt, in what is now Westmoreland County on Aug. 5 and 6.
By Aug. 5, Bouquet force marched his men through 18 miles of intense heat planning to stop at Bushy Run Creek to get water for his thirsty men. But a mile from Bushy Run his scouts spotted tribal campfires and found tracks that confirmed Bouquet’s command had stumbled into a large force of the enemy, estimated to be 2-3,000 men.
Prevan wrote as soon as the Native Americans, a war party made up of Delaware, Miami, Shawnee, Wyandot, Mingo and Ottawa warriors realized they had been spotted, they attacked Bouquet’s vanguard. The British remained calm and opened fire blunting the first rush and sending the Native Americans to cover in the surrounding woods. The British troops fixed bayonets and charged driving their enemies back.
The Native Americans, armed with lances, tomahawks, muskets and scalping knives, regrouped and attacked the flanks of Bouquet’s main column as it moved up to support the vanguard. By afternoon, Bouquet realized he had been ambushed by a huge force of Native Americans and withdrew his troops into a circle on Edge Hill, putting his wounded, supplies and packhorses in the center. A barricade of flour sacks were thrown up to shelter the wounded.
Prevan wrote the Native Americans attacked again, charging up the hill into the teeth of a musket volley which checked their advance. The warriors retreated after another bayonet charge by the British, but they hadn’t gone far.
As night fell, the British dug in on Edge Hill. The heat made the besieged soldiers terribly thirsty, and volunteers sneaked into the darkness to bring back water through the encircling enemy. They succeeded in returning with canteens of muddy brook water that eased the suffering of the wounded.
Prevan wrote on the morning of Aug. 6, the British faced a day of searing heat and ferocious Native American attacks. By noon, the fight was hot in both senses of the word. Muskets crackled around the besieged British, the sun was at its height and the tribal warriors had made several attempts to storm the position each time being driven back. Determined to destroy the British, the attackers yelled they would have Bouquet’s scalp by nightfall.
According to U.S. Army history, by midafternoon Bouquet was in an increasingly precarious position, running low on ammunition, without water and faced with increasing casualties.
Bouquet decided to stake the fate of his command on a gamble. According to the Army history, he ordered two companies of light infantry at the front of his defense to withdraw. In the smoke-filled woods around the hill the attackers saw the redcoats withdrawing.
Thinking victory was at hand, the warriors swarmed over the crest of the hill and engaged Bouquet’s regulars over mounting piles of the dead and wounded. Seeing the tribesmen concentrated on attacking the west wall of flour sacks, Bouquet ordered the light infantry who had waited in the hollow to the south to charge the attackers’ right flank.
The light infantry fixed bayonets and swept around the west side of Edge Hill, scattering parties of Native Americans who had not yet joined the attack. The British stopped to empty their muskets and then crashed into the swarm of Native Americans fighting at the wall.
Prevan wrote, the tribesmen were pushed off the hill. Bouquet gave the order to advance, and the new attack caught the besiegers off guard before they could reload and they broke into a mob of fugitives. Sending his second in command in pursuit with four companies, Bouquet led the main body of his troops off the hill and down to Bushy Run Creek to quench their thirst.
Bouquet dragged his weary troops into Fort Pitt on Aug. 10. The battle cost Bouquet 50 dead and 60 wounded with five packhorse drivers missing.
According to the Bushy Run Battlefield Museum, the British victory at Bushy Run was the critical turning point in Pontiac’s War. It also prevented the capture of Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh) and restored lines of communication between the frontier and eastern settlements. The British victory helped to keep the “gateway to Western expansion” open.
Today, the Bushy Run Battlefield, located along Pa. Route 993 near Harrison City and Jeannette, is the only historic site or museum that deals exclusively with Pontiac’s War. The battlefield today is topographically intact. Combatants’ positions and maneuvers can be “seen” and understood and the 90 wooded acres give a sense of the original environment at the time of the battle. Self-guiding trails, guided tours and interpretive programs return visitors to the days of the battle.
