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Illustrated Episode · Volume III, chapter 2 · 24 June 1763

A gift from the hospital

Before a brick-faced fort under a summer sky, a scarlet-coated officer holds out folded blankets in both hands to a Delaware man in a blanket and silver gorget, a second Delaware man beside him, soldiers watching from the rampart.
Outside besieged Fort Pitt, June 1763, Captain Simeon Ecuyer hands two blankets from the fort's smallpox hospital to the Delaware chiefs Turtle's Heart and Mamaltee, who urge the garrison to abandon its post. Trader William Trent wrote in his journal, "I hope it will have the desired effect." Rothbard calls the gift germ warfare, the hard-liner's answer to a rising he had provoked. Chapter 2 of Conceived in Liberty.

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Adapted from Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011), CC BY 3.0.

What happened

By late June 1763 Pontiac's war had reached the forks of the Ohio. Delawares and Shawnees had besieged Fort Pitt, where Captain Simeon Ecuyer, a Swiss officer in British service, held a few hundred soldiers, militia and frightened settlers behind brick and sod. On 24 June two Delaware leaders, Turtle's Heart and Mamaltee, came up to the fort and told the garrison that the other posts had fallen and that it should go down the country while it could. Ecuyer thanked them and said the fort could hold against every Indian in the woods. Then, in the words of the trader William Trent's journal, "out of our regard to them, we gave them two Blankets and an Handkerchef out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect." Rothbard sets the gift beside General Amherst's own order, in early July, to spread smallpox among the Indians, and calls it one of the great advances in the art of modern war. His point is about Amherst, the hard-liner who took the Indians for vermin, cut off their powder and rum, and met the uprising he had provoked with a demand for extermination (CiL, p. 786). He adds that smallpox soon raged among the Delawares and Shawnees. Colonel Bouquet relieved Fort Pitt after his victory at Bushy Run in early August, and the war ended in peace.

Sources

  1. Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2011 single-volume ed.), vol. III, ch. 2, 'The Ohio Lands: Pontiac's Rebellion', pp. 785-787. CC BY 3.0. Rothbard
  2. William Trent, journal of the siege of Fort Pitt, entry for 24 June 1763, printed in Darlington, Fort Pitt and Letters from the Frontier (1892) and Volwiler, Mississippi Valley Historical Review (1924); read as quoted on the umass.edu Amherst and smallpox page and in the Wikipedia siege article, not in the printed editions. Primary source
  3. Wikipedia, 'Siege of Fort Pitt' (accessed 2026-09-30): the conference of 24 June 1763 'just outside of Fort Pitt' with Ecuyer, McKee, Turtle's Heart and Mamaltee; the 1955 find of the traders' invoice signed by Ecuyer; 16 cannon; houses levelled and trenches dug. Secondary source
  4. Wikipedia, 'Turtleheart' (accessed 2026-09-30): Unami name Tahkoxitèh; Delaware leader of Shaningo; at Fort Pitt with Mamaltee on 24 June 1763; did not catch smallpox from the blankets; at Fort Stanwix in 1768. Secondary source
  5. FortWiki, 'Fort Pitt (1)' (accessed 2026-09-30, through a search summary): a five-pointed star fort begun 1759 under Harry Gordon, brick on the land front and earth and sod elsewhere, a wet moat; Washington in 1770: 'two of which near the land are of brick, the others stockade'. Secondary source
  6. Delaware Tribe of Indians, 'Lenape Clothing' (accessed 2026-09-30, through a search summary), and David Zeisberger's 1772 manuscript on Lenape dress quoted in the tribe's feather-mantle paper: breechclouts, leggings, moccasins, duffel cloth from the traders as blanket and dress. Secondary source
  7. Era registry entry ohio-country-1763 (data/cil/registry/eras/), dress and arms for the Fort Pitt conference; its own sources are listed in its notes. Secondary source