00:00 - The following program was financed by a grant from America

00:04 - 250 A.

00:30 - So there's always two sides to every story.

00:32 - You know, the British

00:33 - and the settlers have their side and the Native Americans have their side.

00:37 - And we spend a lot of time learning about and

00:42 - exposing that education to people.

00:49 - Over the barrel Bush you run actually

00:53 - has beginnings back in the French and Indian War.

00:58 - And the Native Americans felt that the French

01:00 - was less of a threat to their homelands.

01:03 - They traded better with the Native Americans, and they did with the British.

01:07 - So as the war between France and Great

01:10 - Britain broke out for control of the land here, the Native Americans

01:13 - decided that they would side or fight on the side of the French.

01:18 - As the French and Indian War lasted for seven years toward the end of the war.

01:22 - It was obvious that Great Britain was going to win the war.

01:25 - The natives decided that they better make peace with the British.

01:29 - Many of the native tribes I met in a place called Easton,

01:32 - Pennsylvania, and they signed what is known as the Treaty of Easton

01:37 - or the Treaty of Easton.

01:38 - Stated a couple things.

01:40 - Number one, as far as the natives go, the natives would no longer

01:44 - fight on the side of the French and with to battle British.

01:48 - They would abandon all the forts and all the outposts

01:50 - west of the Appalachian Mountains.

01:52 - Number two they would no longer establish settlements

01:55 - and homesteads west of the Appalachian Mountains.

01:58 - And the third thing, the Treaty of Easton, stated

02:00 - they would continue to trade with the natives.

02:05 - Generally, what they had decided to do

02:07 - was that the the British would not allow any settlement

02:12 - beyond the Allegheny Mountains.

02:16 - But that didn't work out very well.

02:17 - After the French and Indian War, the European settlers or the British

02:21 - primarily started moving westward

02:24 - and started headed towards Fort Pitt.

02:27 - It was the opportunity for the British to have an outpost,

02:31 - and with the outposts, then more and more settlers started to come.

02:35 - Again, it was that agreement that the white settlers

02:39 - would not come beyond or west of the Allegheny Mountains.

02:43 - You have to understand that while it may seem like

02:46 - there was a lot of land east of the Allegheny Mountains,

02:50 - the people were looking for fresh virgin land.

02:53 - And, that could have been found just west of the mountains.

02:57 - So they kept coming.

02:59 - There was also, over in the Detroit area

03:02 - or not all war chief named Pontiac.

03:05 - Pontiac was a very influential man.

03:09 - Very highly thought of within the native community.

03:12 - He could see what was happening with the British expansion

03:15 - to their colonies and taken, occupying their homelands.

03:19 - He could he deemed it was inevitable that the British

03:23 - were going to take over their homelands here in the Ohio Country.

03:26 - So he convinced many of the tribes, in the Ohio Country,

03:30 - to rebel or take a stand against the British.

03:34 - And this is what became known as Pontiac's War.

03:38 - Chief Pontiac, of the Ottawa, was very

03:43 - fearful that his people

03:45 - and the native people were learning how to live beyond their culture.

03:51 - They no longer knew the things that, were very,

03:55 - prominent with the Native Americans.

03:57 - They they couldn't hunt any more with bow and arrows.

04:00 - They didn't know how to make bow and arrows.

04:02 - They became dependent upon the,

04:05 - the Europeans for clothing now because they found clothing

04:09 - to be a lot more versatile than the furs that they were used to wearing.

04:14 - And they didn't grow the crops or, or

04:17 - have the ability to make the cloth that they needed to buy.

04:20 - And it was important for them to regain that independence

04:24 - from, the European settlers.

04:27 - And now with the weapons,

04:29 - the Europeans or the Brits knew how to make the gunpowder,

04:32 - which is something that they absolutely needed.

04:35 - The natives, at this point in their history, they were relying

04:38 - very heavily on the muskets and the gunpowder.

04:41 - Now there was a commanding officer of the British forces at the time.

04:45 - His name was Lord Jeffrey Amherst.

04:47 - And he did not like the natives.

04:49 - He wasn't very fond of their lifestyle, did not like them as people.

04:53 - And he all but discontinued the trade.

04:55 - The muskets and the gunpowder and things.

04:58 - But he did continue to supply them with alcohol.

05:00 - Jeffrey Amherst was the leader of the British military,

05:07 - during the French and Indian War. And,

05:11 - one of the

05:11 - things that, history is now painting him

05:14 - and he was again the British leader of the military.

05:19 - He was one of the proponents of, I guess,

05:22 - what you might call some of the first, biological warfare

05:26 - where they would take smallpox,

05:29 - tainted blankets and handkerchiefs and give them to the chiefs

05:33 - so that they would take that smallpox back to their tribes.

05:37 - The leading force were the British.

05:40 - They were the ones that controlled the military.

05:42 - It was their mercantilism that they had that actually was the economy of the time.

05:47 - But you had a lot of folks that, again, came to the New World

05:52 - so that they had the ability to acquire property and finally become

05:58 - not necessarily what their father was or here in the new World, you had a chance to

06:04 - do what you wanted to.

06:06 - It gave a lot of freedom to the people, and that was one of the big draws

06:10 - for people to come from Europe.

06:12 - But once they came over, they were under British rule.

06:17 - Okay, so Pontiac's War

06:18 - breaks out in a spring of 1763.

06:21 - It was an extremely violent time in Western Pennsylvania colonial history.

06:26 - The natives had taken up the hatchet, if you will, against the British.

06:31 - Began attacking forts and outpost and attacking

06:34 - settlements and destroying crops and killing livestock and settlers.

06:38 - Many of the forts around that the natives could not destroy or be held under siege.

06:44 - Lord Jeffrey Amherst had lost communications with Fort Pitt,

06:49 - and he figured they were under siege.

06:51 - So he selected a man named Colonel Henry Bouquet

06:55 - to to alleviate the siege.

06:57 - Henry Bouquet was actually Swiss.

07:01 - He was actually,

07:03 - a mercenary of sorts that he joined the British Army.

07:06 - His original mission was to carry food

07:09 - supplies and a contingent of soldiers to Fort Pitt.

07:14 - They left Carlisle, made it to Fort Ligonier.

07:17 - At Fort Ligonier, they, they were carrying wagon loads of flour.

07:22 - Well, they took the flour, put it in flour sacks

07:25 - and put it over the backs of their pack horses.

07:29 - When you talk about Forbes Road, they were only a wagon with wide,

07:33 - so that if you had an issue, you would have to unload the wagon.

07:37 - You couldn't turn the wagon around.

07:39 - You had to move the wagon out.

07:41 - And if you have trees that are 18ft in diameter, you had.

07:45 - Yes it was it was difficult.

07:47 - So they figured if they could do pack animals, they could do, you know, a pack

07:52 - team of like a mile or two, and they could make it.

07:55 - They could go much faster.

07:57 - And he was going to take, Forbes Road, which is just north of here.

08:01 - But he could cut out almost a day's travel by taking the south fork of Forbes Road.

08:07 - He was headed towards,

08:11 - Bushy Run, which is now called Harrison City.

08:13 - And the goal was, was if he could get there in the afternoon,

08:16 - they could fill up with water and take a rest because they wanted

08:20 - to do the traverse of the,

08:23 - Turtle Creek.

08:24 - They wanted to do that at night because it is a road with very high,

08:28 - hills on the sides that the Native Americans

08:31 - would have used as almost like shooting fish in a barrel.

08:34 - So he wanted to do that trip at night

08:37 - and, didn't quite make it

08:40 - because he was ambushed right here at, that bushy run.

08:44 - The natives that had laid siege to Fort Pitt heard

08:47 - there were troops headed our way, and they abandoned the siege.

08:51 - And they rushed out to meet the troops.

08:53 - And this is the point where the natives had come over the hill,

08:55 - ambushed the British soldiers right here on the spot.

08:59 - One of the problems we have here,

09:01 - Bushy Run, is that there's no fort,

09:05 - there's no buildings, there's no river.

09:08 - There's nothing that you can kind of hang your hat on.

09:11 - It was just a wagon trail through the woods.

09:17 - So it was over 260 years ago.

09:19 - And the land itself, the terrain, actually, was hilly,

09:23 - but there was not a lot of, grass and flowers and things like that.

09:28 - Back in 1763.

09:30 - It would have been very heavily wooded, a lot of trees around,

09:33 - very little underbrush, because the trees would grow so big and so high.

09:37 - This area here was probably just

09:39 - a little pathway would have been known as Forbes Road.

09:43 - So the terrain would be pretty much the same, but

09:45 - the trees and the landscape itself would have been very different.

09:49 - And part of our goal was to try to, you to imagine

09:53 - what it was like with massive trees, you know, American chestnut.

09:58 - You could put 8 or 10 people behind the tree and not see them.

10:03 - So it was very different than what it appears now.

10:07 - This was a very important part of me, of the Native Americans.

10:12 - It wasn't a place where they built towns, but it was a place where they traveled

10:17 - from point A to point B, and this was beautiful hunting grounds.

10:34 - This is the high ground

10:35 - here where the natives, would have attacked the British soldiers.

10:39 - They selected this area right here.

10:42 - It's a very, strategic location for them.

10:45 - Bouquet and his troops had just marched from Fort Ligonier.

10:49 - Their destination was had outpost down or Bushy Run

10:52 - Station, where they could get, water rest and get water.

10:58 - But they had March,

11:00 - 20 some miles to get to this point without any water or anything.

11:03 - So the natives ambushed them right here at this spot.

11:27 - For our reenactment,

11:28 - we have approximately 100 volunteers, and we have,

11:33 - our British forces.

11:35 - We have our, Native American forces.

11:38 - All our jewelry by our what I like to call our professional re-enactors here.

11:44 - We have a Native American that juries make sure

11:46 - all of the Native Americans are attired properly.

11:50 - They're living quarters are proper, so on and so forth.

11:54 - Same with the British.

11:55 - Make sure that the, you know, the regiment style is all correct and so on.

12:00 - And it has been we have been told that Bushy Run

12:03 - reenactment is probably one of the best reenactments in the area.

12:08 - So we're quite, quite proud of that.

12:11 - And we work hard at doing it.

12:12 - Colonel bouquet, he was, an officer in French and Indian War.

12:16 - They had been through this area many times.

12:18 - He's been to Fort Pitt several times.

12:20 - Colonel bouquet and his troops made it to this point about 1:00

12:24 - in the afternoon on August 5th, 1763.

12:28 - When it got to this point here, the natives

12:31 - that had laid siege to Fort Pitt heard there were troops headed our way.

12:35 - The natives plan was to attack and then run and hide

12:39 - and then reappear somewhere else.

12:40 - Attack and then run and hide.

12:42 - So it was very hard for the British to shoot

12:45 - and and to, know what they're firing at, where the direction was coming from.

12:50 - The battle lasted until almost dark.

12:52 - Colonel bouquet and his men had taken on very heavy casualties.

12:56 - So he decided he was going to do a retreat.

12:58 - The British had taken on probably 50 men killed and 60 wounded.

13:02 - So out of his 500 troops,

13:05 - in this first day's battle

13:06 - here, probably had about over 20% of his troops killed or wounded.

13:11 - And you have to understand what Bushy Run looked like back then.

13:15 - Nothing. What it looks like today.

13:17 - Most of the trees here, about 18ft in diameter.

13:21 - So there were lots of places to hide.

13:24 - It's part of our job to help you

13:27 - picture that. And,

13:30 - I think that's one of the things that we do very well

13:32 - here to get people to understand just those tactics.

13:36 - And it was very similar because of Colonel Brooks Swiss background.

13:41 - They were quite aware of how they were quite aware of guerrilla warfare,

13:46 - which Colonel Bouquet to a degree, allowed his troops to do, too.

13:50 - He allowed them to fire behind trees,

13:54 - you know, under behind rocks, things like that.

13:57 - So it wasn't the stereotypical British line

14:00 - where everybody fired at the same time.

14:03 - Wasn't always like that.

14:05 - So Colonel Bouquet and his men just put up a, all day gun battle with the natives.

14:10 - They took on very heavy casualties down there.

14:12 - The first day's battle.

14:15 - They decided they better do a retreat.

14:18 - And they, retreated back to this trail right

14:21 - here, up to what was known as Edge Hill.

14:25 - Bouquet and known as Fort was here.

14:27 - He had been to this area many times.

14:29 - There was a little bit of a clearing right here.

14:32 - So he and his men come back to this spot

14:34 - and needed a way to protect himself.

14:37 - So he took his, supplies,

14:40 - flower bags and stuff off the back of the pack horses.

14:43 - And he built himself a flower bag for right over here in this area.

14:48 - Was definitely a defeat

14:49 - of the first day the British lost.

14:52 - And it was because of that, they were treated back up

14:56 - that a half mile or so to, Edge Hill,

15:00 - where they built a flower sack for the Native Americans, did encircle them

15:05 - and actually kept them up all night

15:08 - because of the, the hollering and things like that.

15:10 - They were actually trying to get water because there are no streams here.

15:15 - And so the Native Americans kept, pecking at them all night.

15:19 - And that was, probably very tiring.

15:23 - And it's hot if, you know, western Pennsylvania

15:26 - and beginning of August, it's it's very hot.

15:30 - It's very humid.

15:32 - But now

15:33 - bouquet would have had a line of troops down toward the front there.

15:37 - You also would have had a second

15:38 - line of troops here around where this high grass is.

15:41 - And like I said,

15:42 - he himself would have come up here and hid inside the flower bag fort.

15:45 - So throughout the night, the natives were harassing him.

15:48 - They began their attack on the second day, August 6th, 1763.

15:53 - The second day's battle lasted again for several hours.

15:56 - Neither side was making any progress.

15:58 - A lot of shots were being fired back and forth, so Colonel Bouquet

16:02 - needed a way to draw the natives out of the woods,

16:05 - get him out in the open where they were easier targets.

16:09 - Henry Bouquet was at the time. It is.

16:11 - It is believed, and he is declared to be the best British officer.

16:17 - His background was in Europe in fighting battles.

16:20 - He understood woodland warfare,

16:23 - and I think that's ultimately what ended up saving him.

16:26 - Colonel bouquet was able to devise a military maneuver

16:31 - that actually, is studied today by the, the US military.

16:36 - What he did was he took to, regiments, and he found a retreat

16:41 - and headed back towards Fort Ligonier.

16:43 - So the Native Americans consolidated some of their attackers

16:47 - and force them into an area that was now

16:51 - what you might consider weak.

16:54 - So they, rushed into the line to attack the retreating soldiers.

16:58 - And when they did, both sides of the, line the bouquet had here in front,

17:03 - had attacked the soldiers, caught him in a crossfire.

17:07 - Bouquet also had another set of troops down here heading over to the hill,

17:12 - and they attacked the natives, from the right flank.

17:15 - And they ambushed him at the time, Anaconda natives completely off guard.

17:19 - The Native Americans were pushed.

17:22 - Colonel bouquet, part of his troops, chased the Native Americans

17:26 - at least a mile further beyond,

17:30 - beyond bushy Run, which is now Harrison City.

17:33 - The Native Americans were never used to losing

17:36 - large numbers of their tribal members.

17:39 - If there was a skirmish, if the Native Americans lost

17:43 - two, three, half a dozen, that was monumental,

17:48 - because you have to remember,

17:49 - there weren't millions and millions of Native Americans.

17:53 - This monument was erected

17:55 - in 2013 for our 250th anniversary of the battle.

17:59 - Here, describes some of the tribes that were here on the battle.

18:03 - The Delaware was the predominant tribe at the time.

18:05 - There was just a few scattered tribes.

18:07 - Wyandot here.

18:09 - There were some Seneca, some Miami, Ottawa.

18:12 - As far as the British goes, 42nd and the 77th or Scottish Highlanders, the 42nd.

18:18 - They were known as the Black Watch and the 60th Regiment or Foot.

18:23 - They were the Royal American Regiment, the British elite fighters.

18:28 - They had fought in the French and Indian War.

18:29 - Captain Romeo Barents Rangers would have been like the scouts and the militiamen.

18:34 - They would have been the guys that were out in front of the battle,

18:37 - more accustomed to the native style of fighting.

18:42 - There were reasons

18:43 - why the settlers were coming west.

18:46 - There are reasons why the Native Americans didn't want them to come any further.

18:51 - And, part of the deal that we have here

18:54 - is to try to understand both sides of those stories, explain them equally.

19:00 - So that people do get a really firm understanding

19:03 - of why the Battle of Bushy Run is so important.

19:07 - We have our Native American, what we call our jurists, that help us

19:10 - when we do our battle reenactments or reenactments, period,

19:14 - that we get what you might want to call official professional input

19:20 - as to Native Americans, how they reacted, how

19:23 - they dressed, things like that. So,

19:26 - this isn't just a British Museum.

19:29 - This is a a battle museum.

19:32 - And it is the only certified Native American battlefield

19:35 - in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

19:37 - So I think we're pretty unique in that regard.

19:40 - And when we see the results, when we see the,

19:43 - you know, the eyes of the little kids that, you know,

19:46 - when the guns go off and when the Native Americans,

19:49 - you don't see them, but then all of a sudden up here

19:52 - in the in the wilderness, you know, it's

19:56 - it's a, it's a shock to everybody.

19:58 - And then we try to explain, well, that's how it really was. And.

20:02 - Oh yeah, it's it's a lot of work, but it's a lot of fun.

20:05 - We have a kids day camp and we allow them to participate.

20:10 - It's on a on a yearly rotating basis.

20:12 - One year it's Native American, perspective.

20:16 - And then it's British military perspective.

20:18 - And then it's,

20:20 - colonial perspective.

20:21 - And then we rotate again.

20:23 - So we give them a perspective and some hands on things.

20:26 - And like I said, our history speaks where we bring in authors.

20:30 - And we had Native Americans here teaching us

20:33 - how they made rope, which is out of Dog Bane.

20:37 - And if you I mean, that's a whole nother it's a whole nother issue.

20:40 - But we actually made rope here.

20:42 - We had people here that showed us how you card war,

20:46 - how you turned it into yarn and teach you how to knit.

20:51 - So we do all those kind of things that we are able to expose

20:55 - people to that are all part of history.

20:59 - Like I said, we are all volunteers here except one.

21:02 - I mean, we cover everything.

21:04 - We cover the tour guides.

21:06 - We have the ability to take people.

21:09 - We have two, eight passenger golf carts that were all provided

21:12 - by moneys that we were able to earn through events.

21:17 - And, you know, this is nonprofit.

21:19 - And every month, every penny we make goes back into some aspect

21:25 - of, providing an educational experience.

21:28 - For example, our reenactment is our biggest event.

21:31 - We don't charge people to come here.

21:35 - We sat

21:35 - back and we looked at it as part of the board, and we said,

21:38 - you know, we're looking at trying

21:40 - to get people into history and explain what's going on.

21:44 - But if you have an event and you've got a mother and father

21:47 - and three kids and you're charging $10 a person to come in $8 a person,

21:53 - you've now possibly just charged them out of the ability to be here.

21:58 - And our mission is, is to expose history, especially to the younger people.

22:03 - And, that seems like that didn't connect.

22:07 - So we said, what we'll do is we'll just stand at the front gate with a bucket,

22:11 - but they give us enough money that we can sustain ourselves.

22:15 - So that's that's our philosophy.

22:17 - And that has worked for us very, very well.