Fort Pitt Museum Pitt, after William Pitt the Elder. As a result, in 1763 local Delawares and Shawnees took part in Pontiac's Rebellion, an effort to drive the British out of their territory. The Indians' siege of Fort Pitt began on June 22, 1763, but the fort was too strong to be taken by force. In negotiations during the siege, the commander of Fort Pitt gave two Delaware emissaries blankets that had been exposed to smallpox, in hopes of infecting the surrounding Indians and ending the siege. The effectiveness of this attempt is unclear. Outbreaks of smallpox had plagued Native Americans for years
Fort Sandusky their territory. But in 1761 British General Jeffery Amherst ordered the erection of Fort Sandusky on Sandusky Bay in order to strengthen the line of defense from Fort Detroit, near the western end of Lake Erie, to central Lake Erie, and to Fort Pitt at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, which controlled access to the Ohio River and the western frontier of the British colonies. The Seven Years' War continued in Europe until 1763 between Britain and France. Fort Sandusky was a small British fort established on the southeastern shore of Sandusky Bay off Lake Erie in