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
Siege of Fort Nashwaak communities. During King William's War - the first of the four French and Indian Wars - French and Indians were victorious in the Siege of Pemaquid (1696) (present day Bristol, Maine) earlier that year. In the Siege of Pemaquid, the French and Indians had destroyed Fort William Henry, which the English colonial militia leader Benjamin Church himself assisted in erecting. In response to the defeat, the following month Benjamin Church led a devastating raid on Chignecto and then laid siege to the capital of Acadia, Fort Nashwaak in 1696. Fort Nashwaak was a four-sided log palisade erected by Governor Villebon