JARED FREDERICK: The American Revolution was a defining in the history of Pennsylvania.

against neighbor amidst a desperate Civil War in colonial America.

Indigenous societies were uprooted from their ancestral homes and hunting grounds, and from the ashes of war, an up and coming Republic would emerge.

But what led to this momentous conflict?

As we revisit the historical record, one can find that the origins of the Revolutionary War were years in the making, and Pennsylvania was at the center of a dramatic chain of events that would define history for years to come.

[music playing] Land was everything.

Following the beaver wars of the 17th century, Iroquois society took possession of all Susquehannock land, and what we now know as Pennsylvania.

By 1,700, much of this territory remained uninhabited.

Therefore, the Shawnee and Delaware asked the Iroquois permission to settle and hunt on that land.

But from the 1730s and onward, the Iroquois granted tracts of that region to the growing Pennsylvania colony.

The Delaware and Shawnee were thereby continuously evicted as the colony expanded.

When English Quaker and entrepreneur William Penn, had established the new colony of Pennsylvania in the 1680s, European settlers compromised the sovereignty of their Lenape neighbors.

Even so violence was a comparative rarity, since Penn's pacifist principles advocated brotherly love, while sister colonies to the North and the South engaged in constant violence with Native peoples.

Pennsylvanians hotly debated whether or not they should even have a standing militia for the common defense.

Peace between colonists and Native nations sometimes seemed tenuous at best.

In this uncertain climate, diplomats such as German born Conrad Weiser acted as a cultural and political bridge between disparate societies.

Even so acts such as the Walking Purchase treaty and infamous 1737 land grab that robbed the Lenape of their territory in Eastern Pennsylvania hardly smoothed relations over.

As the colony grew, successors of William Penn grew increasingly ambitious, and their desires to attain native land and defend the Commonwealth against invaders.

In 1747, the civic minded Benjamin Franklin, advocated the creation of the associators, a predecessor of The Pennsylvania National Guard.

With various imperial powers flexing their muscle in North America, the colony could no longer stand defenseless.

[music playing] Beyond the Allegheny Mountains was a vast expanse of resource rich land known as the Ohio country.

At the heart of that valuable real estate were the forks of the Ohio where Pittsburgh stands today.

The empire that controlled the three rivers there would control the riverways into the American hinterlands.

To safeguard this strategic location, the French constructed Fort Duquesne, a military symbol denoting their colonial intentions.

Further to the North, Fort Le Boeuf and Presque Isle similarly underscored French claim to Lake Erie.

The Virginia colony likewise claimed the forks of the Ohio, and a young Virginian named George Washington was sent by the governor on a diplomatic mission to evict the French in 1754.

Instead, Washington triggered a conflict in the Ohio country when his small expeditionary force of colonists and Seneca guides killed members of a French diplomatic mission.

This small firefight in the wilderness initiated nothing less than a worldwide conflict.

Having kicked the proverbial hornet's nest, Washington's force thereafter withdrew to a large open pasture known as the Great Meadows, where it constructed the wryly-named Fort Necessity.

There, the French, with their Algonquin, Ottawa, and Huron allies, surrounded Washington and forced his surrender.

[music playing] These events marked the opening of what would become known as the French and Indian War.

The outnumbered Virginians were soon released by the French with a stern Warning never to return to the Ohio country.

Young Washington did not heed that advice.

In 1755, he returned with a much larger force under British General, Edward Braddock.

Unwilling to adapt to the mode of frontier warfare, Braddock led his 1,300 men into disaster at the Battle of Monongahela that July.

Outflanked within a steep ravine, the redcoats and their provincial comrades were gunned down like fish in a barrel.

Braddock himself was mortally wounded and Washington, having barely escaped the melee unscathed, was again driven from Pennsylvania in defeat.

Believing that French settlers and soldiers would be less intrusive in their domains, many Native societies threw in their lot against the English.

Reacting to raids upon their villages, various tribes and nations retaliated against sparsely populated settlements.

During one such incursion into Adams County, 12-year-old Mary Jemison witnessed the murder of her family at the hands of Shawnee Warriors.

She was thereafter absorbed into native society, married a Lenape husband and never surrendered her adopted Indigenous culture.

At the same time, the French invited enslaved African laborers to flee their British owners in the Ohio country and gain freedom.

From Kittanning, the Delaware and Shawnee launched a campaign into Pennsylvania's undefended back country.

Chief Shingas and Captain Jacobs led the multifaceted offensive, striking in the Great Cove near present day McConnellsburg and into Maryland.

Settlers fled their homes and relocated east to Carlisle and beyond.

In response to these raids, Pennsylvania authorized Colonel John Armstrong to strike back at the Indian village known as Kittanning in 1756.

The colonel's tactical successes were offset by high casualties.

Fortunes finally shifted for the British in 1758, when an expedition led by General John Forbes succeeded in capturing the abandoned Fort Duquesne.

A new military outpost named Fort Pitt, became the largest fortification in North America.

The installation was so named in honor of supportive cabinet member William Pitt, whose Black and gold coat of arms inspired the color scheme associated with Pittsburgh to this very day.

The Bastion bearing his name was part of a broader network of frontier forts stretching from east to west, including Forts Hunter, Loudoun, Shirley, Littleton, Bedford, and Ligonier.

Some of these forts and additional outposts along the Forbes road laid the foundation for modern day route 30, also known as the Lincoln Highway.

A reversal of fortune for the British, offered renewed bargaining power.

Between 1756 and 1758, Lenape chief teedyuscung helped negotiate treaties at Eastern Pennsylvania.

English officials pledged peace, commercial trade, and military protection.

In return, scores of Native leaders promise not to fight the French and permitted the British to march through their lands unopposed.

The colonists also agreed not to settle territories West of the Allegheny Mountains when the war concluded.

But would the English settlers uphold their end of the deal, and how might the Natives then react?

Over time, these issues and many more would help spark a new conflict in America, a revolution with far reaching consequences that no one could have foreseen.

Join us next time on Past PA as we continue to explore the roots of the American Revolution.

Thanks for tuning in and stay curious.

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