Fort Pitt Museum Speaker Series: Dr. Fred Anderson

Since the 18th century, historians have credited General John Forbes’s success in seizing Fort Duquesne principally to the deliberation and care he took in building the road and forts that constituted his “covered approach” to the Forks of the Ohio. Modern scholars have added to the picture by emphasizing the decisive effects of intercultural diplomacy that paralleled Forbes’s fort-and-road-building and culminated in the separate peace that the Delawares negotiated with the British at the Treaty of Easton. But what made the Delawares, and eventually the Shawnees, abandon their alliance with the French, thus rendering the Forks of the Ohio indefensible? Author Fred Anderson’s account of the history of Native groups at the Forks from 1755 through the fall of Fort Duquesne—until quite recently, a hidden history—casts new light on this turning point of the Seven Years’ War, and hints at larger patterns of Indian influence in the shaping of American history.

Registration is $20 for adults and $10 for students History Center members. Please register online. Registration will close at the end of business on Friday, June 29 or when tickets are sold out. Any remaining tickets will be sold at the front desk the morning of the program on a first come, first served basis.