Smallpox Blanket Scheme
An infamous scheme of biological warfare surrounds the Native attack on Fort Pitt during Pontiac’s Rebellion in June 1763. As tensions intensified in the months prior, the British give two Delaware dignitaries large quantities of food and “two blankets and a handkerchief out of the small pox hospital” in exchange for maintaining their trading relationship and thereby easing pressure on soldiers and civilians in the fort. It is commonly believed that these blankets carried smallpox and that the British intended to spread the disease among Native populations by gifting them. Historians now debate whether this particular exchange could have been part of such a scheme.
View a drawn map of Fort Pitt.
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