Pre-Pittsburgh: Memo and Personal Statement
This fake comic takes places two hundred and seventy ago, in my hometown. Pittsburgh’s cherished founding stories traditionally begin with a cameo from historical a-lister, young George Washington, on his hero’s journey. The Old Block House and the Fort Pitt museum literally stand today as physical testaments of imperial ambition in a bygone age that made the city what it is today. The stories of George Washington and Fort Pitt have been told over and over again since time immemorial, so what is there new to say in retelling this story in fake comic form?
First off, this fake-comic is rife with tooty-fruity images of “Ohio Country” between 1748 – 1755. Brick-by-brick and cell-by-cell the Pittsburgh tale slowly builds. While I usually start by just doing lots of studies of previous historical imagery of the place and time, my research left me wondering down other aspects less explored. While George Washington wasn’t the only military dude in the area, the traditional history tells of a syndicate of various military dudes that who came to the wild west of “Ohio Country” to establish imperial domain. There are also white traders and American chiefs as other “agents” that move the story along.
Pittsburgh is the 68th largest city in the United States, it’s one of many places that made contributions to a national historical narrative and it of course experienced national and global phenomena, aside from being home of the Steelers.
Generally, I’m more interested in social history over generation instead of the hijinks of individual military dudes. I just didn’t have the sources to make the entire narrative around Pittsburgh’s social structure of the eighteenth century. This fake-comic turned out to be more of an exercise in telling the old stories.
 The book for this time period that really broadened my horizons was Into the American Woods by James Merrell that narrates the translators and negotiators between the state of Pennsylvania and Native American groups, mainly the Haudenosaunee, who were centered in upstate New York, but had claims to the region. Merrell’s interpretation of the events at Fort Duquesne and Fort Pitt are very different from other interpretations on the cause and effects transpiring at the forks of the three rivers. The native people who lived in the region, who had broken free of Haudenosaunee and allied with the French, even helping expel Braddock’s forces in 1755 against the English. History would remember Braddock as Pittsburgh’s first jagoff.
Perhaps in second installment I can present how critical the Ohio Native Americans were in determining which empire would be the victor.
