White Devil: A True Story of War, Savagery, and Vengeance in Colonial America Book

It was North America's first major conflict, known today as the French and Indian War. In that conflict, France and England-both allied with Native American tribes-fought each other in a series of bloody battles and terrifying raids. And no confrontation was more brutal and notorious than the massacre of the British garrison of Fort William Henry in what is now upstate New York-an incident memorably depicted in James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. That atrocity stoked calls for revenge-and the tough young Major Robert Rogers and his "rangers" were ordered into enemy territory to take it. On the morning of October 4, 1759, they surprised the Abenaki Indian village of St. Francis, slaughtering its sleeping inhabitants without mercy. After the attack, Rogers's band endured a nightmarish journey home. Some were captured and tortured to death by vengeful pursuers, others resorted to cannibalism rather than starve in the frozen wilderness. Those raiders who staggered back to safety were hailed as heroes by the colonists, their indomitable leader immortalized as "the brave Major Roberts." But the Abenakis remembered Rogers very differently: To them he was Wobomagonda-"White Devil." Stephen Brumwell has scoured archives on both sides of the Atlantic to unearth eyewitness accounts that lay bare the remarkable facts behind the legends of this controversial episode from America's violent frontier past. In White Devil, he tells a powerful true story of hardship and courage, savagery and humanity, vengeance and survival.Read More