Ponteach; Or, The Savages of America

Transcribers' Note:
For your convenience, the transcribers have provided the following links:
Spelling as in the original has been preserved.


Major Robert Rogers

Robert Rogers, a soldier of fortune, is the Davy Crockett of Colonial times. Born at Dumbarton, New Hampshire, on November 17th (some authorities say 1730, another 1731, while the Dictionary of National Biography says 1727), he was the son of James Rogers, a farmer living in a frontier cabin at Methuen, in upper Massachusetts.
Evidently Rogers flourished financially at this period, for we find him buying land in Massachusetts in 1753. His activity as a soldier in the French and Indian War put him in command of a company, known as Rogers' Rangers, and he participated in the Siege of Detroit against Pontiac and the French. This experience of his must have fired Rogers with the desire, after careful consideration of the condition of the Indian, to put his special plea for the cause of the Red Man in some permanent literary form, for Ponteach was published in 1766, after Rogers had left America, had gone to London, and thence had taken vessel for Algiers, where he fought under Dey.
By 1761, Rogers had so far advanced in worldly standing that he could afford to turn his attention to family affairs. We find him visiting Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where Elizabeth, daughter of the Reverend Arthur Browne, lived. The two were married on June 30th of that year; but evidently there was about Robert Rogers something his father-in-law did not quite relish. For, in 1763, a dispute arose between the two, because of Rogers' increasing dissipation. That they did not reach, however, any immediate open rupture, may have been due very largely to the fact that Rogers was becoming quite a land-owner in New York and New Hampshire. It was not until March 4, 1778, after Rogers had gone through many and varied experiences, not the least of which was serving a term in the Debtors' Prison in England, that his wife was granted, by the New Hampshire Legislature, a decree of divorce. She thereupon married Captain John Poach.