1746), when he helped withstand an attack of Indians near his home, and this may be considered his first active experience with the Red Man. From this time on, the history of the career of Robert Rogers is the history of the efforts of the Colonists against the Indians as far west as Detroit, and as far south as South Carolina. The necessity which confronted all of the Colonists made of young Rogers one of the most expert hunters of the period, and in this connection he was associated with the famous John Stark, of Green Mountain Boys reputation. In the latter's Memoir, written by Caleb Stark, we have as graphic a pen-picture of Rogers, the hunter, at twenty-two, as we have actual likenesses of Rogers in the pictures of the time.[1]

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[Pg 112] 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.

[Pg 112]

Naturally, most of the interest attached to Rogers is historical, not literary. His career in the French and Indian War, outlined by him in his "Journal of the French and Indian War," which was published in London in 1765; his activity in the 

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