Rogers' Rock, Lake George, March 13, 1758: A Battle Fought on Snow Shoes — Themes and Context

Rogers was under the protection of the Great Spirit. The Indians have a superstition, that the witches or evil spirits haunt this place, and seizing upon the spirits of bad Indians, on their way to the happy hunting grounds, slide down the precipitous cliff with them into the lake where they are drowned. Atalapose is their word for a sliding place.

During the one and one-half hours of battle the Rangers lost eight officers and more than one hundred privates killed on the spot. The enemy lost one hundred and fifty killed and some one hundred and fifty wounded, mostly Indians.

Was Colonel Haviland so indifferent and shortsighted as to send Robert Rogers with his brave Rangers to meet this impossible situation at such a great loss of life, or was he influenced by improper motives? Evidently Rogers's suspicions were awakened, for the clause, "but my commander doubtless had his reasons, and is able to vindicate his own conduct," is italicized in his journal.

This is what Major General John Stark, the friend and companion of Rogers says, though not in the engagement, of Colonel Haviland's act: "This officer was the same who sent him (Rogers) out in March, 1758, with a small force, when he knew a superior one lay in wait for him. He was one of those sort of men who manage to escape public censure, let them do what they will. He ought to have been cashiered for his conduct on that occasion. He was one of the many British officers who were meanly jealous of the daring achievements of their brave American comrades, but for whose intrepidity and arduous services, all the British armies, sent to America during the seven years' war would have effected little toward the conquest of Canada."--Memoir of Gen. John Stark, page 454.

Rogers was saved by a miracle and by his own daring. Thus ended his brave but unfortunate battle on snow shoes.

General Montcalm in a letter dated less than a month after the encounter, says: "Our Indians would give no quarter; they have brought back one hundred and forty-six scalps."

We can not with certainty say what Rogers, at this time twenty-six years of age, might have done had he had four hundred strong--but there is every probability that he would have put the enemy to rout.

When I visited this beautiful and romantic region, where one hundred and fifty years ago, and something more, the famous action took place, my mind passed in swift review through that notable afternoon when the Rangers fought one of their most desperate and unequal battles in the "Old French and Indian War."

In fancy I saw this picturesque body of Rangers, clad in skin and gray duffle hunting frocks; each man well armed with firelock, hatchet, and scalping knife, a bullock's horn full of powder hanging under his right arm by a belt from the left shoulder, and a leathern or seal skin bag, buckled around his waist, hanging down in front full of bullets and smaller shot, the size of full grown peas, and in the bottom of my great-great-grandfather's powder horn a small compass, while the French officers were clad in bright uniforms and the Indians in true Indian fashion gaily decorated with war paint.

I seemed to hear this peaceful solitude made hideous with the yells of the savages.

Behind this bank the Rangers lay in ambush for the Indians and killed and scalped about forty of them. Here they were confronted by more than six hundred Canadians and Indians well versed in forest warfare.

In this place the Rangers fought, "seven to one," from behind forest trees, for this theatre of action retains much of its original character preserved, improved and owned by Mr. David Williams. The Rogers Rock property includes the Slide and extends for more than a mile and a half along the shore of Lake George and some half of a mile back of Rogers Rock.

For more than an hour and a half this unequal contest raged. The Rangers after a long toilsome march on snow shoes and having camped three nights, sleeping in hammocks of spruce boughs, the third and last night without fire and chilled--the French and Indians fresh from the Fort.

The brave Rangers were fast falling everywhere, and the snow is crimsoned with their blood. They were the most hardy and resolute young men New Hampshire and other Colonies could produce, and their descendants are now filling their places in the world's niches well to-day.