NORTHWEST PASSAGE by Kenneth Roberts INTERNATIONAL COLLECTORS LIBRARY

By: unknown

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: B08BTWMDFH
• Release Date: January 1777
• Publisher: Generic
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Historically flawed but a great novel, as are most of Kenneth Roberts' works

Although Robert Rogers' attack upon the Abenaki mission village at St. Francis has been interpreted as a justified attack upon hostiles, (and savage, judging by the scores of scalps hanging there), most of the fighting age males of that village were absent searching for him; and most of the villagers killed were old men, women and children. This is not evident in the book, nor is the fact that Rogers falsified the after action report to Jeffrey Amherst to make it appear a large number of braves were eliminated. The book also glosses over the desecration and looting of the Roman Catholic mission church in the village. We must remember that in this time period, American colonists were overwhelmingly Congregationalist Protestant and many detested Roman Catholicism. Furthermore, the French priests were encouraged to incent the Native Americans to violence in order to keep the border English colonists frightened and occupied with defense lest they continue to migrate north into French territory. In sum though, the march to St. Francis, depiction of the attack and consequences of the subsequent retreat are compelling reading. And, to be fair, the American colonists (in this case the Rogers' Rangers) were justifiably incensed by the many decades of native American attacks on their border habitations. Anyone who wishes a more comprehensive description of this period of warfare in encouraged to read Francis Parkman's works, though he as an author has been criticized by modern historians for bias, embellishment and I think plagerism, though Parkman based a lot of his work upon the Jesuit Relations, a compendium of ethnographic and historical information written by the French Jesuits over the decades, and available, incidentally, in pdf format online free. There are so many gripping scenes, like for example, the flight of the Rangers after the attack, on the way back to New Hampshire and then Crown Point, NY. There are also rather more revealing and candid depictions of Robert Rogers after the French & Indian War when he is a (flawed) governor of Michilimackinac, (considered then to be the "Northwest"), and his alcoholism and shameless self-promotion and boastful nature while living in London. The title of the book relates to Rogers attempt to gain rank and financing to undertake the discovery of the "Northwest Passage," which he understood could be accomplished by travelling westward from the great lakes to the Pacific. As an aside, it is not commonly known that Rogers tried to pass bogus paper money in a bank in Rhode Island when he had not yet formed a ranger company and was a younger man. This is an assertion by one historian, though I did not seek collaboration. Readers may also be unaware that Rogers led a force which raided Connecticut as an English officer during the American Revolution.