The Raid On St. Francis Page 4

Abenaki
Robert Rogers led a punitive expedition to the Abenaki village of St. Francis in the summer of 1759. St. Francis was widely known to be a staging point for the brutal Indian raids that the colonists had suffered for years. The raid gained Rogers wide fame, though his men were scattered and many were lost in the escape from St. Francis.

The village was believed to be inhabited mostly by women and children at the time of the raid, most of which were either killed or taken captive. The retreat from St. Francis was brutally difficult, and the rangers quickly ran out of supplies. Rogers split his force in penny packets of ten to twenty men in an effort to allow them to feed themselves off the land, but this also made them easier to track and destroy. Rumors of cannibalism and worse atrocities flew after the war, some through accounts of the rangers themselves.

The British hailed Rogers as a hero, but the French and Abenaki most assuredly did not.


French & Indian War Toy Soldiers by John Jenkins Designs