Customer Reviews

Betrayals: Fort William Henry and the Massacre

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Those familiar with James Fenimore Cooper's "Last of the Mohicans" can now read the true tale of what exactly happened on August 9, 1757, when Fort William Henry, commanded by British Lt. Colonel George Monro, formally surrendered to a beseiging army of French regulars, colonial troops, and their Indian allies. The resulting "massacre" is discussed using sources and eyewitness accounts from both sides involved. By careful analyses of details, Steele is able to estimate how many were probably killed in this incident. Steele also views the massacre within the broader aspects of Indian-European relationships and attitudes toward war, captives, and honor. The book is complemented by an appendix of missing New England troops as well as a wealth of notes. Much new light is shed upon this controvercial and troubling incident of the French and Indian War. -James J. Mitchel

The title of this perceptive book tells the gist of Professor Steele's investigation into the seige and subsequent murder or kidnapping of prisoners after the British garrison surrendered to Montcalm in 1757. In essence, the English prisoners were betrayed by the French by letting their Indian allies seek scalps, prisoners and plunder after being given parole to march to a British force on the Hudson. On a larger scale, the French betrayed the Indians by not allowing them to take what Indians assumed were rightfully theirs as a part of 18th century warfare: prisoners to replace tribal members killed in combat, plunder of European materials, and scalps. Steele asserts that the losses suffered by the British garrison were smaller than previously claimed (including a number of men who were forced to travel home with Indians from the Great Lakes)and that the incident was not the bloodbath of popular legend. The men taken to the Lakes kept turning up for years afterward. Many of the scalps taken were from the corpses in the fort's cemetery-the Indians who took these scalps therefore brought smallpox back home with them and might have inadvertently destroyed whole tribes. Steele tries to count the men killed during the "massacre" and I think he is successful in his enumeration. He does not overlook the wounded who were murdered in their beds, the man boiled and eaten by his captors, and the soldiers knocked out of line and killed because they resisted being plundered. I agree that Montcalm was not complicit in directing the massacre, but set up the conditions that caused it to happen.

The Massacre lives on in popular imagination, but so does the Boston Massacre, certainly one of the most non-massacres in American history.

On a personal note, my 7th generation great-grandfather Bernardus Bratt commanded the New York troops at Fort William Henry in the summer of 1756 and came out as a company commander in Sir William Johnson's regiment after the 1757 massacre.

Well-written and well-documented modern accounts of the French and Indian War are few and far between. Steele's book should remain the final word for some time to come.

Despite the Liberal revisionist description of this book I found it to be an honest scholarly investigation into this event in history which has become one of the darker legends of colonial American history. Clearly not the work of some Amerindian apologist bent on denying or trivializing what happened, this book tries to provide the reader with an honest and unbiased source of what happened. Provides a good source of background on the war and the treatment of captives, including the French Colonial slave trade of American captives. The author makes a sincere effort to determine what actually happened.

A good book for those interested in this period.

Although this was a good book in itself, it covered too much of the French and Indian War to just have a title of Fort William Henry and the "Massacre". The book was interesting up to the point of the siege and massacre then it became very vague. It lacked details to the point of disappointment. It did not say what specific Indian tribes did most of the massacre, nor did it have a thorough account of actually what was happening! It told about some injured being killed in the fort , then it jumped to militia killed on the road to Ft Edward, then to the English officers dining with the French officers and chasing away Indians from their personal effects. In addition the author downplayed the massacre! Every time the word was used it was in quotation marks,making it seem the massacre was overplayed. But if 10 people are massacred instead of 200 does that make a difference? The book did inform the reader about the Canadien slave trade which was going on between them and some tribes, which other books clearly never bring up. Many English suffered because of it. It also made it clear that because of the French's terms at Ft. William Henry, many Indians then refused to help the French in the future. Sealing their fate in the French and Indian War.

Much of this book concerns the French and Indian War in general and not just the "massacre." In fact, I don't see why the title claims it is specifically about "Fort William Henry and the Massacre."

This is an okay book, but I have read better ones. I wouldn't feel less informed, really, if I had never read it. Decent writing but somewhat dry. Not a page turner, but just okay to read. Disappointing in that it didn't really cover the subject well (in my opinion).

Steele presents the reader with a masterful treatment of the events surrounding the "massacre" so familiar to viewers of the latest cinematic incarnation of Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans." As a teacher, I can tell you it's a bit of a surprise for students to find out that Colonel Munro survived Magua's knife. Steele puts the events in historical and cultural context. A fine piece of work, one which should be of interest to a broader audience than the book will probably get.

Accounts of the siege and fall of Fort William Henry (3-9 August 1757) vary dramatically depending on the source (or movie), but all agree English/Colonial forces were attacked a day after their surrender to Montcalm with the `honors of war.' The causes, responsibility, and number of victims have been widely disputed ever since.

This work convincingly reconstructs the actual event from sources drawn from colonial to modern times (all presented). It describes the frontier (from Kalm's 1749 travels), the struggle for dominion, the combatants, and the victims' fate (with a tabulation of killed and missing). It is a lucid, balanced account that sets the record straight and raises larger questions.

Each party was betrayed: English/Colonials by the attack, each other, and the absence of Iroquois allies; the French by unreliable native allies (especially those from the pays d'en haut) and Canadians; Canadians by French neophytes in North American warfare; and the perpetrators (Indians allies of the French) by European terms that foreclosed their expectations. It was an event that exposed radically disjointed cultures.

One of the Indian perpetrators best explained himself to Sulpician Abbé François Picquet in Montréal en route west after refusing Governor Pierre de Rigaud de Vaudreuil de Cavagnail's attempts to redeem his captive:

"I make war for plunder, scalps, and prisoners. You are satisfied with a fort, and you let your enemy and mine live. I do not want to keep such bad meat for tomorrow. When I kill it, it can no longer attack me." The native world had no conception of the `honors of war' or chivalry (save silent days of torture of a captive before inevitable death).

A few minor items missing in the text/footnotes:
-The Ohio Land Company (formed by George Washington's elder brother Lawrence, Lt-Gov Dinwidde, and others, employing George Washington as a surveyor) which stood to directly profit from the acquisition of western Pennsylvania - claimed by France;
-The `assassination' of Joseph Coulon de Villiers de Jumonville and ten other Frenchmen after they surrendered to George Washington by Tanaghrisson and his Mingo tribesmen 28 May 1754 at Jumonville's Glen PA (a formative event for war, similarly disputed in subsequent accounts);
-Louis Coulon de Villiers's (Jumonville's elder brother) victory at Fort Necessity 3 July 1754 is mentioned, but without any acknowledgment of Villiers's award of `honors of war' to George Washington and Washington's immediate renunciation of them on regaining safety in Virginia (he returned with Braddock the following year and narrowly escaped death at Monongahela 9 July 1755);
-The Battle of Carillon 8 July 1758, Montcalm's last victory, in which (deserted by most native allies) his force of 4,200 defeated Maj-General James Abercromby's 17,600 man (including 400 Mohawks) attack.

Those points aside (they have more to do with context rather than content), this is an excellent work that is highly recommended.

This book is great for projects if they are looking for a great fort to report on. It's detail is phenominal and I really liked the pictures and diagrams.