The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ponteach, by Robert Rogers

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Title: Ponteach
The Savages of America

Author: Robert Rogers

Editor: Montrose J. Moses

Release Date: June 26, 2009 [EBook #29223]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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TRANSCRIBERS' NOTES

This e-book contains the text of _Ponteach_, extracted from Representative
Plays by American Dramatists: Vol 1, 1765-1819. Comments and background
to all the plays and the other plays are available at Project Gutenberg.

Spelling as in the original has been preserved.

PONTEACH

_By_ ROBERT ROGERS

[Illustration: MAJOR ROBERT ROGERS]

MAJOR ROBERT ROGERS
(1727-1795)

Robert Rogers, a soldier of fortune, is the _Davy Crockett_ of
Colonial times. Born at Dumbarton, New Hampshire, on November 17th
(some authorities say 1730, another 1731, while the _Dictionary of
National Biography_ says 1727), he was the son of James Rogers, a
farmer living in a frontier cabin at Methuen, in upper Massachusetts.

Robert's boyhood was spent in an atmosphere characteristic of pioneer
life. He had scarcely passed his fifteenth year (Nevins claims in
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