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'Northwest Passage' (Book I -- Rogers' Rangers) (1940) More at IMDb Pro »

As with most history, the real story is more fascinating, even more unbelievable than the Hollywood version.

Perhaps the best source for the historical facts is Burt Garfield Loescher's The History of Rogers' Rangers: Volume 4: The St. Francis Raid: http://www.amazon.com/History-Rogers-Rangers-Vol-Francis/dp/0788420771/sr=8-5/qid=1171423247/ref=sr_1_5/102-5980821-3930542?ie=UTF8&s=books Probably no one has done as much or gone as far to uncover the truth of this historic feat of arms against early New England's most feared enemy (at least, after the Pequots had been vanquished) the Abenaki tribe.

Another excellent book is John Cuneo's Robert Rogers of the Rangers.

A book of more recent vintage is Stephen Brumwell's White Devil: A True Story of War, Savagery, and Vengeance in Colonial America.

Several reasons, the most important of which was a dramatic diversion that the British Commander In Chief Jeffrey Amherst desired to draw French and Indian forces away from James Wolfe's force arrayed before Quebec.

The St. Francis Raid occurred in 1759, climatic year of the French and Indian War. Amherst had devised a three-pronged attack upon French Canada that had bogged down. Rogers' mission would cause the French to change their dispositions just as Amherst's main army would be on the move.

As Burt Loescher points out, the provincials had their own reasons for wanting to destroy St. Francis (which the Indians and French called Odanak).

The St. Francis Abenakis had become a byword for ferocious attacks on New England's frontier villages since at least the end of King Phillp's (Metacom's) War in 1676. The famous 1704 Deerfield Massacre was but one of the Abenaki raids for which New Englanders long swore vengeance. Even though Abenaki raiders descended upon colonists from a total of nine main French missionary towns in the Quebec-Montreal-Crown Point region, as Loescher points out.

As Rogers noted in his after-action report, his rangers found 600-700 scalps fluttering in the breeze at St. Francis -- which of course gives us no idea how many additional hundreds of English scalps hung from poles in the other eight Abenaki villages. Suffice it to say, the colonists had cause to hate St. Francis.

Timothy J. Todish annotated and Gary S. Zaboly illustrated a new edition of the Journals of Major Robert Rogers originally printed in 1769.

Todish in his introduction to the Journals recounts a number of other biographies and books about Rogers that are worth investigating.