Insurgents, Raiders, and Bandits by John Arquilla Read Free Book Online Page A

their divine origins, these visions were of changes that most Indians, familiar with the disruptive, enervating effects of liquor, could accept, at least for a while, and their will to fight was only reinforced by ham-fisted British negotiating tactics. Soon the tribes were on the attack in many places. Every British outpost west of Detroit, all the way to Green Bay on the western shore of Lake Michigan, fell to the Indians. Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Niagara were in effect besieged as Amherst’s road network was cut in countless places by raiding parties. In short, Pontiac conducted the very sort of campaign that Rogers had envisioned from the outset of the French and Indian War—coordinated, protracted, widespread raiding by small bands of highly mobile fighters.
    Faced with these reverses and an almost entirely irregular enemy campaign, Amherst had to perform a kind of strategic triage. He focused on the idea of helping his three major forts withstand Indian sieges, and wrote to one of his subordinates about the need to employ any and all means at hand, including allowing blankets that had been used by smallpox victims to fall into enemy hands. In addition to waging a primitive form of biological warfare, Amherst also called for extreme brutality, including mass executions of warriors and their families. 15 But at this point in the war he had little ability to defeat the Indians in battle. The best he could hope for was to send relief columns and convoys to his besieged forces. Robert Rogers and his rangers joined one such force, heading off to Detroit in the fall of 1763. Unfortunately the British commander of the expedition, James Dalyell, a man of high birth but of low capabilities, disregarded Rogers’s advice and sent his massed force out to “hunt down” the Indians. The result was a predictable disaster. The British commander was killed and decapitated, and his head shown around triumphantly. Rogers fought heroically and fell back into Detroit with the other survivors of the rescue column. The fort held until further relief, under more prudent command, arrived.
    Soon the British began to restore the equilibrium in the irregular fighting and were able to bring Pontiac to the peace table with offers of a renewed flow of goods and the implicit threat to unleash upon his people and his allies a terrorist swarm of Shawnees who were not members of the pan-Indian movement. Pontiac agreed to treaty terms. But the promised goods soon stopped coming, and the great chief was murdered by a disgruntled warrior from his own tribe. Without his vision and leadership, the Indians never again achieved meaningful levels of unity.
    For his part, Rogers went to Britain to request permission to conduct explorations aimed at finding a route to the Pacific—the fabled Northwest Passage. His petition was denied, but he was given a command in the Great Lakes region that he used as a jumping-off point for extensive forays, including some that extended far beyond Crown territory. His detractors—and they were many—helped raise a charge of treason against him, which he successfully defended.
    This experience seems to have soured him on British rule, and at the outset of the Revolution in 1775 Rogers sought service with the rebels. Given both his character flaws and his long service to the Crown, many among the revolutionaries worried he might be a British spy. Those suspicious of him included even George Washington who, in a letter to Congress, gave voice to his concerns about the loyalty of the great ranger. Although Washington made no direct charge, he referred quite insinuatingly to “the Major’s reputation, and his being a half-pay officer.” 16 This was enough for Rogers to be blackballed by the rebels, and he soon shifted his support back to George III.
    Rogers quickly helped form and command units of “the King’s American rangers,” who fought with considerable skill and a desperate fury across much of the same ground