Walking the Berkshires: Right Rangers, Wrong Fight

Viv and I passed this roadside history marker during our recent trip to the Lake George / Ticonderoga area. I knew right away what it was - the site of the famous Battle on Snowshoes in March, 1758 where Captain Robert Rogers and 184 elite rangers were practically annihilated in an ambush gone wrong. The French and Indian War is not my primary area of historical interest, but I've been fascinated with Rogers ever since reading Kenneth Roberts' Northwest Passage as a boy. My very first issue of American History Illustrated way back in December 1979 featured an engrossing and exceptionally well written article on The Battle on Snowshoes by Gary Zaboly, one of the foremost authorities on Rogers Rangers.

So I was thrilled to find this sign at the site of that famous fight: that is, until I got out to take a photograph. The inscription wasn't right. For one thing, this sign doesn't read like a memorial to a massacre in which 129 men, or 2/3 of the entire expedition, were casualties. The number of rangers listed on the sign is much lower, and the date is a year earlier than that fight in the snow, but I knew the location was right. I speculated that perhaps this marked some other engagement of Rogers Rangers, which after all scouted and fought across the region from Crown Point to Fort Edward extensively between 1755-1760. When we got home, I ran to my old stack of AHI magazines and soon found the Zaboly article. I was right that this was precisely the site of the Battle on Snowshoes in 1758. But evidently there was more than one battle by that name and the marker refers to an earlier ambush in the snow.

The first Battle on Snowshoes was fought on January 21, 1757 between Captain Rogers with 74 rangers and French forces from Fort Carillon that included about 90 soldiers from 4 French different regiments and nearly 90 Chippewa and Ottawa warriors under the remarkable Ensign Charles-Michel Mouet de Langlade who was in every way Rogers' equal in woodcraft.

Rogers had previously ambushed a group of French sleighs traveling down Lake Champlain between Fort Carillon at Ticonderoga and St. Frederick at Crown Point but only secured the lead vehicles while the remainder dashed back to spread the alarm. With seven prisoners, he redoubled his tracks and started back toward Lake George and safety, but the French were able to get ahead of him and the resulting fight cost the Rangers at least 19 killed or taken prisoner. The 1760 "Narrative of Ranger Private Thomas Brown - in which Rogers is referred to by his later rank of Major - describes the ambush and some of the horrors of the fight:

"The Major tho't it best to return to Fort William Henry in the same path we came, the snow being very deep; we march'd in an Indian file and kept the Prisoners in the rear, lest we should be attack'd. We proceeded in this order about a mile and a half, and as we were ascending a Hill, and the Centre of our men were at the top, The French, to the number of 400 besides 30 or 40 Indians, fired on us before we discovered them. The Major ordered us to advance. I receiv'd a wound from the enemy (the first shot they made on us) thro' the body, upon which I retir'd into the rear, to the prisoner I had taken on the lake, knock'd him on the head and killed him, lest he should escaper and give information to the enemy; and as I was going to place myself behind a large rock, there started up an indian from the other side; I threw myself backward into the snow and it being very deep, sunk so low that I broke my snowshoes (I had time to pull 'em off, but was obliged to let my shoes go with them). One indian threw his Tomahawk at me, and another was just upon seizing me; but I happily escaped and got into the centre of our men, and fix'd myself behind a large Pine, where I loaded and fired every opportunity; after I had discharged 6 or 7 times, there came a ball and cut off my gun just at the lock. About half an hour after I receiv'd a shot in my knee; I crawled again into the rear, and as I was turning about receiv'd a shot in my shoulder. The engagement held, as near as I could guess 5 1/2 hours, and as I learnt after I was taken, we killed more of the enemy than we were in number. By this time it grew dark and the firing ceased on both sides, and as we were so few the Major took the advantage of the night and escaped with his well men, without informing the wounded of his design, lest they should inform the enemy and they should pursue him before he had got out of their reach."

It is a wonder that Private Brown survived his ordeal - and other wounded prisoners were not so lucky, with Captain Spikeman of the Rangers scalped alive. Rogers and 54 men (six wounded) made it back to Fort William Henry. But did this first Battle on Snowshoes 1757 happen in the same spot as the more famous second Battle on Snowshoes in 1758 as the historical marker suggests?

I have since discovered that Bob Bearor has written a short but fascinating account of his research and recent archaeological work that he believes identifies the site of the former Battle on Snowshoes more than a mile away from the site of the the second. His site is on the other side of Bear Mountain in the valley where Trout Brook joins LaChute River. His 2000 book French and Indian War Battlesites: A Controversy describes artifacts he and colleagues found with metal detectors at that place that include hundreds of fired and dropped musket balls and various accouterments used by the French and British in this period, but most convincing are two pairs of ice creepers, 18th century version of crampons called grappins by the French: items unlikely to be taken on a summer campaign.

The historical marker that initially caught my interest might at a stretch be "in the vicinity" of the 1757 battle site, but it is almost exactly on the site of the final stages of the second battle in 1758 which it does not, in fact, commemorate. New York State does a marvelous job of memorializing roadside areas of historic interest, but in this case it would seem that a second marker is in order: two Battles on Snowshoes, two signs. One may one day need to be moved around the mountain to the East. The other is long overdue.