White Devil: A True Story of War, Savagery, and Vengeance in Colonial America

335 pp. In America's first war, known as the French and Indian War, France and England-both in unholy alliance with warring Native American tribes-battled each other in a series of bloody conflicts and terrifying attacks on colonial settlements. No more brutal raid was carried out than the massacre of the settlers at Fort William Henry-an atrocity memorably depicted in James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans. Following the raid, Major Robert Rogers and his famous band of "Rangers" marched north into French territory to exact retribution, where they ruthlessly attacked a peaceful village of the Abenaki Indians, massacring its people with a frightening vengeance.