will be very pleased to sign them. today i am very pleased to welcome james warren who is the author of "a kingdom strange: the brief and tragic history of the lost colony of roanoke". on my left john f. ross who is the author of "war on the run: the epic story of robert rogers and the conquest of america's first frontier". two will be going in alphabetical order. jim will start. he's going to be showing images on the stage and so john and i will vacate in a moment but first let me tell you that james is vice president of research and historical interpretation and o'neill director of the john d. rockefeller jr. library at the colonial williamsburg and nation. and a lecture at the college of william and mary. he's the author most recently before this book of the land as

god made corned account of the jamestown colony. he lives in our sister city in intellectual attainment, williamsburg, virginia. [laughter] now briefly, "a kingdom strange" is about one of the enduring mysteries of american history. in 1587 john white and hundred 17 men, women and children landed off the coast of north carolina on roanoke island hoping to establish a small settlement. ..

>> thank you, henry. henry pretty much summed up what i was going to say. [laughter] >> i'll keep my remarks fairly brief. it is nice to be back in charlottesville. i spent four very happy years of that monticello working in the international center of the jefferson studies. one of the problems about

working up that monticello is when you have to leave, as i did, it's all downhill from there. [laughter] >> but i couldn't have chosen other than charlottesville, i couldn't have chosen a nicer place to work than williamsburg. so i count myself quite fortunate. i am, as you may have gathered, and historian of early america. i've long been fascinated by this story of the lost colony. and i had the pleasure of doing some of my own research on the topic when i was putting together the book on jamestown. and i guess, you know, this was something of an epitome for me because i kind of assumed that we had the basic very straight. and provide a benefit scaffolding as to what the basic theory is, as to what happened to the lost colony, some of you

may know. but bear with me for just a moment. the idea is that when john white left roanoke island to return to england for the reinforcements, the colonists decided to leave, maybe in the winter, maybe in the spring. get my point are going. and headed north to the chesapeake bay, and settled either here at this location. you probably can't see it. this is lynnhaven. or possibly over here. this is meant to represent the elizabeth river system. this theory was put forward something like 35 years ago i the eminent authority on

roanoke, david quinn. and has been established there is, really, ever since. so pick up any textbook, pick up any scholarly account and you probably read the colonists went north to chesapeake bay. why? because when john white's colony left england in may of 1587, that's what they were meant to go. they weren't meant to go to roanoke. they were meant to go to the chesapeake bay. so i think when decided quite reasonably i suppose, that having been interrupted in their voyage and landed on roanoke island, ultimately, that would be the destination. that would be where they would go. so as i say, i started up with the assumption that that must be correct, a theory that's been

current for 35 years, got every bit of hacks behind it, a bit afraid behind it. i didn't really think of challenging that there is until i started some of the research of my own. but what i would like to introduce briefly this afternoon is that just about every path of the established view row know, of john white settlement, the loss column a., is incorrect. bit of an arrogant thing to say. [laughter] >> but i'm sticking to it. and i hope that the argument that is flushed out in the book will persuade you, too. so let me start with the first of both premises here. i've got three main things to run through. very briefly. the first will be why did john white settlers go to america in the first place? so that's another one.

number two is do we find out anything more about the english origins of the colonists? and number three will be what happened to them? where did they go. they did leave the island but where did they go? when i get to that point i'm going to invite anyone that doesn't want to know the ending -- [laughter] -- to leave the room temporarily, but do come back for john's remark. i don't often invite my audience to walk out. but yeah, i think you've been warned. i'm going to tell you what happens here. there's more about it in the book. the first premise than, each of the 118 settlers that signed up for the voyage in 1586, early 1587, was granted a princely sum, 500 acres of land, are

proportionally more if they were in famine. that's a huge amount of land by english standards. of course, it would be as it were, in america uncultivated. it would have to be hewn out of the land. i will call the wilderness. there were plenty of people around, native americans around it but it would have to be improved. but nevertheless, 500 acres is a large amount of land. i think it was that that impressed david quinn that the purpose of the colony was primarily agricultural. that this would be farming segment. it would be a settlement on producing the natural products that the land a 40. his instance, it seems to me, of

historians leading history backwards. that the ultimately the british empire in north america was founded on agriculture, either plantation societies and agriculture and staples of tobacco and in the west indies, sugar. or in new england of course various kinds of farming both kind of agricultural products. i don't believe that's true of the first phase of english settlement in america. and i'm talking about the first phase of that extends from around about the 1580s through to a roundabout 1612. was the english were looking for was the kind of success that the spanish had enjoyed in middle and south america. this map is, put a name to it,

1582. and what i want to draw your attention to is this strange is this here. that is not panama. this is the mid-atlantic region. years in new england. yours florida down here. and here's this day here. and here is the south sea coming in from the west. is not an overly common map, this one. [laughter] >> but it is, it is based on an earlier map, 1529. and this theory that there might be a passage to the south sea through the landmass in the mid atlantic region, had been around for a least half a century

before the sponsor of the roanoke colony. there was a more commonwealth place map and that might be here in sebastian munsters look, which again shows this isthmus here. this is the mid-atlantic region. is there a route through to the south sea, to the pacific? that's one thing we should look at. there a also looking for the northwest passage by the way. but here's another way through the landmass. the second thing that the english are looking for is gold or silver or copper. and this is an image from theodore, america 1590. in indians panning for gold in the appellations. so this is appellation mountains. it's actually we will see in a

moment a bit further south from the chesapeake or roanoke region. but it's a clear indication of the possibility of gold or silver. what's worse, kind of wonder what this is, his mountain streams coming out of the great rock here. and these are gold bearings, gold dust. or they are collecting, if you can sit down there but there's the gold dust down there. want you to remember the great rock and the mountain streams. this map is from 1655. it was painted by a settler called jack lemoine. and it dates to the foundation and one of the first european

settlements in north america by the french in 1564, 1565. it's a pretty good, pretty accurate map. i think you'll agree that, so florida here and in the coast through georgia, south carolina northward here. what i want to show here you can't see us there will am afraid. launches going to point to it up here. there is a great mountain range up here. pardon my latin, that's the best i can do, appalachian mountains. here's a great stream. up your is a notation that says gold, silver and copper. pretty clear.

in other words, what the attraction of that area is. and then just at the very top, almost edged off here, the screen, you can't really see it very well but actually that is a shoreline. now, is that a great lake inland? or is that the sure of the south sea? this is 1565, jack lemoine. this is more familiar, and i don't have any gold bearing rocks or passage to show you in this image. but this is john white illustration of the roanoke area. so we can see his roanoke island in the outer banks. it's very accurate even if you put it on a modern map and you will find it's pretty accurate. here is chesapeake up here

following that engraving, up there. you also see this a tribute to 1585. there's no chance it was painted in 1585. for very good reason. so this was actually put together by john white probably in the summer of 1586. and here is the river. and this is the roanoke river. now, how does this work out? well, this is by john white. it is the summer of 1586. so here it is very familiar. it is waterskiing here and so on

but you can just see here, here is roanoke island and so on on the outer banks. here is the roanoke river. it's a bit tricky to see it, but i think there's enough there to show it is heading south and west. that's not the course of the roanoke river, if you know. be aware of that. but it is according to this map. what's going on with this? this is a map that was put together by john white with jack lemoine, from 20 years earlier. jack lemoine being a good protestant left france. he survived the massacre at fort caroline. the french were wiped out by the spanish in 1565, but jack lemoine and managed to escape and get back to france. we don't know exactly what happened to him in france

subsequent, subsequent to his return, but he probably left france somewhere in the '70s and settled in london, certainly by the early 1580. he was recruited by sir walter raleigh in 1582 or 1583. he worked with john white, worked together to produce this map. why would they do that? well, here's those gold bearing rocks from jack lemoine's earlier map right here. and here, see this very faint outline right on the edge of the map. always seems to be on the edge of the map. and here it is. it is either a great lake, england see, or perhaps the south sea. i think it was a way by which

raleigh wanted to visualize the connection between these regions, that he wanted to understand that you have the chesapeake up here, the sound here, here is roanoke, here and here, down interior is the south sea and these gold bearing rocks. no english ship is going to sail down the coast down here and try and access the river to the passage. for two reasons, one, the current are against you, and the second reason is you've got a powerful spanish garrison at san agustin, 1565 and you don't want to run into warships down there. so it is a possibility. that's all i'm going to say it is, but here is raleigh trying

to visualize the connections between these reasons -- regions between florida, gold bearing rocks and the roanoke area and then the chesapeake bay. and there's one, i think, clue that confirms this. in the spring of 1586, an expedition led by a man, he took 40 englishmen up the roanoke river. this was an earlier colony on roanoke island, 1585-1586. routh led these 14 englishmen of the roanoke river, because they had heard rumors from local indians of a great rock, england, where waters spring out of the rock. there was a sea nearby, and there were mines and the place

that was the name the indians gave it. not only that, there was a mysterious yellow metal that the indians called wax it off. i can't vouch for the pronunciation, which could be copper. they refer to copper but it is soft and yellow. so it could be gold. so somewhere up the roanoke river, 20 days beyond the last settlement of local indians they came across, there was a fabulous providence where the mines were and where there was this great rock and where there was salt water. could that be -- could that be what jack lemoine found in the appalachians? is a possible that they were one

and the same, or with a different place? but either way, where you want to be if your english is not on the coast but in the interior, in the mountains, where it you're going to find the pearl and gold and the passage to the south sea. now, so what i'm suggesting is this, the 1587 colony, john white's colony, was not primarily agricultural settlement. two major purposes, one, raleigh was a sponsor of the privateering. in the colony he founded in north america would be a privateering base. chesapeake bay would be a good location for a privateering base your to plunder spanish shipping. two, he is looking to sell off the colony from which english could explore england to find

the root to the south sea. robbie plays with big stakes. is not going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in current not you on a settlement that's producing sassafras and silk grass. he will take it there people are growing products, people are self-sufficient and that's fine. but that's not the primary reason for this colony. he wants to be another cortez. he is looking for a great breakthrough in north america. he is thinking big. he wants to establish an english america that is a counterpart of this spanish possessions in middle america, and to the south. and, of course, in this period, it is pain that is the world greatest power.

and not only that, but a catholic power. so after all that, here's a mid-16th century map of london. and i want to introduce another possible reason for the colonists departing and joining white's expedition. here's the cathedral, old saint paul's. and here is london. this is where john white lived. i did quite a lot of research on the origins of the lost colonists, because i rather dislike descriptions of people on the block here so i have this notion that lost colonists were kind of joined at the hip and would go everywhere together. because you couldn't distinguish one person from another. this is the first evidence that

i'm aware of where we been able to trace the parish origins of at least some of the lost colonists, those from london. the majority of lost colonists maybe 75, 80% were from london. and these are the particular. is where groups were from. there were two main ones. here is where raleigh lived. but a whole number of these here in the city of london is the old wall, here's a london bridge. whole number of those parishes have a link. that doesn't the loss column is more, but there's circumstantial some of them may have had reformist tendencies. so perhaps another reason why some of the individuals was informed for religious purposes.

never english. insta go to the new world. okay, so here's a boring. i think i've got five minutes. okay. so the warning is the next five minutes i'm going to tell you what happened to them. one thing that's always puzzled me about the theory that they went to the chesapeake bay is, if that was the case, why did john white, when he returns to america, why did he go to roanoke island? why didn't he go to the chesapeake bay? there were two settlements i've mentioned there. it seems to me if they were thinking of going up to the chesapeake bay, would they have told john white that before he left the island in august of 1587? and therefore, when john white recruited extra supplies and settlers, wouldn't he go

straight to chesapeake rather than going back to roanoke island? why did he go back there? so this is what i think happened. he lives in august, and the settlers have already decided that they will leave the island, even before john white goes. the settlers had decided to leave the island. they were frightened that they might be found by the spanish, and they were anxious about being hacked by local people, the indians were hostile to them. and they were running out of supplies. apart from that they were fine. [laughter] >> by the those principal reasons, i find them to leave the island. and the only recorded clue as to where they went, is this phrase

50 miles into the main. 50 miles into the main. it's roughly 60 miles from there to there. straight, kind of looks north on this map, but it is west. straight up to the little village towns up here at the confluence of the roanoke. so i think what happened, it kind of went like this. john what you they were going to move inland before he left. they were quite certain and he wasn't quite certain where exactly they would settle in the and that it would be up here somewhere, but he didn't know right where it would be. so they told him before he left that they would leave the small garrison here on roanoke, that he should return him and that small garrison who is still being touched with the main

group inland would then be able to direct him to the main group that left the island. so that's why he returns. but what he doesn't know is it's going to take him three years, not six months to get back to he has anticipated he will be back by the late spring or summer of 1588. he did get back until august of 1590. then he finds -- you go to roanoke island and he finds this time, everyone knows what it says. the island, you just see part of it here. this island down here. about 50 miles to the south. friend the indians. so he is thinking the lost colonists are safe. so what happened is that the colonists went inland to settle up here, not so chesapeake bay but up here. a small group go to grow down

island here to wait for john white to return. and then they will direct him up into the interior so he can pick up the main group. and that that point the whole group with reinforcements were received to the chesapeake bay. late but nevertheless still as a group of people. but, of course, he never finds them. he never makes contact with them. when he returned to roanoke he sees the sign, croatoan but he never gets there. the hurricane forces of the coast and history forced to return to england and he never gets back. at that point, these people living up here settle in with the indians. and there is another group that settles up here on the roanoke. how do i know this? because of this. this is a 1608 map that shows

the locations of survivors of the lost colony. well-known. it is not -- i can't claim to discover this. i wish i had, but i think it is -- its significance has been overlooked that i won't decided for it because there's not enough time, but i can assure you this version of it, which is a bit clear. except for the fact i've got it oriented the wrong way. which is to say this is south and this is north. [laughter] >> so here's james dubik wasn't going to make it that easy for you. this is jamestown, and there are places where the survivors of the last colony who went inland are still living. . .

their descendants are discover subsequently in the early 18th century and then there were survivors and land. it's hard to know how many. there could have this view as a half-dozen or maybe as many as two or three dozen still living in the interior and that is where. and so we have a for a major settlements, croatan, pac iraq and nick and have located that,

lee is a town some. croatan is out of quinn but the towns inland, the most powerful indian group in north carolina at this time. there were also hostile so they're all sorts of possibilities as to what was going on there but this is where they were and transcribed off of that map. and that's what i think happened to them. in there are some implications to all this. it's not really a matter of a so they didn't go north, they went west. their significance to what has happened here, but i will reserve that for questions and i'd like to thank you very much for your patience. thank you.

[applause] >> thank you very much, jim. i am looking forward to the question and answers so that we can continue with that. on my left is john ross who is the executive editor of american heritage magazine in invention and technology magazine and he was formerly a senior editor of smithsonian magazine. and he has had a number of very interesting assignments, he has chased scorpions in baja, he has dived 300 feet under water in the caucus in his dog sled with the inuit and cree land among other things. he has published more than 200 articles, spoken in many different places in his previous book the polar bear strategy: reflections on a risk in modern life. and we were talking about this before the events and he made in

his remarks pull some of those ideas into this discussion -- not spencer tracy. [laughter] his new book war on the run -- "war on the run: the epic story of robert rogers and the conquest of america's first frontier". in, of course, it caught my interest because there is a big fan of the spencer tracy movie when i was younger. robert rogers is held as the father today's elite special forces. he was not only a wilderness where the north america's first or the playwright and authentic celebrity and john has reconstructed his life and exploits in this book. he puts together a group of hand-picked soldiers chosen for their backwoods setting and encourage insurance and i find remarkable for campaigns during the french and indian war. i have a series of questions to ask john to guide us through the

book. starting off who is rob rogers and why should we be interested in him today. >> thank you henry and i want to make one quick aside and never miss an opportunity to flag our magazine. this is american heritage, we're celebrating our 60th anniversary which you'll remember this is susan '70s when it was hard back and white and without it. we brought back to life a couple years ago and a happy to say in this issue serendipitously we have an excerpt from jim's book so get this but still buy his book. [laughter] you may be wondering why with some of the reporting have done and why came to this fellow rosburg rodgers and this time, with henry and i talking about this a little bit, robert rogers was an extraordinary human being

who was a scots irish descendants who grew up on a then frontier which was in new hampshire. what interested me about him was many things. it's not been a major biography of him in years and he ran onto right, he wrote it's fairly well known that t plus innovated, rode down, came up with the whole idea of special operations, special operations in combat but what people haven't really worked in to understand who this guy was un on to write two books and wrote a play. the sky grew up on the frontier. there are two books owned by thomas jefferson parts of the first books in the library of congress. and so i began two really think from a risk perspective and a whole lot about this man, his

writing, his sister in your travels at that point he had been iran and more of the territories down in north carolina and our less certainly up north. and had written about it in ways and explored in ways. what i really work with on this book is two really talk about what life was like right then and and what this man did in addition to these extraordinary kind of battles in all of that during the french and indian war. as the french were fighting to see who was going to be the major player in north america. but really come to the whole idea that this fellow and his writings and what he did it really started to open up the continent in new ways. this was as jim said it was not a wilderness. there were many people living

there, many of whom died with the introduction of european diseases. but nonetheless it was not something that was in any way shape or form categorize or understood so if you think about all the roads and the highway signs we have a satellite maps and the paintings by landscape painters, none of that was there. forget the photographs in your gps. this was to the european mind terra incognita. in the in the late 18th century the colonists which had been clinging for hundred 50 years to adjust it. edges of the continent like norway continued to look generally back to the mother country redounds out to the sugar islands. and but i argue in this book it

took some very interesting character such as robert rogers to really interpret and understand the land and write about and communicate that. so the of wilderness became something that was beneficial could be walked in and lived in it and understood and it was not just peril. the long answer? i've always been interested in that french-indian war time, it was under study it and really sets the tables stage so much for what would come on and the revolution and later. is such an interesting time because there is such a clash of culture. in indian culture, french, british colonial culture so in that there is an incredible

turning and the motion and movement that began to coalesce into what recall america become the not too far later. >> is there an incident you can describe where rogers character really begins to emerge and come into flour? >> good question. there are a number. one comes to mind is the battle on it snowshoes and this was in 1758. really was the kind of coming to age of this small unit fighting group and traditionally the french and the british during the winter had just pulled up in their respective courts and nobody really came out because the winters were very bad and there was a lot of support, there was an cortex and all kinds of one of things like that. robert rogers changed all that

anyone's fault -- one fell swoop and went out to with bands of 120 men, snowshoes often in many feet of snow, they went out to end harassed some of the food trends coming in, attacked for its, lured people and there's a very famous battlefield where he came -- his group ran out into another group that came out because they found out there was a terrible battle that took place in you have to remember it was the days of black powder and these very precaution of balls that didn't travel very fast but could do terrible harm at yahoo! close range betook probably half a minute to loaded. so as people close to their role is looking. the had 20 to 30 seconds before the person can look again, how

fast and some person run so than the whole battle who was brought with a long knife and tomahawks and very ugly as you can imagine. robert rogers had -- he was getting arrested by a very formidable crew of indian warriors, french indian warriors and some french partisan fighters and he then institutes two hours away today's walk away from any kind of help and the french, of course, maybe 10 miles from the very large fortas so they were close to getting some help. and he did what he had written in these 28 rules of conduct about how to fight a war. they all dissipated to meet up at one point that they had agreed on before.

the rule was if they couldn't hold a there there would dissipate again and moved back to a second and then a third place so that a small and very active how offensive team win out in the enemy territory could stave off being annihilated. so rogers managed to pull his group back and this was on the shores of lake george. the night was falling and the key word a bunch of his followers of his pursuers away from a lot of his wounded indian men and there is a price on his head at that point. a climb that this from subsequent mccaul of rogers rock, a great escalated dome of granite that this a hundred feet in lake george. he came to the top of this and

this whole band of indians were working right after hamid and on the data to the top and it was a beautiful who do a precipitous they saw him walking on the ice below. just casually walking on the ice below. it can founded them and led to this incredible superstition of rogers having some kind of incredible supernatural spirits. and when he had done people say you can't jump off and even robert rogers, but they found how he could have gone down about what was interesting about that which was a fairly superhuman feats it was how he did and then he casually walked away and how he was beginning to manipulate psychological kind of a, a psychology against his enemies so we are seeing here a really early kind of example of how special operations they can move very fast and then the

surprise their enemy. the small group of men with the final analysis was large armies that one and pushed and pulled so he didn't win the war but what he began to do was to change a whole tenure of the war and really make the french and indians as well so concerned when they stepped out to the thought he was when to be there that he really put a crack in his enemies veneer. that's kind of an interesting example of this new form of warfare. >> can you sketch for us quickly geographically the theater of his operations? where was he acted during the french-indian war? >> so there weren't as we know a lot of rope so what became the points of major conflict and

forts were the waterways and the french, of course, you came up to the north on that st. francis there was -- you can look at new york eight is like george and lake champlain. and then in the richelieu river and in between those and a couple porridge is between those you can move all the way up from your call the way up to a french territory. so fort ticonderoga which started office for carry-on was right between lake george and lake champlain. so there for ford said all along the way and that the french and the british contested for those ford's because whoever owned that the water highway is could in essence in short order of the french if they owned it could sell right into new york city and as is in the london and with

the forces could have ported to so that was the fight between them. that became a seminal place in the french and indian war to really -- >> you mentioned a minute ago the time it takes to reload and a muzzle loading rifle, one of the things images we have all grown up with boustany history is the backwoods sharpshooter. t you have any notion, how good were the sharpshooters? is this just a myth or were these people skilled at what they did? >> they are very skilled much of that came especially the groups of men that rogers gathered from a long hunting so they got a lot of practice. pater was at a premium so you had to make a shot count. beverages beginning to introduce rifle's said that changed everything so these guys had to

be ready to shoot there was a wonderful thing i came across in the average we move to cartridges that she muzzleloader but they had it so that they were adapted that they could put some balk and bawl come up for some powder and put the box and all and then to its. so they had ever done all sorts of details about that they adjusted their muscle and for shorter combat spread so it wasn't actually all the time. they were thinking about two or 300 yards and when it came down to in a very thick woods was accuracy at fairly short order. so sometimes depending on what they put in their in their shot. so it was all kinds and and keeping you're powder dry so that all kind of technology

beginning to develop so they borrow some french to cover for the muskett to work in innovative ways with their powder horns and all that too keep things drawn. >> you mentioned in the book that modern-day rangers are still at trained in throwing tomahawk. >> that was great fun. and so i went down to fort benning which is the launching point for rangers today to afghanistan and iraq and they have the best ranger competition. it's a pretty grueling two and half day event were to rangers manager teams compete through a series of things. all lines obstacle courses and the whole thing and then get graded on their timing and all that to in something like 50 percent don't finish, not because they don't want to but because they break a leg or something. [laughter]

these are tough guys. anyway, one of the things that have to put certain things certain machine guns back together blindfolded it is due a tomahawk throw and this was in the woods. this is a not a robber rogers but i was interested to down and see because it's not always it was an easy for these guys to throw a tomahawk. is it more like a dart, throwing darts have, but it was interesting to see these guys because the key u.s. and they began two also the length of your forearm and how the axis but is very interesting to see these guys through the real good ones you can tell backing up. backing up to adjust to see how in calculating the revolutions

the tomahawk would take before it would hit something but it was great fun to see that and these guys still everybody reads engagement bob made famous in them spencer tracy movie but bastardize to sound like a the first rule is still forgets nothing. [laughter] robert rogers even though he grew up in the backwoods new hampshire would have been heartened by that, don't forget anything. but a very interesting basic rule the go from there to really the first thing you guys remember and in the rear equipment and double check that. the use or asked by a 25 ahead of the british commander in north america they were getting been terribly by the british and the indians, the french and

indians. so large shirley asked this 25 year-old american and there was not a lot of love between the british military which did the stairway that a lot of the colonial soldiers and asked and said what can we do about this. it's an extraordinary thing so robert rogers wrote down 20 rules. they survive to this day, there are laminated and given out to some grunt who went into vietnam. you can read them to this day and still make sense. it's remarkable the conditions and what he said the size from indiana, tactics and strategies he had seen the long hunter and that british kind of military traditions and he put into something and you really look at what i suggest in this book there were military manuals with they belong to the upper crust and spent a great deal of time

and heroes 20 roles that you could in normal joke to remember could read and remember and there were a little many stories so if you got caught in the situation here's what to do but they're very simple. so simple that if you go out and you are in danger and not seeing things except summit tried to kill you. here the men are bringing it had nothing to do with class ranking. it was in society. this really incredible form of democracy in play and the rules were really kind of an interesting reflection of that. that led to no love with the british forces at that point that they desperately needed him at that point and that would come back to haunt him later which is the later part of the

story. what you really see is this emerging special operations lowest kind of still can be heard is about a group dynamics and an esprit de corps. he began to put together and it's a great story in. >> to put together a rich and textured narrative which means we think about the sources. what kind of primary sources did you have to work with? >> well, as jim and you know that's great fun of writing this history is coming across the river primary source material and a lot of the french and indian war has not been looked at but i did everything from north rich material in the journals of privates who would jot things down in letters. i often would spend a lot of time with them sounding them out

because this is not king's english and is often phonetics so i would have to do -- to translate that through some of the slaying may reduce was a bit of a challenge but if i spat -- and i sat with it and tried it out, it was really very rich and what they said and did and didn't say. i found it really wonderful map and private collections not published before that robert rogers, a map of the st. francis reagan and was able to work with that two really shed some light on that is urinary story. he was really the first newspaper hero. it's so interesting to hear that during the french-indian war clearly the british call in this were concerned about what was going to happen to their livelihood and to their lives and everything. during the french-indian war the

number of newspapers and the british colonies -- and they needed somebody to write about, they needed heroes and he was a tailor-made man to do that. so this guy in the british colonies was no more than anybody. they were talking about this guy come his exploits, so was as well known as ben franklin or any number of people in part due to this whole growth of newspapers so there's rich material in that. there's a rich material in the the maps and when i couldn't find -- and then, of course, this is again missionary for a military man like this. he wrote an extraordinary series of journalists on his activities so that was really the basic point that i went into with a lot of good staff. >> you mentioned ben franklin and other famous figures the

famous figure makes an appearance in the book, george washington. he had an encounter with rogers. could you talk about that a bit? >> it's a very dramatic moment. you have to think about these two men, both six atoll, they are a year separated in age, and this is during just as the revolution is opening up rogers has been in london for a while and needless to say the whole territory in the the british colonies has changed virtually overnight. people whether they are tory or rebels, there's a lot of the all sorts of rumors plots against washington's life. robert rogers comes back to -- he comes back and has a realize how much the ground has swelled. he still thinking his whole imperialists idea robert rogers is what are you guys are doing about, we need to move west,

think about all the incredible things we did and he thought the revolution might blow over in essence. of stopper squabbling, deal with it. we have bigger fish to fry. so pretty soon robert rogers, of course, to as i mentioned with the newspapers and all this is a great hero, he had this incredible -- he was being cited and people were writing about that he dressed up as an indian and had 200 miles to the north started getting people together to fight against the rebels and he was here and there were rumors started flying of this colorful guy. and washington as he is coming to the continental congress, rogers offer services, he's thrown in jail by george washington. as a spy. rogers is not very happy about that as you can imagine it so washington comes to me tim. >> 1775? >> yes and comes to meet him and have a huge argument and robert

rogers gets thrown back into jail on this. what is so interesting is about there are two americas, just standing nose to nose looking at each other. here is this scrap the scots irish populist tumbleweed looking at who would become the founder of our nation, was a tidewater gentlemen of means, and you begin to see some interesting things which we all know that today about some of this occurrence of american history and here it was with these two men. why we don't know a lot about robert rogers in general was because of that and washington. again, i don't plan washington. he was looking around and try to see and this guy, robert rogers was charismatic. he could have gone over the