the French and Indian War put him in command of a company, known as
"Rogers' Rangers," and he participated in the Siege of Detroit against
Pontiac and the French. This experience of his must have fired Rogers
with the desire, after careful consideration of the condition of the
Indian, to put his special plea for the cause of the Red Man in some
permanent literary form, for "Ponteach" was published in 1766, after
Rogers had left America, had gone to London, and thence had taken
vessel for Algiers, where he fought under Dey.

By 1761, Rogers had so far advanced in worldly standing that he could
afford to turn his attention to family affairs. We find him visiting
Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where Elizabeth, daughter of the Reverend
Arthur Browne, lived. The two were married on June 30th of that year;
but evidently there was about Robert Rogers something his
father-in-law did not quite relish. For, in 1763, a dispute arose
between the two, because of Rogers' increasing dissipation. That they
did not reach, however, any immediate open rupture, may have been due
very largely to the fact that Rogers was becoming quite a land-owner
in New York and New Hampshire. It was not until March 4, 1778, after
Rogers had gone through many and varied experiences, not the least of
which was serving a term in the Debtors' Prison in England, that his
wife was granted, by the New Hampshire Legislature, a decree of
divorce. She thereupon married Captain John Poach.

Naturally, most of the interest attached to Rogers is historical, not
literary. His career in the French and Indian War, outlined by him in
his "Journal of the French and Indian War," which was published in
London in 1765; his activity in the Cherokee War in South Carolina;[2]
his association with William Bird, when he had an opportunity of
studying the methods of Indian guides; his political ambitions when he
returned to England in 1765--all of these are matters for the
historian, and have received adequate consideration by Francis Parkman
and other writers. During these activities, Rogers was not idle with
his pen. He kept his Journals, and they clearly reveal how much of a
ranger he was. After the fashion of the times, when he returned to
England, anxious to let his friends know of the conditions in America,
he not only published his Journals (1769), but also a concise account
of North America (1770). But there must have been something about
Rogers as a soldier of fortune that w