Forgotten War

Forgotten War is a nationally distributed PBS produced documentary that has reached millions of viewers throughout the United States and Canada. This program tells the story of the conflict in a way it’s never been told before; introducing viewers to fresh and diverse voices.

About

Over 250 years ago an epic struggle for the fate of North America played out right here in our own backyards, we call it the French and Indian War. For five years, from 1755 to 1760, the battles raged at Lake George, Crown Point, Fort Ticonderoga, and Quebec as France, Britain and the native peoples of North America fought to decide who would control the crucial highway of rivers and lakes between New York and the city of Montreal. We follow the fate of the Abenaki people one of the most influential Indian nations in early American history; and we examine the realities behind the myth of Robert Rogers and his legendary Rangers the frontier partisans who gained heroic status in this brutal war.

Multi-Media Educational Documentary

Often overshadowed by the American Revolution, the epic struggle known in the United States as the French and Indian War (1755-1760), determined which great European empire would control North America. The rivalry between the French and British for this vast continent had been simmering for a century when war finally erupted in western Pennsylvania, then spread to Europe and the rest of the world, in a global contest called the Seven Years War.

But it was the crucial battles for domination of the waterways of northeastern New York, Vermont and southern Quebec that would determine who would control the New World.

The British and their colonial militias had the advantage of numbers, while the French had a more important edge: the support of the Indian nations in the region, including the powerful Abenakis. However, there was one man on the British side who understood how to wage war the way the Indians did, Robert Rogers created a new type of warrior and new rules of warfare. Considered the father of the Special Forces, Rogers established the Rangers, an elite corps of exceptional woodsmen who could fight as well and as fiercely as the native peoples they opposed. A celebrity in his own time, Rogers was considered a hero by the colonials, an upstart by the British, and the “White Devil” his Indian enemies. The story of Robert Rogers and his Rangers brings to life the passion, the brutality and the violence of the fight for North America.

With the help of historians from Europe, Canada, and the United States, as well as the Abenaki and Iroquois nations, Mountain Lake PBS will tell many powerful stories that make this war so fascinating:

The massacre at Fort William Henry
The battles of Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point
The tragic expulsion of the Acadians
The fall of Quebec and Montreal
The brutal destruction of the Abenakis at Saint Francis by Rogers’ Rangers
The brilliant Iroquois diplomacy of Sir William Johnson that helped turn the war

Forgotten War allows viewers to see that the issues of racism, terrorism, militarism, and colonialism that fed this long ago conflict still strongly resonate years later.