'Northwest Passage' (Book I -- Rogers' Rangers)
Tags: tragedy, revenge, cult, murder, violence

Plot synopsis:
=== Book 1 ===
Langdon Towne is a young Congregationalist resident of Kittery, Maine, in love with Elizabeth Browne, the youngest daughter of Anglican minister Rev. Arthur Browne of nearby Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Towne wants to become an artist, a goal which he has kept secret from even Elizabeth. He is admitted to Harvard College, but an ill-timed visit from his friends Saved from Captivity ('Cap') Huff and Hunking ('Hunk') Marriner results in his expulsion in 1759, although it does allow him to meet the young artist John Singleton Copley. Upon his return to Portsmouth, he incautiously insults Benning Wentworth, the governor of the Province of New Hampshire, and he and Hunk flee arrest and head to Crown Point to join the volunteers fighting the French and Indian War.
On their way, they meet a sergeant named McNott, who is a member of Rogers' Rangers. Both Towne and Hunk decide to join Rogers' Rangers themselves. After arriving at Crown Point, Towne impresses Major Robert Rogers with a discussion about the Northwest Passage and is chosen as one of Rogers' aides. Setting out with a force of Rangers, Stockbridge Indians and Mohawk Indians, the troops are not told their destination. The Mohawks, who are closely allied with Sir William Johnson, are jealous of Rogers' preference for the Stockbridge Indians and decide to leave. Hunk and McNott, among others, are critically injured when the Mohawks detonate gunpowder after failing to steal it and have to be left behind. The rest of the Rangers are then informed that their destination is the Abenaki town of Saint Francis, a center for hostile native raiding parties into New England. In a predawn attack, the Rangers annihilate the town and kill about a quarter of the population. However, to prevent capture, the Rangers choose to return across Quebec and northern Vermont, through the forests along the eastern shore of Lake Memphremagog. The harrowing journey creates dissension, and some Rangers who choose to separate from the main body are massacred by pursuing French and Indian troops.
The starving troops eventually make it safely to the planned meeting point, Fort Wentworth on the Connecticut River, where reinforcements and supplies were supposed to be waiting for them. However, the reinforcements withdrew with the food shortly before their arrival, apparently afraid that Rogers' men were enemy troops. A group of four men, including Rogers and Towne, make the arduous raft trip down the Connecticut to the Fort at Number 4 to get food for the rest of the company. They barely make it, but they succeed in saving the company. As a result, Towne is promoted to ensign, and he returns to Portsmouth a hero, just in time to witness Hunk's death from his wounds. Towne now openly works at painting, and Copley helps get him a small commission and points him toward a trip to England to study art. Towne, however, wants to stay in Portsmouth, paint natives and the West, and marry Elizabeth. When Rogers comes to town in the summer of 1761, he greets Towne as a long-lost friend . . . and asks Towne to be his best man, as he has proposed to Elizabeth, whom he met through fellow Mason Rev. Browne, and she has accepted. Instead, a crushed Towne tells Rogers that he is going to England, as Copley had urged.
=== Book 2 ===
In London, Towne learns that no one can achieve success except through "preferment", usually through a sponsor. His search for sponsorship leads him to Benjamin Franklin, who arranges for him to get a commission for a panel of Jeffrey Amherst at Vauxhall Gardens that brings him other work, more than enough to prevent him from having to return home broke. In early 1765, Towne, now 26, finds out that Rogers (minus Elizabeth) has arrived in London. With Rogers' help, Towne gets a major commission from a wealthy nobleman to paint a series of pictures of the Saint Francis raid. Rogers has decided to mount an expedition to find the Northwest Passage and has come to England both to collect his back pay and to win appointment as the royal governor of Fort Michilimackinac, the farthest west of the British forts on the Great Lakes, and he offers to include Towne in the expedition.
Rogers has a personal secretary named Natty Potter, who helps him write two books and a play while in London. Potter recruits Towne to find his daughter Ann. Towne finds that Ann, now about 14, was left nine years ago with a family that trained children to act as crippled beggars, and he ends up paying £15 to take her away from there. To his surprise, Towne learns that Potter only wanted to blackmail Ann's mother, a member of a wealthy family with whom he'd had a Fleet Marriage, and is unwilling to provide for Ann (or even to reimburse Towne) after the blackmail is paid, so Ann ends up as Towne's responsibility. Ann proves to be a gifted mimic and quickly picks up "proper" behavior from the tutor Towne hires for her.
With the help of Charles Townshend, Rogers is appointed governor of Michilimackinac over the objections of General Thomas Gage and Sir William Johnson, who had monopolized trade with the natives. When Towne finishes his series of paintings, he and Ann return with Rogers and Potter to Portsmouth in 1766. Rogers has arranged for several of his former Rangers to join the journey, including McNott (who lost a leg from the gunpowder explosion), Jonathan Carver, and James Tute; Elizabeth, Potter and Ann also accompany the group to Michilimackinac. Rogers expects to receive orders that permit him to appoint a deputy governor so that he can lead the search for the Northwest Passage himself, but such orders are not included with the authorization for the expedition, so the group leaves without Rogers (or Elizabeth, Potter and Ann), with Tute and a trader named Stanley Goddard in command.
Because Towne has paid his own way to join the expedition, he is not under Tute's command, and he and McNott winter separately among the Yankton Dakota. In the spring, when they reunite with Tute, Goddard and Carver, they find that the rest of the group is out of supplies. Towne and McNott then learn that the other three have used their supplies to purchase a large parcel of land from the Dakota (which the Yankton Dakota inform McNott that the Dakota do not actually own, because it is contested by the Chippewa) and have abandoned their mission. McNott and Towne travel up the Missouri River on the route to the Northwest Passage without them, but a serious injury to McNott forces them to head back to Michilimackinac. When they arrive, in the spring of 1768, they learn that Charles Townshend has died, that Rogers has been arrested by Gage and Johnson for exceeding his authority, and that Ann has returned to England after Rogers tried to take improper liberties with her.
When the ice on the Great Lakes breaks, Towne, who realizes that he has fallen in love with Ann, returns to England himself, where he finds and marries Ann, who has just opened a one-woman play about life on the frontier. She has taken some of his sketches to a royal society that commissions him to paint a series of pictures based on native mythology. Rogers later returns to England after being acquitted at court-martial but is ill from his imprisonment and is soon placed in debtors' prison. At the end, Towne and Ann decide to return to America and side with the American Revolution, although they know Rogers has sided with the British.

Review: It recounts Major Robert Rogers' 1759 raid on St. Francis, an Abenaki village, during the French and Indian War. As Rogers, Spencer Tracy gives a powerhouse performance, King Vidor delivers the directorial goods, and the storyline, itself, is very exciting.
This time the movie (which is not so well done) occurs during The Seminole Indian Wars (1835–1842), and the initial objective is an old Spanish fort, lying deep within the Everglades.In conclusion, I'm not shocked that Hollywood recycled Roberts' plot without attribution.
Based on the Kenneth Roberts novel of the same name, Northwest Passage covers "Part I - Roger's Rangers" of that epic work.
Set in Colonial American during the French and Indian Wars, it recalls the true exploits of a group of Rangers sent up into the French-Canadian woods to wipe-out a village of enemy-aiding warriors.....
The scope of this movie has always impressed me, from the coziness of the firelight of a Studley's Tavern, the richness of The Reverend Brown's palor, the solid construction of Crown Point, and the beauty of the forest.The Cast is top-notch headed by Spencer Tracy as Major Rogers.
Probably his biggest seller was Northwest Passage a fictionalization of the exploits of Roger's Rangers during the French and Indian War.His books sold well at the time and we have to remember that in viewing Northwest Passage we are seeing a fictional story rather than the real story of Roger's Rangers.
At that we are only seeing part of that book, nothing at all about a search for a land route across North America.The historical significance of the Rangers is that Robert Rogers had an idea that one should be living and thinking like the American Indian in order to fight him.
It's all done in a few minutes without dialog and its own of Spencer Tracy's greatest film moments.Northwest Passage will not find too much favor with a lot of today's audience.
It begins on Potmouth New Hampshire in 1759...¨ This Technicolor MGM classical describing the troop of Rogers' Rangers battling the hostile Indians and wilderness.
The historical novel Northwest Passage (1937), by American author Kenneth Roberts, portrayed the events of Rogers' Rangers' raid on the Abenaki town of St. Francis.
The main cast ans secondary support give good performances with special mention to Spencer Tracy , Walter Brennan and Robert Young.
This is a winner for Spencer Tracy fans.The story is based on real events , these are the following : During 1759, the Rangers were involved in one of their most famous operations: they were ordered to destroy the Abenaki settlement of Saint-Francis in Quebec.
He returned a few days later with food, and relief forces from Fort at Number 4 now Charlestown, New Hampshire, the nearest English town.In the raid on Saint-Francis, Rogers claimed 200 enemies were killed, leaving 20 women and children to be taken prisoner, of whom he took five children prisoner and let the rest go .
Briefly, it is 1759, and Major Robert Rogers and his famous Rangers (probably America's first example of a special forces unit) are sent into territory in the hands of an enemy Indian group.
Rogers does not have to only worry about Indian attacks (off screen we hear of the massacre of part of his men who separated for security reasons to rendezvous at a later spot), but with starvation and madness (witness Addison Richards insane ranger).
The present film ends with Langdon married and watching Rogers and his Rangers marching off on their next mission.The sequel would have been a downer, but a brilliant one - and I suspect the subject matter of the sequel had more to do with killing the problem than the actual expense (after all, the first part was a hit film, and made back it's cost at the box office).
Northwest Passage is based on a novel of the same name by Kenneth Roberts, in fact it is an adaptation of its first part The Roger's Rangers, the second part was also originally planned to be filmed by King Vidor, but MGM dropped the project fearing the costs involved.
The story is centred on Major Robert Rogers (Spencer Tracy) and his rangers who take a dangerous and adventurous journey through the territory controlled by the Indians and the French troops in 18th century America in order to destroy a hostile Indian village from where English settlements are constantly being attacked.
Northwest Passage is possibly the best and the most visually impressive King Vidor's adventure film.
Harking back to Kenneth Roberts' Roberts' "Northwest Passage," Rogers' life after the legendary mission to destroy the nest of Abenaki vipers equally unbelievable.Did you know that Rogers undertook with just two companies of Rangers an equally legendary 1763 expedition into what was called the Northwest (the Ohio territory) to accept the surrender of the French posts to the British, who had in that year won the French and Indian War?This trip afoot took Rogers nearly halfway across the continent.
In fact, Rogers proposed to the British Crown an expedition to the Pacific, an exploration which one of his captains later partly accomplished while Rogers was stuck commanding Fort Michilmackinac in what would later become Michigan.Thus Rogers almost achieved in 1763 what Lewis and Clark wouldn't actually fully achieve till some 40 years later -- an expedition of exploration to the Pacific Ocean.Rogers was indeed turned down by George Washington at the start of the American Revolution as a volunteer Ranger in the colonial forces.
Instead, Washington had Rogers arrested and tossed into prison.Understandably rankled by this, Rogers broke out of jail and went over to the British.Rogers is the guy of whom George Washington said: "He is the only man I ever feared."We have our unfathomably brave predecessors in the Rangers to thank for the British colonists' ultimate victory in the 150-year-long war against the French and Indians -- America's longest war, and one that NO elementary or high school ANYWHERE in America teaches ANYTHING about.Robert Rogers was larger than life.
Those who sling arrows at Rogers and his Rangers from their easy chair in a warm home on land won by their forebears from the Indians have no conception - absolutely none - of just how feral the so-called native Americans were.FACT: Like most Stone Age peoples, most Indian tribes engaged in constant warfare.
They just liked torture.Rogers' bushwhacking victory over the Abenaki Indians -- the Northeast's Islamofacist terrorists of one-quarter of a millennium ago -- helped finally end the last of the five consecutive French and Indian wars in New England.
Hardly a radical plot but director King Vidor and screenwriter Talbot Jennings craft a very good film that only Hollywood in its hay day could produce .It's not only a great adventure but a technically brilliant film for its time.
The rangers themselves are written as being a good bunch o blokes but I found them just a little too good to be true while no doubt the thought police will complain about the native Americans being portrayed as a bunch of blood thirsty savages , but this was made before revisionary westerns like the overrated DANCES WITH WOLVES and before Marlon Brando sent native Americans to collect Oscars , but at least King Vidor has cast real natives in the part of Indians and hasn't dressed up a bunch of white guys pretending to be injuns Good Hollywood movie featuring the rangers .
Northwest Passage is one of the few films about the Seven Years' War that isn't based on a James Fenimore Cooper novel, and in that sense, it's a welcome lesson in how that important period has come to be mythologized in popular culture.
It's certainly an exciting story, but it has a number of cringeworthy elements (and they would have elicited just as many cringes back in the 1930s, I assure you.)Here's a few comments:Jeffrey Amherst and Sir William Johnson: As anyone who has read any of the fine studies of this era can attest (I recommend the works of James Axtell, Gregory Evans Dowd, Daniel Usner, Daniel Richter, Richard White, and many others as fine introductions to Indian-White relations in the 17th and 18th centuries), this film takes a rather interesting view of these historical figures.
In fact, Johnson and his many Indian allies throughout Iroquoia and the Ohio country were indispensable to the British victory in the Seven Years' War, while Amherst, a capable officer but a virulent anti-native racist, instituted policies that helped start the 1763-64 Indian uprising ("Pontiac's War") and actually approved using germ warfare on Indians near Fort Pitt (he approved a plan to give them smallpox-infected blankets.)Uniforms: If you squint, Roger's Rangers look like they should be in the Confederate Army.
The Indians in this movie look like they belong in the Southwest or the plains -- not in the Eastern Woodlands, especially late in the year.Rogers himself: Well, his anti-Indian rants probably do illustrate something of the man himself.
Many people who speculate that a sequel to this movie was never made because of the animosity between the director and Spencer Tracy ought to also read author Kenneth Roberts' comments about it.
Rogers sided with the British during the Revolutionary War and his Rangers eventually became a Canadian outfit and he never was able to achieve his mission of finding the Northwest Passage, although as Tracy says in the film, he may have had little faith in there actually being such a water route.
Spencer Tracy, fellow actors and crew must have endured a lot of hardships to create this realistic look at true-life explorer Major Robert Rogers, intrepid leader of an expedition during the French and Indian War. For 12 weeks of filming, they trudged through muddy swamps, crossed mountains and rapids and worked in bitter cold.
The end result is a vigorous adventure epic with some of the best early Technicolor photography under King Vidor's direction.Using only the first part of the Rangers story, all of the players do excellent jobs--Robert Young, Ruth Hussey and particularly Walter Brennan in a chilling supporting role.
As for Tracy, his courage and stamina are completely believable--a fine actor.One of the best adventure films of all time..
A great trip to adventure where rangers led by Spencer Tracy search a way to go west by the north and try to escape from some Indians tribes.
They took 50% casualties in that operation.This movie, NORTHWEST PASSAGE, depicts the ill-fated operation by the first American Rangers.
Brennan and Young give good support and the film's glorius technicolour cinematography is a pleasure to watch.The film does contain a glorius battle scene which contains action but no gore,and the effect of a war on men takes its toll on different survivors.
The young man, Langdon Towne, accompanies the Rangers on a punitive raid against the indians and their French allies.This MGM adventure yarn displays to great effect the majesty of the virgin American wilderness.
This is one of Robert Young's best films and having Spencer Tracy and Walter Brennan (both who have won something like a zillion Oscars among them) along for support doesn't seem to hurt.
The film is about the French-Indian War and in particular a group of Colonial volunteers who fight just like Indians.
What with the film having a reputation as one of the greatest adventure films of all time, that opening salvo for Vidor's movie doubly whets the appetite.What follows is more a case of a visually great picture, dotted with action, that is more about actual heroes than heroic deeds.
It never occurs to Rogers that this woman might actually prefer to live in a society that grants women real political and personal power.War has become much more real since "Northwest Passage", both on the screen and off.
So in "NorthWest Passage" the film there is a spurt of why the American Revolution occurred early on,and a brawl between Yank and Limey before the expedition gets fully underway,mostly it's an alliance of equals, united in a common purpose: to defeat the French and annihilate their Indian allies.
Spencer Tracy does a good job, as does Young and Brennan, but Ruth Hussey is only in two scenes and King Vidor did a good job as director..
A bit overdone, but nonetheless very entertaining historical biography of Ranger Robert Rogers, a colonial-born British loyalist who fought the upstate NY-Montreal Indians.
As far as I've researched, the movie was historically correct, although the title, Northwest Passage, has nothing to do with the movie plot itself...it refers to where Roger's Rangers go at the END of the flick..
Pretty good film about the Major Rogers Rangers.
Just as Major Rogers (Spencer Tracy) was trying on moccasins, he says, "Don't any of these red hellions have man-sized feet?" A statement that indicates just what he thought of the Native Americans he, and his band of Roger's Rangers, were wiping out.
This movie came out just after his two Oscar wins, and you see him at his peak.Robert Young ("Father Knows Best", "Marcus Welby, M.D.", The Enchanted Cottage) was quite interesting as a more humane individual (Harvard grad, artist, mapmaker), who tagged along to escape jail (Gitmo?) for criticism of the administration.Walter Brennan, who won an Oscar in 1939 and 1940 for The Westerner and Kentucky, and won one just a few years prior for Come and Get It, and who would get a nomination in the following year for a favorite: Sgt. York, was at the peak of his career and really shone as Young's sidekick.I am just glad that Young gets home to his fiancée, Ruth Hussey (The Philadelphia Story).
Tracy goes off to kill more Native American in hopes of a promotion in the Tory Government, not knowing that he had hooked up with the losers.Directed by five-time Oscar nominee King Vidor, who is in the Guinness World Records as having "The Longest Career As A Film Director", spanning 67 years beginning with Hurricane in Galveston (1913) in 1913 and ending with the documentary The Metaphor (1980) in 1980..
Pacific Northwest Indian Wipe Out. Spencer Tracy (as Major Rogers) gets Robert Young (as Langdon) and Walter Brennan (as Hunk) drunk, so they'll become members of his Colonial American Rangers, and head for the "Northwest Passage" of the title.
Mr. Tracy performs well, as usual; however, his Rangers look a little old, as a whole, to be making this journey.The most exciting scenes are when the Rangers burn an Indian village, and wipe out its inhabitants.
***** Northwest Passage (2/20/40) King Vidor ~ Spencer Tracy, Robert Young, Walter Brennan, Ruth Hussey.
It deals with an expedition of the Roger's Ranger, a British colonial light infantry force, to punish a village of hostile Indians (where the rangers massacred 30 women and children, not the 200 warriors he claimed).
Most big Hollywood leads from the good old days, like for instance Humphrey Bogart, never looked too well in color but Spencer Tracy is definitely an exception to this.Under the circumstances, it's not really a movie that did an awful lot wrong but it also at the same time didn't do much original or specular with its story either.
Like other classics of it's times, DODGE CITY, ROBIN HOOD etc that has been given the Technicolor Hollywood treatment of the late 1930's, for what ever reason Northwest passage stands out as being the best.
Although Robert Young and Walter Brennan are fine in support, Tracy just steals the show as the enthusiastic tough as nails ranger ready to conquer North America.I say conquer, he's not a raving maniac that is just out to kill, he'll fight if he has too, but its' discovering routs and new territory that's important to him.
Spencer Tracy is the real historical figure Major Robert Rogers, leader  of an elite group of Rangers within the British Army during the French  and Indian Wars of about 1760, known in Europe as the Seven Years' War.
Clearly, this film was not an easy shoot.Tracy, as real-life historic figure Robert Rogers of the famous Rogers' Rangers, shines in this film.
This is one of his best roles.Robert Young is also excellent as a would-be college-educated artist who gets himself in political trouble and joins Rogers' Rangers to flee possible arrest.
The 1940 film "Northwest Passage" (sub-titled "Book One: Rogers' Rangers") is a major work and was a resounding success in its day.
The story, taken from the historical novel of the same name by Kenneth Roberts, concerns the real-life exploits of British Major Robert Rogers, the original founder of what would become the U.S. Army Rangers.
Although the title alludes to a far off expedition, this film concentrates on Rogers leading his men against the Abenaki Indians and their French masters during the early years of the French and Indian War (1750s).
One group of Rangers who stray from the rest are ambushed and butchered by the French and Indians who literally "play ball with their heads." Iconic film director King Vidor does tremendous work here with his cinematographer and the talented cast.
Knowing that the little Lady,Deanna (nee Jones)and myself are film buffs, his conversation began, "I saw that Spencer Tracy, NORTHWEST PASSAGE, the other day.
There were different tribes of Red Men align allied with either side.Now, as to the film, NORTHWEST PASSAGE, we need only look at the cast and see what talent old Louis B.
He worked for the 'big boys'(as in this film's Studio, MGM) and done his own Independents.The Players list features Stars Spencer Tracy (Major Rogers), Robert Young (tenderfoot, Langdon Towne), Walter Brennan ('Hunk' Marriner), Ruth Hussey(Elizabeth)all as the main characters.
here is one scene involving French Soldiers and their Indian allies moving along the water way, with the Rangers perched high on a hill overlooking their passage.
Now, go 'n' do it right away, now!" * We feel sort of short changed as the opening read "NORTHWEST PASSAGE: BOOK I, ROGERS' RANGERS".