Talk:Siege of Fort William Henry

Last of the Mohicans
This battle is depicted in the movie Last of the Mohicans (sp?) - in the movie, the French general appears to suggesting to the natives to attack the British after they leave the fort.75.154.236.150 (talk) 00:28, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

The movie is not historically accurate. Montcalm abhorred what the Natives did, and even attempted to get them to stop, near the end of the 'massacre' —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.30.113.163 (talk) 20:05, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

request for peer review, Battle of the Thousand islands
Peer review/Battle of the Thousand Islands/archive1
 * I Just finished up the main body of this article on a relitivly small engagemet of the French and Indian War. I'm hopeing a peer review will bring some suggestions on how the article can be improved and hopfully bring some more info on the subject. I'd like to see more info on some of the personalities that don't have they're own page to link to, and some more detail on how the battle developed... Any input would be very much appreciated! Mike McGregor (Can) 18:13, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Conflicting sentences
-Munro eventually gave in after being shown an intercepted message from General Webb, the commander of British forces in the New York colony, which said that he would be unable to send reinforcements to relieve the beleaguered garrison. -General Webb did in fact send reinforcements to Fort William Henry, which arrived one day too late,

Does this mean that the message was a ploy? Perhaps it should say "forged message?"

colonel munro was very easily tricked into leaving the fort if he was a smart general he would have anticipated this trick by the french.you can understand that he saw how many troops the french and their native allies had plus they knew the terrain well.he should have stayed at the fort and tried to wait it out because the british obviously saw the importance of the fort, so how could munro not see this?

I'd like to add a lot of info on this fort
I was fortunate to work on excavations around Fort William Henry, actually the incomplete Fort George, back in the very late 1990s and early 2000. I have many sources on Fort William Henry and the battle itself. The sources are mostly written by David Starbuck who oversaw some excavations within the reconstructed fort in the 1990s. However, I am a rather busy college student at the moment and I can't spare the time to put up much more than a few observations until this summer (6/2006). After that I'd be more than happy to contribute. ZenTrowel 03:52, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Battle or Siege?
Should the article be renamed to Siege of Fort William Henry? As that is what it literally was. There was very little fighting outside the Fort, except the massacre which was not really a battle.Lord Cornwallis (talk) 18:25, 16 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Yeah, that's a no-brainer, so I went ahead and renamed it. A Google Books search suggests that "siege of Fort William Henry" is about six times more common than "battle of...." —Kevin Myers 00:14, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

how many eaten?
`in the French Preperations sections it states that "several" prisoners were ritualy eaten following the battle of sabbath day point, but on the battle of sabbath day point page it is specifically stated that "one unlucky prisoner" was eaten. i'm inclined to go with the latter but wtf do i know Primergrey (talk) 22:24, 6 September 2011 (UTC)


 * I'd be inclined to agree with you, because Parkman (cited here) isn't always right. However, William Nester quotes Bougainville on the matter (link): "They put in the pot and ate three prisoners." Fowler refers to a different primary account that mentions only one victim.  Magic ♪piano 00:41, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

sounds like maybe the sabbath day point page should be changed to "one or more" or something like that. i'll take it up over there Primergrey (talk) 00:45, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Questioning the Valitity of William Nesters Claims
In the section "Participating Indian nations",  the author of the section references a historian named William Nester who claims that various Indian tribes from all over the continent came to participate in the battle, some traveling distances of 1500 miles to do so. Just the sheer scale of participation and distance traveled for the battle makes me doubt these claims. What incentive did the Menominee, Iowa or Winnebago from the great plains or the Fox and Sac from far out west to fight in a war they had no stake in? Further more, the Iowa, Fox, Sac, Menominee, Winnebago, Kickapoo, Miami, Atikamekw and Winnebago tribes from all records I can find are listed to have no involvement in the French and Indian War. To question the validity of this claim further, the "Canadian" Iroquois and Onondaga, with the exception of a few deserters, sided with the British in the French and Indian War, not the French, so it would not make sense for them to be in this battle.

The real question I'm posing here is weather that particular section of text should be removed or not. In my opinion it should because it lacks serious a explanation and evidence for how his claims could be possible. For this reason I am going to remove this particular section of text. If someone happened to disagree or has another opinion other than mine I encourage them to voice their concerns. on my talk page.

Elxa izhne (talk) 04:26, 8 November 2022 (UTC)


 * William Nester has written extensively on the French and Indian War, and is as far as I can tell a respected historian of the period. The primary source he cites for his description of the composition of the Native corps is the journal of Louis Antoine de Bougainville.  I agree that the presence of some of the listed tribes is easy to question, but the numbers that came long distances were relatively small.  See Nester as cited (or presumably Bougainville's journal, if you have access to a version of it) for a detailed breakdown.  I suspect the principal explanation for their presence at all is that they were recruited over a period of months through the extensive French trading networks.  Magic ♪piano 22:05, 8 November 2022 (UTC)