Deerfield 1704. L’ultimo avamposto della frontiera

The Deerfield 1704 Saga is a 96-page graphic novel, with 80 black and white comic strips, plus 16 pages of watercolour drawings by Lele Vianello, a long-time collaborator of Hugo Pratt. The subject and screenplay are by Carlo Bazan, an expert in adventure novels for children, comic book writer and author of an essay on Salgarian ancient illustrations.
The plot: On February 29, 1704, at three o’clock in the morning, in a snowy landscape, an outpost of English settlers, named Deerfield, situated along the Connecticut River in Massachusetts, was attacked by a group of warriors, composed of fifty Frenchmen and about two hundred Abenaki, Huron Wendat, Pocumtuck and Mohawk Indians, from the Caughnawaga Mission. This story tells, with a cinematic rhythm, minute after minute, hour after hour, what happened during the attack on the inhabitants of the Outpost. The story begins with the ambush of a column of 17 British Colonial Militia men who are massacred along the banks of an unnamed stream, which from that day on will be called The Bloody Brook. The story continues with the attack by the British Colonial Militia on the Indian camp of the Pocumtucks tribe during King Philip’s war. An Indian boy, protagonist of the story, vows to take revenge and kill the English Sergeant who killed his family and his tribe. The reason for doing so will be given to him a few years later, when he challenges him to a duel, during the French attack on the Outpost of Deerfield, where the Sergeant was sent as commander of the English garrison, in defence of the Outpost.