“Vengeance is Mine” is the story of Bemino, called Killbuck, who was a Delaware war captain and medicine man who fought against the English during the French and Indian War. What separated Bemino from his Native contemporaries was his ability to speak English which he learned as a child at his home in what is now New Jersey. This unique advantage enabled Bemino to know what his enemy was likely to do, as he could think like them.

With a handful of warriors, Bemino was able to out-think, out-maneuver, and out-fight the men of the Virginia Regiment that Washington sent to destroy him on the Virginia wilderness frontier. Always one step ahead, Bemino avoided direct engagement against superior numbers. The results were catastrophic defeats for Washington’s men who unwittingly fell in well-planned ruses and ambushes.

The ambush of the Virginian militiamen at the Battle of the Trough in 1756, the massacre of Fort Edwards’s soldiers a month later, the ambushes staged in 1757 near Fort Cumberland, and the fall of both Fort Upper Tract and Fort Seybert in late 1758 were Bemino’s handiwork. Only when the French abandoned war against the English in the Ohio Country did Bemino cease his attacks and return to his father, Nettawattwees, at New Comer’s Town.