Colonel Bouquet at a Council Fire

An Indigenous leader meets with British army officer Henry Bouquet in this ca. 1765 illustration by Pennsylvania-born artist Benjamin West. The illustration is captioned “The Indians giving a Talk to Colonel Bouquet in a Conference at a Council Fire, near his Camp on the Banks of Muskingum in North America, in October 1764.” It depicts Ohio Valley Lenape (or Delaware) and Shawnee forces agreeing to make peace at the close of Pontiac’s Rebellion.

West studied art in Italy in the early 1760s, where his career received a boost from the fact that he was one of the few classically trained artists in Europe with first-hand experience with people indigenous to North America. West accepted multiple commissions to illustrate scenes in North American history, and he began to collect Indigenous weapons and clothing to more accurately represent them to a curious European audience. West tended to represent Indigenous people more for symbolic meaning rather than complete factual accuracy, but his depictions were significantly closer to reality than other European art of the time.