Robert Rogers meeting Pontiac

Ottawa leader Pontiac, smoking a pipe and posing regally, greets the uniformed British major Robert Rogers in this highly conjectural illustration from the 1841 book Events in Indian History. The illustration depicts the 1760 meeting of Pontiac, who three years later led Pontiac’s Rebellion, a significant Indigenous uprising against Great Britain, and Rogers during the Seven Years’ War. Rogers wrote in his 1765 A Concise Account of North America that Pontiac “expected to be treated with the respect and honor due to a King or Emperor.”