The next morning Pontiac came to the camp and the great chief of the Ottawas, haughty, shrewd, politic, ambitious, met face to face the bold, self-possessed, clear-headed Major of the British Rangers.  It is interesting to note how calmly the astute ally of the French accepted the new order of things and prepared for an alliance with his former enemies.  He and Rogers had several interviews and in the end smoked the pipe of peace.  With dignified courtesy the politic Indian gave to his new friend free transit through his territory, provisions for his journey and an escort of Indian braves.  Rogers broke camp on the twelfth and pushed onward towards Detroit.  By messenger sent forward in advance he apprized Monsieur Belletre, Commandant of the fort, of his near approach and the object of it.  The astonished officer received him Cautiously.  Soon satisfied, however, of the truth of the unwelcome news thus brought, he surrendered his garrison.  On the twenty-ninth of November the British flag floated from the staff which ever before had borne only the lillies of France.

On the tenth of December, after disposing of the French force found in the fort, and having taken possession of the forts Miamie and Gatanois, with characteristic ardor Rogers pushed still farther westward for Michilimackinac.  But it was a vain attempt.  The season was far advanced.  Indeed, the winter had already come, and while the ice prevented his progress by water, the snows rendered impracticable his advance by land.  With reluctance he relinquished for the first time the completion of his mission.  Turning eastward, after a tedious journey, he reached New York on the fourteenth of February, 1761.

From New York, there is reason to suppose, that he went this same year as Captain of one of the His Majesty’s Independent Companies of Foot to South Carolina, and there aided Colonel Grant in subduing the Cherokees, who had for a year or two been committing depredations upon the Carolinian frontiers.

From this time onward for the next two years we lose sight of Major Rogers, but he re-appears at the siege of Detroit in 1763.  Hither he went with twenty Rangers as part of a body of soldiers sent from Fort Niagara under the command of Captain Dalzell for the re-inforcement of the beleagured fort.  He arrived on the twenty-ninth of July, and on the thirty-first took an active part in the fierce battle of Bloody Bridge.  His valor was as useful as it was conspicuous on that occasion, and but for his daring efforts the retreat of the British troops would have been more disastrous even than it was.  Having, for a time, in the house of the Frenchman, Campean, held at bay a throng of savages which surrounded it, his escape with a few followers at one door was hardly achieved ere these burst in at another.

The next glimpse we get of Major Rogers is at Rumford (now Concord) where he had a landed estate of some four or five hundred acres.  Good old Parson Walker, who here kept open house, and for more than fifty years watched with solicitude the interests of his parish and his country, says, in his diary for 1764, against date of February 24:  “Major Rogers dined with us” and again December 22:—­“Major Rogers and Mr. Scales, Jr., dined with me.”