Native American Educational Services (NAES) College was founded by the Native American Committee (NAC) in 1973 to continue their mission of increasing accessible education for the Chicago Native American community. NAES College began as Native American Educational Service (NAES) with the initial founding of the school being grounded in providing Native students with a system of higher education, supporting community members in earning their G.E.D., and promoted traditional academic knowledge combined with tribal knowledge. After the opening of the Chicago campus NAES College expanded to study sites in Minneapolis Saint-Paul, the Menominee Reservation, Fort Peck, Leech Lake, Northern Cheyenne, and Santo Domingo. After issues with a federal grant, NAES administrators partnered with Antioch College to keep the institution going in some form to support Native students who sought higher education. Today NAES College has been reconfigured as Native American Educational Services, Inc. Its library and archives were split between the University of Chicago and the American Indian Association of Illinois (IAIA). In its current form, the organization continues to advocate for Native students through a partnership with AIAI and its president Dr. Dorene Wiese in stewarding the stories of its alumni, faculty, and administrators.

In 2019 Santiago X (or X) was commissioned by the Chicago Public Art Group and The American Indian Center of Chicago to pay homage to the original inhabitants of Illinois. X is an indigenous futurist artist and a citizen of the Coushatta of Louisiana and CHarmoru from the island of Guam. Coiled Serpent will be an effigy mound made in collaboration with various artisans and community members, such as Nilay Mistry (landscape artist), and honors the ancestral practice of mound building by using soil from various tribal lands. It will be located in Horner Park by the Chicago riverfront.  Pokto Cinto and Coiled Serpent Mound are the two ends of the forthcoming Northwest Portage Walking Museum which aims to show the connection between indigenous cultures in Chicago and the land on which Chicago stands. On its completion Coiled Serpent will be a start/end point of a nine mile museum trail which discusses indigenous cultures within the Chicago urban space.

The home of Archange (Potawatomi) and Antoine Ouilmette was one of many French and Native households in early Chicago. French and American men frequently married Native women as a way of integrating themselves into existing kinship networks, and Native women expanded the connections of their own kin through these marriages. Archange was the daughter of Marianne (Potawatomi) and François Chevalier and the granddaughter of Potawatomi leader Naunongee, which meant she was connected to one of the most notable Indigenous and fur trade families in the western Great Lakes. Though we don’t know very much about the Ouilmette home other than that it neighbored the Kinzie house, we can make educated assumptions about Archange based on what we know about other relationships between French men and Native women. Archange likely served as a translator for her husband Antoine, instructed him on Native protocols, and was his way of integrating into existing Indigenous kinship networks. Many believe Archange was instrumental in helping settlers navigate the constantly fluctuating portage between the Chicago and Des Plaines River. Though the business of leading people through the portage was in her husband’s name, she would have carried that knowledge of the land from generations of Potawatomi people who lived around and used the portage before her. We also know that Archange helped several of the wives of officers at Fort Dearborn through pregnancies and deliveries, and that she personally helped survivors of the Battle of Fort Dearborn to survive in her house by disguising them as Native women. She and her husband worked directly with Indian Agent Alexander Wolcott to acquire support for the Treaty of Chicago in 1833. In the 1829 Treaty of Prairie du Chien, she and her children were given a plot of land on the Northern border of the city that includes parts of the present-day cities Evanston and Wilmette. The Village of Wilmette is named after her family.

The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) American Indian Education Program provides support for Native American students and their families within the CPS district. Services it provides include after-school tutoring, cultural programming, workshops for students and parents, and programming geared toward students finishing their education within the CPS system or continuing to college. The program is overseen by the Citywide American Indian Education Council (CAIEC), and they monitor the program while also serving as intermediaries between the Native American community and CPS.

There were a number of cabins and taverns on Wolfe Point because this area was relatively dry compared to the lakeside buildings. These homes and businesses were owned by both Native and non-Native people, including Alexander Robinson, or Che-che-pin-quay. Robinson was born to an Odawa mother and Scottish father, so like Billy Caldwell, he excelled at navigating both Native and American worlds and was a key negotiator in the 1829, 1832, and 1833 treaties. He married Archange Oulimette’s sister Catherine Chevalier (Potawatomi) in 1826. Catherine was the daughter of Marianne (Potawatomi) and François Chevalier and the granddaughter of Potawatomi leader Naunongee, which meant she was connected to one of the most notable Indigenous and fur trade families in the western Great Lakes. Their home and trading post had frequent visits from Native people like Billy Caldwell until the 1833 Treaty of Chicago forced them out of the area. As part of the 1829 treaty, a plot of land was reserved for Robinson on the Des Plaines River where he moved in the 1830s and lived until 1872. It was the only Potawatomi “reservation” in the area in the post-removal period. His family remained connected to the land until the mid-1900s.

On Monday June 14, 1971, a number of Native people involved in or affiliated with the organization Chicago Indian Village (CIV) broke into an abandoned United States Army missile site in Belmont Harbor. The occupation was one of several during this period by CIV, who took up the strategy of occupying abandoned federal sites, a tactic used by Native activists across the country during the Red Power era. The site included 12-acres on the lakefront that had recently been closed by the Department of Defense as part of the process to turn the land over to the Chicago Park District. Mike Chosa (Ojibwe) led CIV alongside Carol Warrington (Menominee). Chosa used media attention from the occupation to call for housing and education for Native youth, requesting 200 public housing units, space for educating hundreds of Native children, a cultural center, and more access to jobs. As a result of the occupation, Chosa reached an agreement the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Office of Economic Opportunity for 132 units of public housing in Uptown that would be opened for Native families. Another part of the agreement designated Camp Seager, a Methodist Youth Camp near Naperville, Illinois as a temporary housing site that CIV did eventually occupy. But to some in CIV this was not enough. The group was ultimately removed from the site to a church, after altercations between police and protestors results in the arrest of twelve Native activists.

Chicago hosted two World’s Fairs, the 1893 “World’s Columbian Exposition” and the 1933 “Century of Progress International Exposition.” These fairs had a lasting impact on the way the city sees itself in the world. Two of the four stars on the Chicago flag, a ubiquitous symbol of city pride in the twenty-first century, represent the two fairs. Popular books, movies, and board games about the fairs abound. Native people had a complex relationship with the World’s Fairs. The events created an opportunity for Native people from around the country to assert their identity on the world’s stage. They created employment opportunities in a new cash economy at the turn of the century and allowed Native people to send money back to their communities. The World’s Fairs were also a powerful reemergence of Indigenous people in Chicago after their forced removal from the region. While many Native people lived in and visited Chicago during the nineteenth century, the 1893 fair was the first mass gathering of Indigenous people since leaders gathered in 1833 to negotiate the theft of millions acres of their land. However, commissioners of both World’s Fairs refused to grant Native people the opportunity to tell their own story. In fact, they often worked against them. For both fairs, the authorities in charge of recruiting Indigenous people were anthropologists who saw Native people solely as part of the past. They did not view their cultures as equal to those of the other nations of the world. As you will see in the following City Story, Native people were dehumanized by fair organizers, but you will also see the ways in which Native people defied that image. Sources: Rosalyn R. LaPier and David Beck, City Indian: Native American Activism in Chicago, 1893-1934 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015). David Beck, Unfair Labor?: American Indians and the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019). Abigail Markwyn, “‘I Would Like to Have This Tribe Represented’: Native Performance and Craft at Chicago’s 1933 Century of Progress Exposition,” American Indian Quarterly 44, no. 3 (Summer 2020): 329–61. Lisa Cushing Davis, “Hegemony and Resistance at the World’s Columbian Exposition: Simon Pokagon and The Red Man’s Rebuke,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1998-) 108, no. 1 (2015): 32–53.

Native peoples from around the United States came to work at the 1933 Century of Progress International Exposition, or World's Fair. Most came as performers, but many artisans came to sell artworks and other items. Craftspeople earned $1.00 a day. This trading post was one of the places where art created by Native peoples was sold. The fair Committee on Arts and Crafts created a special Indian Arts and Crafts Board to regulate the sale of Native art. While the Indian Arts and Crafts Board was formed to provide opportunities for Native peoples to make a living at the fair, fair organizers at the 1933 fair were similarly constricting and paternalistic towards Indigenous people as they were at the 1893 fair. Likewise, the Indian Arts and Crafts Board wouldn’t allow Indigenous people to sell items that included factory-made beads because they wanted to maintain the narrative that Indigenous people were not modern.

The Chicago American Indian Center was founded in 1953, but has existed in several locations across its history. At each place, it has worked to promote community across Native people living in Chicago, advocate for the welfare of Native people in the city, and sustain and educate others about Native cultural and artistic traditions. The center moved to this Wilson Avenue location after Verna Ewen bequeathed money for the building's purchase after her death. In its first year (under Leroy Wesaw as director) the address was sometimes given as 4605 N Paulina Street.

The Native American Chamber of Commerce of Illinois (NACC-IL) is an organization within Illinois that aims to provide business education, mentoring, and networking opportunities for Native American businesses. It seeks to highlight how vital it is to have businesses created and owned by Native people for community cultural and economic growth. It is one of fourteen Chambers of Commerce around the country that support business education and support for Native Americans.

The portage between the Chicago and Des Plaines Rivers served as an important piece of infrastructure for Native peoples long before European settlers arrived in the region. The portage was often called “Mud Lake” because of the way it fluctuated between marsh and dry land over the changing seasons. Called the Portage des Chenes, or “Portage of the Oaks,” by the French, it was one of two portages that connected the Mississippi River watershed to Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes via the Illinois River (the other portage was between the Des Plaines River and the Calumet River). These portages allowed Native people to travel and trade throughout the region for millennia. Louis Jolliet and Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette, the first European settlers to traverse the Indigenous portage in 1673, were guided every step of the way by Native people. Jolliet and Marquette drew maps based on the expertise provided by Odawa people at the Jesuit Mission of St. Ignace on the upper peninsula of Michigan. They were then led by Myaamia guides as they traveled to the Mississippi River via the difficult Wisconsin and Fox River portage. On their way back, Kaskaskia guides led them through the Chicago portage to Lake Michigan. The entire journey would have been impossible without the extensive knowledge of the Native people who had used the portage for generations. In spite of this support, the monuments at the site today (one of which is pictured here) show Marquette leading the journey, while the Native guide crouches behind him, in a submissive position. This is one of several depictions of Marquette and Jolliet throughout Chicago, each of which perpetuates a false narrative of the subservience of Native people.

This monument is one of several dedicated to Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette, the first non-Native settler to traverse the Chicago portage in 1673. However he and his party, which included French explorer Louis Jolliet, were guided every step of the way by Native people. Jolliet and Marquette drew maps based on the expertise provided by Odawa people at the Jesuit Mission of St. Ignace on the upper peninsula of Michigan. They were then led by Myaamia guides as they traveled to the Mississippi River via the difficult Wisconsin and Fox River portage. On their way back, Kaskaskia guides led them through the Chicago portage to Lake Michigan. The entire journey would have been impossible without the extensive knowledge of the Native people who had used the portage for generations. In spite of this support, monuments across the city show Marquette leading the journey, while Native guides crouch behind him or turn to the side, in submissive positions. This is one of several depictions of Marquette throughout Chicago, each of which perpetuates a false narrative of the subservience of Native people.  Representations (and misrepresentations) of Native history and people are present across public art and architecture in Chicago. Other aspects of the built environment feature colonial narratives that marginalize Native people or erase them altogether. On this map, we have selected a examples of iconography to feature, but you can see a full map of many more sites across Chicago here.

After its incorporation into the city of Chicago in the 1880s Uptown worked to compete with downtown, leading to the construction of well-known landmarks such as the Uptown Theatre, the Aragon Ballroom, and the Green Mill Lounge. The Great Depression led to a once thriving area with luxury housing to be broken down into smaller apartments that could be cheaply rented. This was the Uptown that White Appalachians, African Americans, and Native Americans encountered when federal policies or economic necessity drove them to migrate to the neighborhood from across the country from the 1950’s through the 1970’s. Native people that moved to Chicago were motivated by economic necessity or pushed by federal policies created by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) seeking to assimilate them into American society. These policies included the voluntary relocation program (1952-1972) followed by the relocation Act of 1956, other job placement programs, and decades of other assimilation policies. Chicago was chosen by the BIA as one of five original relocation sites for relocation due to the high volume of factory work and other jobs, along with it being an urban setting that was seen as being in opposition to Native reservations. But Chicago had already been chosen by Native people. It had been a site of Native villages prior to the establishment of the city, and those who remained in spite of removals or moved to the city did not always see it as being in opposition to their home communities. This Chicago Native community that existed prior to relocation founded the Indian Council Fire, the American Indian Club, and worked with other groups to create the foundations of the institutions that would follow. This Native community was scattered throughout the city, not concentrated in one neighborhood. In its first nine years the voluntary relocation program relocated almost 5,000 Native peoples to Chicago. The need for housing for the mass number of people, and the low paying jobs many were forced to take meant that many were forced into cheap housing around the city, with Uptown becoming the neighborhood with the largest population of Natives. Native people also came together to support one another when the BIA failed to provide the housing, jobs, and support that it had promised. In opposition to the efforts to assimilate Native people, relocation resulted in the creation of a new, intertribal community in which people supported one another through mutual aid. Sources:  Ann Durkin Keating, ed. Chicago’s Neighborhoods and Suburbs: A Historical Guide. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008: 286).  James B. LaGrand. Indian Metropolis: Native Americans in Chicago, 1945-75. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2002).  John J. Laukaitis. Community Self-Determination: American Indian Education in Chicago, 1952-1996. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015).  Douglas K. Miller. Indians on the Move: Native American Mobility and Urbanization in the Twentieth Century. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019).  Chicago American Indian Oral History Project Records - Native Voices in the City manuscript, Newberry Library.

Founded in 2007 by Dr. Dorene Wiese (White Earth Band Ojibwe), the American Indian Association of Illinois (AIAI) is among the most recently Native founded and driven organizations in Chicago. AIAI provides student centered assistance and services for students in public, private, and tribal schools not only in Chicago but throughout the United States. A few of the programs implemented by AIAI include the Medicine Shield Indian School Program, the Black Hawk Performance Company, and the Native American Language Institute. AIAI's leadership is dedicated to grounding the Native youth of the city today in the longstanding activism within Chicago and individual's ties to their tribal nations.  Its leadership under Dr. Wiese and others also connects the organization to institutions that are no longer active, including the Institute of Native American Development (INAD) at Truman College and Native American Educational Services (NAES) College. This connection has grounded IAIA in the goals of many Native driven organizations in Chicago, to provide space for Native students to receive support and make their mark within the rich history of the Native community within the city.

The Chicago Theatre is a historic building, and its large marquee has become an icon of Chicago. However, the theater also sits on the site of one of the camps that Neshnabé (Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Odawa) people created during the negotiations of the 1833 Treaty of Chicago. That year, Neshnabé representatives were called to Chicago to negotiate additional land cessions in the Midwest. They built massive encampments around Fort Dearborn and lived there the month before finally meeting with US Commissioners on September 21 for negotiations across the river from the fort.  In the 18th and 19th centuries, land cessions from Indigenous nations were made through treaties (legal agreements) with the U.S. federal government. These treaties were often negotiated at established meeting places like Chicago and are not necessarily named for the land that is being ceded. Such is the case for the 1833 Treaty of Chicago which ceded land tracts in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin and orchestrated the forced removal of Neshnabé people from 8 million acres of land in what are now the states of Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan.  The treaty was signed on September 26, and it began another migration into the city. Knowing that Neshnabé leaders would soon be receiving their treaty payments, hundreds of American traders from the midwest descended on the city to collect on supposed debts they claimed from Native people. These creditors made up $175,000 of the annuities listed in the treaty, equivalent to about $6.5 million dollars in 2024. In the cash-poor economy of the Midwest, these payments were a massive influx of federal dollars into the region.  Over the next decade, Neshnabé people were removed from the 8 million acres of land in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan in a fragmented and abusive way over the course of nearly a dozen different removals. At least 5 of these removals began at or crossed through the Chicagoland area.  Proceed north, turning right on Lake Street for one block, then turning left onto Wabash and proceeding north one block. When you reach East Wacker, turn right, and make your way back to the southwest corner of DuSable bridge for the final stop on this walking tour (.4 miles).

Our next stop is 411 N La Salle, the site of the Chicago American Indian Center from its founding in 1953 to 1963, when it moved to a new location. Today, the American Indian Center continues to offer community programming from its location in Albany Park. The center was initially founded during a time of great change for the Chicago Native community. Native people had been moving to and from Chicago since forced removal in the 1830s, but the Bureau of Indian Affairs's voluntary relocation program (1952-1972) meant that there was a significant increase in Chicago's Native population. In response to this change, a group of organizations including the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), the Chicago Citizens’ Advisory Board, the American Indian Club, the Indian Council Fire, and the American Friends Service Committee began meeting in July of 1953 with the intention of creating connections between Native Americans moving to the city and the city itself. These meetings and the work of Native people already in the city led to the creation of the All-Tribes American Indian Center, which opened its doors here in late 1953.  At this location, the American Indian Center began hosting annual powwows and formed clubs to facilitate community building in a growing intertribal Chicago Native community. The Canoe Club, the Photography Club, an all Native Boy Scout troop, a day camp, educational services, and job assistance were a few of the many clubs or programs developed in the first decade of the Center. Over the past seventy years, the Center, its leadership, and the Chicago Native community have worked to uphold the legacy of the institution to serve the community and sustain the Center’s mission. It remains one of the oldest American Indian centers in the country.  Proceed south on La Salle Avenue about .2 miles across the LaSalle bridge to the southeast corner. Look back across the bridge to locate the Merchandise Mart building.

The Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative (CAICC) was established in 2012 and consists of fifteen Native American organizations and programs that are focused on “improving conditions for Native Americans in the Chicago area.” CAICC was founded to create cohesion across the many organizations that serve the Native community and provide a unified voice in a city where Native perspectives are often ignored and invisible. From its beginning, CAICC has established goals to meet the current and future needs of Native Americans who continue to call Chicago home and to sustain connections to Chicago’s Native past.  Today, CAICC maintains four subcommittees that attend to pressing issues for the Chicago Native community. Among the organization's greatest accomplishments include: hosting an annual Education Conference that brings together leaders in Native education from across the nation; holding two Native American Summits in 2022 and 2024 at the state capitol to call attention to community priorities; and assisting in the passage of two state bills: HB1633, which mandates the teaching of Native history in K-12 classrooms, and SB1446, which ensures that Native students are allowed to wear culturally significant regalia at graduation ceremonies.

Located on the ninth floor of the old main Post Office, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) office was occupied several times by Native activists who were advocating for more resources and more of a voice within the BIA in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  The sit-in on December 26, 1969 was organized by the Native American Committee, a group formed within the American Indian Center to support Red Power activism. The committee occupied the BIA office to support the occupation of Alcatraz Island (1969-1971) by the group Indians of All Tribes and other Native activists. By December, the Alcatraz occupation had entered its second month of what would become a two-year occupation.  Another one of the most publicized sit-ins by Native activists in Chicago occurred on Monday March 23, 1970. This was part of a coordinated mass sit-in campaign that also included five other BIA offices in Denver, Colorado, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Sacramento, California, Cleveland, Ohio, and Minneapolis, Minnesota. Leaders of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and other Native institutions argued that the BIA needed to assist Natives that lived off of reservations. The protests also critiqued the BIA more broadly, especially policies like the voluntary relocation program and Termination.  This sit-in at the Chicago BIA office resulted in 23 arrests on trespassing charges including Minnie Bacon, Mike Chosa, and Steven Fastwolf. However, like other national-level protests, these sit-ins also brought national attention to issues Native communities faced in cities and on reservations. Native activists sought aid to help with housing, health, job, and food security, which they had been promised through treaties and through the voluntary relocation program. These sit-ins were Native communities' way of exerting their right to aid.

Based in Itasca, Illinois, Visionary Ventures NFP advocates and promotes accessible and affordable housing to combat the longstanding issue of homelessness that Native communities have faced in Chicagoland. With these goals, Visionary Ventures builds on the well-established activism in the Native American community of Chicago to call for and provide affordable housing for Chicago’s Native population. Visionary Ventures also promotes general economic development and services to the Native American community with a focus on those who have been underserved by other organizations.

In the centuries following the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the story of this event has been told and retold in various ways, but the most common narratives dehumanize Native people and stoke resentment against them. The term “massacre” comes from one of the earliest published histories of Chicago, Wau-Bun, by Juliette Kinzie in 1856. Kinzie lived in Chicago in the 1830s at the Kinzie mansion which gave credibility to her account of the early days of the American occupation there. Native historians and other scholars disputed her story, but the misnomer stuck. The myth of a “massacre” took on further life during the World’s Columbian Exhibition of 1893, when fair commissioners sought to tell a story that cast the city of Chicago as resilient in the face of disaster. The city was just twenty years removed from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and the myth of the “Fort Dearborn Massacre'' provided useful inspiration. The fair’s celebration of the battle as connected to colonialism made the event a fitting place to dedicate The Fort Dearborn Massacre, a monument that once stood in this park, but was removed from public view in 1998. Still, other public commemorations of the battle remain. In 1939, the fourth and final star on the Chicago flag was added symbolizing the “Fort Dearborn Massacre.” These representations and other commemorations of the battle within the built environment of the city cement a story of Indigenous violence within the myth of the city’s founding. Today, historians rely on a bevy of evidence to reconstruct the events of the Battle of Fort Dearborn. Few narratives hold more weight than that of Simon Pokagon’s whose father witnessed the aftermath of the battle. Pokagon’s story gathers multiple accounts from Native people, something Juliette Kinzie’s book failed to do. In his story, the Battle of Fort Dearborn was the result of a conflict between complex political entities who were in open war. And he compares the battle directly to massacres of American Indians committed by US soldiers where there were no survivors.  Representations (and misrepresentations) of Native history and people are present across public art and architecture in Chicago. Other aspects of the built environment feature colonial narratives that marginalize Native people or erase them altogether. On this map, we have selected a examples of iconography to feature, but you can see a full map of many more sites across Chicago here.

Our final stop on this walking tour is the Defense, a sculpture representing the Battle of Fort Dearbon, which is an event that looms large in the collective memory of Chicago. Represented by one of the four stars on Chicago's flag, the Battle has been positioned as a "founding moment" in the city's history.  However, before discussing the battle, it's important to understand the context of Fort Dearborn, a military outpost built in 1803. Though the fort no longer stands, plaques on the ground around you show the outline of where the fort once stood. When the fort was built, it existed within only six square miles of land that had been ceded in the 1795 Treaty of Greenville. In the decade after the fort was built, Neshnabé (Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Odawa) people living in the area began to increasingly see it as a threat to their land and lifeways. These groups contested the Treaty of Greenville and argued that no representatives from Chicago were present at the treaty signing, and they grew increasingly frustrated with white settlers who had begun to farm the land and disrupt the environment that Native people had long maintained. These tensions erupted in the Battle of Fort Dearborn.  The Battle itself did not take place at the Fort, but about a mile and a half south on the shores of Lake Michigan, on August 15, 1812. It ended in the death of more than fifty American soldiers, women, and children and fifteen Potawatomi fighters. The violence is often positioned as a random act of violence and has been used throughout history to cast Native people as savage, but in reality, it was one of several violent engagements during this time period in which Native people fought on both sides, and it was part of a much larger intertribal resistance movement coordinated by Shawnee leader Tecumseh against American invasion.  In June of 1812, Tecumseh and his allies laid out a plan to attack several American forts later that summer: Fort Madison in present-day Iowa, Fort Wayne and Fort Harrison in present-day Indiana, and Fort Dearborn at Chicago. The attacks would be coordinated through wampum belts, small beads made from shells that were strung together to record histories and communicate messages. However, as Tecumseh and his allies made plans, war broke out between the Americans and the British, and Captain Nathan Heald was ordered to evacuate Fort Dearborn. Tecumseh and his allies learned of this planned evacuation, and decided that this was the right time to execute their attack on the fort. The night before the battle, a wampum belt was delivered to Potawatomi leader Mad Sturgeon signaling war should begin.  On the morning of the evacuation from the fort, Potawatomi fighters, along with Kickapoo, Sauk, and Ho-Chunk allies, attacked the convoy of American soldiers, civilians, and their Myaamia allies who were leaving the fort. In the centuries following the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the story of this event has been told and retold in various ways, but the most common narratives dehumanize Native people and stoke resentment against them. The term “massacre” comes from one of the earliest published histories of Chicago, Wau-Bun, by Juliette Kinzie in 1856. This myth took on further life during the World’s Columbian Exhibition of 1893, when fair commissioners sought to tell a story that cast the city of Chicago as resilient in the face of disaster. The city was just twenty years removed from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and the myth of the “Fort Dearborn Massacre'' provided useful inspiration. Today, representations like those in "The Defense" continue to cement a story of Indigenous violence within the myth of the city’s founding.

Mainstream narratives of Chicago’s founding have primarily featured European and American settlers. But stories of René-Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle, Jacques Marquette, and Louis Jolliet as visionary adventurers and John Kinzie and Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable as founding settlers have concealed a much more complicated reality. In fact, Indigenous people lived on the land now called Chicago a long time before Europeans set foot here, and many remain here today. Indigenous people used this area for seasonal and more permanent village sites, to gather food sources like wild rice and wild onions (or ramps), and to travel to other parts of the larger Great Lakes and Mississippi River networks. The first European settlers entered into an already existing network of trade and familial relationships created before their arrival. How does this change the way we understand the founding of Chicago as a city? This City Story re-centers Indigenous people to encourage a re-thinking of the familiar “founding” myths. It casts aside unnecessary superlatives like “first” settlers and “last” Native peoples in order to understand the more complicated origins of Chicago. Sources  Alfred Theodore Andreas, History of Chicago: From the Earliest Period to the Present Time (Chicago: A. T. Andreas, 1884) Ann Durkin Keating, Rising up from Indian Country: The Battle of Fort Dearborn and the Birth of Chicago (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2012) Juliette Kinzie, Wau-Bun, the “Early Day” in the North-West (New York: Derby & Jackson, 1856)  Jean M. O'Brien, Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010)  Terry Straus, ed., Indians of the Chicago Area (Chicago, Ill: NAES College, 1990).

The Grand Council Fire of American Indians, later called the Indian Council Fire (ICF), was founded in 1923 by both Native American and non-Native American participants. From 1923 to 1953, the ICF assisted the Chicago Native American community with legal, education, housing, and employment matters. ICF was the first major Native American organization in Chicago and the Midwest. Many of its Native American members had been members of the Society of American Indians and other national multi-tribal organizations. During the administration of Mayor William Hale (“Big Bill”) Thompson in the late 1920s, the Indian Council Fire challenged the city of Chicago to include more accurate Native American history in school textbooks. Leter in the 20th century, they also advocated for accurate representations of Native people in public history spaces, such as having a historical monument erected at Alexander Robinson's cemetery.  ICF held monthly meetings that combined entertainment and socializing from October to May each year. The organization also provided events for both its non-Native American and Native American members. Programs included the Indian Players Little Theater group, a young women’s chorus, and a Native American boys’ basketball team. ICF also published a quarterly newsletter, Amerindian (1952), edited by ICF secretary Marion Gridley. This newsletter espoused an assimilationist philosophy and emphasized the importance of higher education for Native Americans. It appealed to those who modeled themselves after Carlos Montezuma—or at least his focus on gradual, voluntary assimilation—but the organization seemed out of touch and somewhat condescending to many of the Native Americans who began to trickle into Chicago during the 1940s. Nationally recognized Native Americans such as Charles Eastman, Reverend Philip Gordon, and Gertrude Bonnin regularly spoke at the monthly meetings.  In addition to providing modest social services and community youth programs, the ICF focused a great deal of attention on participating in the annual Chicago Indian Day celebration held every September since its adoption in 1919. In 1953, however, the ICF redrafted its bylaws and decided to shut down its social service program in favor of focusing solely on the Annual Indian Achievement Award, which it continued to sponsor well into the 1990s.  In 1965 the Indian Council Fire was dissolved for failure to file the 1964 annual report and pay the required fee. Although quickly reinstated, there were conflicts within the organization and previous members regarding the merger of the Indian Council Fire organization with two organizations (Indian Council Fire Publications Inc. and Indian Achievement award) started by previous ICF president, Marion E. Gridley. These conflicts are well recorded within the correspondence and position paper written by the Board of Directors of the ICF at the time.

This mural, titled "Indians Cede the Land" is one of hundreds of WPA murals across Chicagoland, many of which depict Native people. WPA (The Works Progress Administration) murals were a part of the New Deal program under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Murals like this allow passerby to quickly take in the story and narrative which they display. Typically showing the development of the U.S. from early interactions with Indigenous peoples, western expansion, and modern industry, these murals include Native people but strip them of all information which would make them significant to U.S. or Indigenous history. Rather than capture the complicated history of Indigenous-settler interactions and the transformation of Native land, this mural reduces it to an easily digestible story of progress. By commemorating Indigenous peoples as only located in the past or at a particular point wherein they encountered European settlers, the murals erase Indigenous peoples, or position conquest and removal as a necessary developmental step in the unfolding of U.S. history.  Representations (and misrepresentations) of Native history and people are present across public art and architecture in Chicago. Other aspects of the built environment feature colonial narratives that marginalize Native people or erase them altogether. On this map, we have selected a examples of iconography to feature, but you can see a full map of many more sites across Chicago here.

Here, in what is known as Pioneer Court, we can see two sites related to the importance of Native women in early Chicago. First, we have this bust depicting Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a fur trader who was of African and Haitian descent and came to Chicago in the 1780s. Du Sable was married to Kitihawa, a Potawatomi woman, and their relationship is an important example of early kinship between Black and Native communities. Together, they established a trading post at this site.  Another French fur trader, Antoine Ouilmette, and his Potawatomi wife Archange lived nearby, at approximately the site of Tribune Tower, just north of where you stand. Antoine led a business of leading people through the Chicago portage, but it's likely that Archange was actually the one who carried the knowledge of the fluctuating waterway and helped, or taught her husband how to, lead people through it. Archange was from a powerful Native-French family, the Chevaliers. Her father was also a French fur trader, and her sisters, Catherine and Suzanne, also married white fur traders. Archange and Antoine lived in Chicago for several decades. They helped protect several white fur trading families in the aftermath of the Battle of Fort Dearborn and were influential in the negotiation of the 1829 Treaty of Prairie du Chien. This treaty reserved land for Archange and her family in what are now the townships of Evanston and Wilmette, and the city Wilmette is named for her family.  These two households give us examples of the many relationships between Native women and non-Native fur traders, who had to establish and maintain relationships with the Native peoples who controlled these lands in order to safely travel through them and be successful traders. Ojibwe scholar Michael Witgen describes this process clearly: Settlers who were new to the region either became ndenwémagen (relatives in the Potawatomi language) or myeg yegwan (foreigners). In order to be successful in the fur trade, they had to become relatives. But Native women like Archange and Kitihawa were not passive participants in these marriages. Instead, they were extending the long-practiced value of incorporating newcomers into their communities. They introduced their fur trading husbands to the people they would need to know to do business. They managed the businesses locally while their husbands traded across the Great Lakes region for long periods of time. They translated across various Native languages, and educated their husbands on protocols for greetings, gift exchange, and communication.  Proceed north to the corner of Hubbard and Michigan Avenue, then turn left on Hubbard and walk 3 blocks west to the corner of Hubbard and State (a total of .3 miles). From this intersection, locate Marina City (often known as the "corn cob" towers), walking south along State if needed. Please note, there are stairs along Hubbard Ave. Alternatively, you can walk back to the south side of the river and take one of the ramps down to the Chicago Riverwalk, then proceed west along the path. You can view marina city from this side of the river.

People from all over the world gathered for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, or the 1893 World’s Fair, and that included many Native peoples from around the country. Like most people at the fair, many Indigenous people traveled there to work, to perform, or to sell goods. Others protested the fair. Simon Pokagon wrote the pamphlet critical of the fair, "A Red Man's Rebuke" (later "A Red Man's Greeting") on birchbark and distributed it at the fair. Upon reading it, Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison requested that Pokagon become involved with some ceremonial aspects of the fair. This included Pokagon riding on a float on "Chicago Day" and performing in a tableau of him signing the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, which his father had actually signed 60 years earlier. Harrison then accepted the treaty at a ceremony attended by 70,000 people in front of the "Columbian Liberty Bell." Pokagon wrote a speech for the event in which he gave his vision for the future of Indigenous people in America. Using his new-found publicity from the World’s Fair, Pokagon became a prominent activist for Indigenous rights before he died in 1899.

While it initially began meeting within the American Indian Center as a club, the Menominee Social Club of Chicago developed as Menominee individuals and families needed support after moving to the city on their own or through the twentieth century voluntary relocation program by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). In 1994, the Menominee community in Chicago reached out to the tribal government to ask for support, and in 1996 the Menominee Nation Tribal Council recognized the Menominee Community Center of Chicago as a distinct but important part of the Menominee Nation. After this recognition, the Community Center was designated as a non-profit tribal program. The efforts by both those on the reservation and the urban Menominee community members in the creation of the center demonstrates the continued connections between Menominee peoples and the lands and family they have on the Menominee Reservation in Wisconsin.

Native peoples from around the United States came to the 1933 World's Fair to perform. Many came as a part of the official American Indian Villages, but the Seminole Village was a privately operated exhibit on the Midway. It was created entirely for entertainment (a popular attraction was the alligator wrestling) and had very little information about Native people's daily life.

Shab-eh-nay was Odawa and was born in what is now known as Michigan. He traveled to what is now Illinois with two Odawa spiritual leaders when he was young, and during his time there, married the daughter of Potawatomi leader Spotka, who lived in a large village on the Illinois River. After Spotka died, Shab-eh-nay became a village leader.  As Shawnee leader Tecumseh worked to unite Native people against increasing American encroachment on Native lands in the first decade of the 19th century, Shab-eh-nay was very influenced by his messages. He welcomed Tecumseh into his village and accompanied him in his travels to other Odawa, Potawatomi, Sauk, and Ho-Chunk villages.  In spite of his alliance with Tecumseh, Shab-eh-nay protected the white Kinzie family after the Battle of Fort Dearborn, alongside Black Partridge, Che-che-pin-quay (Alexander Robinson), Sauganash (Billy Caldwell), and Waubansee. The Kinzies had been living according to Native protocols and kinship with Native communities at Chicago, unlike other settlers who were invading Native territories.   Shab-eh-nay signed the Treaties of St. Louis (1816), Prairie du Chien (1829), and Chicago (1833) in order to protect his village. Like Chechepinquay (Alexander Robinson), Shab-eh-nay stayed on land that had been reserved for him in treaties, traveling between these lands and his community further west. However, Shab-eh-nay’s land was illegally sold.  In 2024, part of Shab-eh-nay's reservation was placed into trust for Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation. It is the only federally recognized Tribal Nation in Illinois. This village is one of many across what is now northeastern IL. For a full map of village sites in the Chicagoland area, please visit our Village Site Map.

Founded in the 1970s, the Native American Support Program (NASP) at the University of Illinois Chicago supports the success of Native American, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, and Native Pacific Islander students academically and culturally. This support comes from the program’s origin and administrators from within the Chicago Native community who have had first-hand experience with the issues Native students face while attending college.

"The Pioneers" is one of four relief sculptures on each corner of the DuSable bridge. Depicting non-Native settlers who are guided by an angel, it represents the "manifest destiny" mindset that was popular in the 19th century and used to justify settler colonialism. Manifest destiny is the idea that land in the United States was “destined” for the United States’ use and had been set aside for white settlers by God. Under this mindset, Native people did not deserve the land they had because they were not Christian.  Representations (and misrepresentations) of Native history and people are present across public art and architecture in Chicago. Other aspects of the built environment feature colonial narratives that marginalize Native people or erase them altogether. On this map, we have selected a examples of iconography to feature, but you can see a full map of many more sites across Chicago here.

The historic Green Mill Lounge located in Uptown Chicago has a legacy connected to its place in the city during Prohibition, its ties to Al Capone and his associates, and performances by stars of the Jazz Age. But this history also has ties to the Native community in the city. Its poetry slam nights attracted writers and performers from around the city, including Native writers and poets. E. Donald Two-Rivers (Ojibwe) became involved in these poetry nights as he became involved with institutions in the Native community and the poetry scene in Chicago. The Green Mill also held weekly poetry slams that were sponsored by the Red Path Theatre, founded in part by Two-Rivers in the 1990s. Two-Rivers also held a book release party at the Green Mill for his first book A Dozen Cold Ones in 1992, and remained connected to the establishment through his work with Red Path Theatre Company and the lounge's long-term ties to artists in Chicago.

The Chicago Centennial celebration continued much of the excitement of the 1893 World's Fair, held ten years earlier. Unlike the Anthropology exhibits at the World’s Fair, Native people organized their own involvement in the centennial. Forty Potawatomi people from Michigan, forty Ho Chunk people from Wisconsin and Nebraska, Odawa people from Northern Michigan, twenty-five Sauk and Meskwaki people, twenty Menominee people from Northern Wisconsin, and fifty Ojibwe people all gathered to live in Lincoln Park for the festivities. They included prominent figures such as Charles Pokagon, Andrew Blackbird, and Chief Lone Star. All were solicited by T. R. Roddy, the contractor for the American Indian Village on the Midway at the 1893 World’s Fair. The Indigenous people built bark and brush mat lodges in which they stayed during the centennial. At the encampment, Native people gave la crosse, rowing, and house building demonstrations. They staged an attack on a newly constructed replica of the Fort Dearborn block house–an event that never actually happened since the 1812 Battle of Fort Dearborn occurred along the shoreline south of the fort. Unlike at either of the World’s Fairs, the centennial demonstrations were led entirely by Native people. They included speeches by tribal leaders, interpretation, and explanation.

Navy Pier originally opened in 1916 as Municipal Pier before a renaming in 1927, serving as a shipping and recreation facility for the city. The Navy Pier ballroom was the site of numerous annual powwows hosted by the American Indian Center that featured dancers from throughout the city. Photographs of powwow participants at Navy Pier for these powwows were featured in the book Chicago's 50 Years of Powwows (2004) sponsored by the American Indian Center, who worked with Newberry staff. While many photographs of powwows across Chicago exist, most of the photographs in the Newberry collection were taken by Chicago community members Dan Battiste, Ben Bearskin, Joe Kazumura, Peter Weil, and Leroy Wesaw. Powwows were held at Navy Pier in 1973, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, and 1987. Navy Pier has continued to be an occasional site for powwows, arts shows, and gatherings for Native Americans. One of the most recent powwows held at Navy Pier was in 2011 for the 58th American Indian Center Powwow. Today Navy Pier remains a historic site for not only the city of Chicago, but also to the Native American community.

As seen in this relief sculpture, French explorer Louis Jolliet and Jesuit priest Father Jacques Marquette, are often credited with discovering Chicago in 1673. However, Native people had been living at and traveling through Chicago for centuries before their arrival. Likewise, their journey through the Chicago portage, a critical link between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed, was made possible with the assistance of Native guides. Jolliet and Marquette drew maps based on the expertise provided by Odawa people at the Jesuit Mission of St. Ignace on the upper peninsula of Michigan. They were then led by Myaamia guides as they traveled to the Mississippi River via the difficult Wisconsin and Fox River portage. It was Native people they encountered near the convergence of the Arkansas and Mississippi Rivers who told them about the Chicago portage, and Kaskaskia people (of the larger Illinois Confederation) that led them safely through the portage.  Despite their significant reliance on Indigenous knowledge and assistance, the legacy of Jolliet and Marquette often overshadows the leadership and contributions of Native people. In representations like this one, Marquette and Jolliet are centered and appear to be leading, while Native people cower behind or below them in subservient positions.  Proceed north a short distance to the bust of Jean Baptiste Point du Sable in Pioneer Court.

Established in Schaumburg, Illinois in 2005, the Trickster Cultural Center features contemporary Native American art and works to provide space for Native artists to show their work along with educating people on the impact of Native American art. Named for the trickster archetype in Native American traditions that teaches life lessons and other truths, the Trickster Cultural Center positions itself in this legacy of the trickster by creating an environment to educate others about the present-day Native communities. Alongside other Native driven and founded institutions in and around Chicago, the Trickster Cultural Center supports community efforts to provide culturally focused education for Native youth through summer and cultural camps.  The organization has also led the National Gathering of American Indian Veterans in Wheaton, Illinois since 2015, and this has led to a shift in its original mission statement to now promote the legacy of Native veterans alongside contemporary Native art.

Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show was a performance that romanticized the American West and traveled across the United States and Europe between 1883 and 1913. Performers from Pine Ridge (Lakota) traveled the world with the Wild West Shows and were paid well, but the shows dehumanized Native people, depicting them as violent. Bill Cody, the show's founder, tried to have the show included in the 1893 World's Fair. While Cody was eventually able to secure a location just outside of the fairgrounds, he ultimately failed to have the show officially included in the fair because of protests by Native people and anthropologists alike. Activist Henry Standing Bear (Lakota), who had toured with Buffalo Bill, petitioned the Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs asking that Bill Cody’s show not be welcomed on the fairgrounds.

This exhibit, named a racial epithet during the 1893 World's Fair, became known for the treatment of the Inuit performers and their successful protest of their conditions. Promoter P.M. Daniels forced them to perform in warm clothing on hot days. When some protested, they were locked in and confined. Locals petitioned the courts successfully to have the Inuit people liberated from the camp for being held against their will, but they still needed a clandestine escape at night with the help of a Moravian Minister. After escaping, some ended up staging their own exhibit on Stony Island Blvd. outside of the fair.

The Agency House is where the US government engaged with Native people, especially regarding past treaties. This is where the Native signers of past treaties such as the 1829 Treaty of Prairie du Chien collected annuity payments for land ceded. Chicago’s first Indian Agent, Charles Jouett, moved his family into the Agency House in 1805. The Jouett family employed a Pottawatomi woman, Nokenoqua, as a housekeeper and held at least one enslaved person in bondage there. Alexander Wolcott was appointed as Indian Agent in 1817. It is believed that Wolcott worked with Antoine Ouilmette to recruit Alexander Robinson to negotiate the three treaties in 1829, 1832, and 1833 that lead to the removal of Anishinaabe and the official founding of Chicago as an American city.

Representations (and misrepresentations) of Native history and people are present across public art and architecture in Chicago. Other aspects of the built environment feature colonial narratives that marginalize Native people or erase them altogether. On this map, we have selected a examples of iconography to feature, but you can see a full map of many more sites across Chicago here. These stained glass images in the Baptistry of the Queen of All Saints Cathedral retell a story of colonial expansion and assimilation. Looking across the room you can see Christopher Columbus’s arrival in America, the baptism of Chief Sauganash (Billy Caldwell) and his family by Father Badin, the settlement of Fort Dearborn, and lastly, the signing of the Treaty of 1833 (although it is labeled as 1835) which orchestrated the removal of Neshnabé (Potawatomi, Ojibwe and Odawa) people from Illinois.

This monument was commissioned by previous fur trader, eventual lumber magnate, and Chicago real estate investor, Martin L. Ryerson, who employed John J. Boyle to create “The Alarm.” Originally commissioned under the name “The Indian Family,” the monument is dedicated to the Odawa, one of several Indigenous peoples whose homelands include Chicago. The statue’s pedestal also holds a relief panel on each side, titled, “The Peace Pipe,” “The Corn Dance,” “Forestry,” and “The Hunt." Ryerson, sought to memorialize his relationship with the Odawa, but the representation ultimately cements Native people in time. Moreover, the monument was commissioned in the same period that violence against Native people was still ongoing in the West and Native children were being sent to Indian boarding schools. The creation of representations like these allowed settlers to romanticize Native people and think of them as entirely historical, while ignoring the ongoing atrocities against them.  Representations (and misrepresentations) of Native history and people are present across public art and architecture in Chicago. Other aspects of the built environment feature colonial narratives that marginalize Native people or erase them altogether. On this map, we have selected a examples of iconography to feature, but you can see a full map of many more sites across Chicago here.

These distinctive “corncob” look of the Marina City Towers were designed by Bertrand Goldberg and famous for the Steve McQueen Movie The Hunter where a car was launched into the Chicago River from the parking lots. In the late 1960s, several local initiatives in Chicago sought to create advocacy campaigns that resonated with the Red Power Movement, a term used to describe the explosion of Indigenous activism across the country throughout the late 1960s and 1970s. In 1969, the Native American Committee (NAC) formed within the Chicago American Indian Center to support Red Power activism. In 1970, NAC led an occupation of the Chicago Bureau of Indian Affairs Office and also set up teepees near Wrigley Field to protest the eviction of Carol Warrington (Menominee) and her children. Even after the police forced them out, some kept protesting and started calling themselves the Chicago Indian Village (CIV). The CIV was led by Mike Chosa and Betty Jack Chosa, siblings from the Lac de Flambeau Ojibwe reservation in Wisconsin who came to Chicago during relocation.  Over the next two years, the CIV occupied several important places across the Chicagoland area. This included a demonstration on November 25, 1971 in front of Marina City to protest the inadequate housing for Native people in Chicago. Protestors ate dry crackers, a dramatization of a Thanksgiving 'feast,' to demonstrate the necessity of their demands during a press conference. The protest took place at Marina City because Charles Swibel, then director of the Chicago Housing Authority, maintained a residence there. According to Chosa and other protesters, Swibel had refused to provide a public list of available housing for Native Chicagoans in the Uptown neighborhood despite the release of similar lists to other non-Native residents and organizations.  The CIV continued to stage protests through 1972, many times co-organizing with groups like the Black Panther Party and the Rainbow Coalition. Many of their actions included the occupation of abandoned federal land, which was a tactic used by other Red Power organizations.  From the corner of Hubbard and State, proceed 3 blocks west on Hubbard, then turn left on LaSalle for one block before stopping at the corner of Kinzie and LaSalle (a total of .3 miles). If you walked back to the south side of the river to take one of the ramps down to the Chicago Riverwalk, proceed back up the ramp to Upper Wacker and cross the LaSalle Bridge to access the intersection of Kinzie and LaSalle.

Listed in the Chicago American Indian Service Directory as one of the "American Indian Owned and Operated Businesses in the Chicago and Metropolitan Areas" the Chicago Indian Artist's Guild had Sharon Skolnick (Fort Sill Apache) as its proprietor. In the 1970’s it had a gallery on the fourth floor of the American Indian Center on Wilson. Skolnick also founded the Okee-Chee Wild Horse Gallery in Andersonville to continue to highlight the work of Native artists within Chicago.

The Chicago Indian Village (CIV) was formed in 1970 after Carol Warrington, a Menominee mother, was evicted from her apartment with her six children on May 5, 1970 after she refused to pay her rent until her landlord improved the apartment's living conditions. Members of the Native American Committee (NAC) decided to support Warrington and stage a larger protest on the poor housing conditions Native people were facing around the city. After they borrowed a large teepee used by the American Indian Center for powwows, they set up a protest between North Seminary and West Waveland Avenue next to Wrigley Stadium and in view of Warrington's building. Others in the Chicago Native community joined in solidarity, bringing tents and joining the demonstration.  About a month into the protest, Mike Chosa (Ojibwe) split from NAC to form his own organization, the Chicago Indian Village (CIV), with Warrington, his sister Betty Jack (Ojibwe), and others. Chosa became the center of media coverage on CIV along with Warrington, facing praise and criticism for the approaches the organization took. Some members of the NAC and AIC began to critique the continued protest, but to Chosa and those that stayed, they had found a way to draw direct attention to housing issues. This split demonstrated the different ways people within the Chicago Native community believed was the best path forward for Native activism. It was also a reflection of a national debate among Native activists and showed the diversity of issues Native communities faced.  At the original CIV site, members of the village and its cycle of supporters witnessed a wedding, numerous community gatherings, and the presence of police and reporters. CIV went on to hold twelve separate rallies and occupations across Chicago and its suburbs between 1970 and 1972. They advocated for affordable housing, as well as educational and employment opportunities for Native people living in Chicago.

During the summer of 1832, Sauk leader Black Hawk and his community of mostly women and children returned to their ancestral homeland in northern Illinois from Iowa Indian Territory. Having faced severe oppression and the destruction of their crops in Iowa, Black Hawk and his followers returned home to plant corn. Neshnabé peoples were split over whether to support Black Hawk’s defiance of U.S. removal orders. Some housed and sheltered his people; others saw him as a threat to their already tenuous relationship with the Americans, and worried that an alliance with him would lead to their forced removal without compensation. Over the course of the summer, the fear and resentment already present among settlers since the War of 1812 built to a fever pitch. The State of Illinois formed a militia to hunt Black Hawk joined by settlers like Abraham Lincoln but also Neshnabé people like Billy Caldwell and Alexander Robinson. In the end, General Winfield Scott brought American troops from Virginia to hunt Black Hawk. His troops pursued the band and routed them back to the Mississippi River where they were massacred while trying to flee. This conflict has come to be known as the Black Hawk War. During the months of conflict, Neshnabé people and settlers alike fled to Chicago in fear of being caught up in the conflict. Others were ordered to leave their homes and go to the refugee camp to avoid being identified as “hostile Indians” and killed. Many of these refugees camped as close as possible to Fort Dearborn as they waited for the US military to arrive. When Winfield Scott’s troops arrived in July, they brought cholera to Chicago for the first time, a water-born disease that would kill thousands of Chicagoans over the course of the 1800s. The refugees camping outside of Fort Dearborn faced danger from both war and disease. Though the events of the Black Hawk War occurred outside Chicago, the war had a significant impact on the subsequent removal of Neshnabé people and the founding of Chicago. American leaders used the violence of the war as justification for why all Native people must be removed and threatened that if Neshnabé people did not negotiate treaties for removal, they could face violence. In the wake of the recent massacre of Black Hawk’s community, Native leaders knew these threats to be sincere.  There is a duplicate point for this site on the Downtown Walking Tour

The Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR) at Northwestern University was founded in 2014 as a larger movement of initiatives within Northwestern University that has worked to strengthen the relationship between Northwestern and Native American communities. These initiatives include the John Evans Study Committee, the Native American Outreach and Inclusion Task Force, the Native American Leadership Council, and student participation in projects for the Chicago Native community.

When Fort Dearborn was built in 1803, it was a military outpost in a landscape still occupied and controlled by Native people. The fort sat across the Chicago River from the fur trading post and was built within only six square miles of land that had been ceded in the 1795 Treaty of Greenville. All other land surrounding those six miles was still owned by Native people until future treaty cessions in 1816. In the decade after the fort was built, Neshnabé people living in the area began to increasingly see it as a threat to their land and lifeways. These groups contested the Treaty of Greenville and argued that no representatives from Chicago were present at the treaty signing, and they grew increasingly frustrated with white settlers who had begun to farm the land and disrupt the environment that Native people had long maintained. These tensions erupted in the Battle of Fort Dearborn. After the battle, Fort Dearborn was raided for what supplies had not been destroyed and the building was burned to the ground. The Neshnabé people who lived and traded in the area continued to do so with some non-Native relatives. Beyond the mouth of the river, the labor of the Potawatomi, Odawa Sauk, Ho-Chunk, Myaamia, and Kickapoo people made the fur industry in the city immensely profitable. When the Americans returned to Chicago in 1816 and rebuilt Fort Dearborn, they once again entered an already thriving market.

Andrea Carlson’s mural along the Chicago rivier waterfront reminds us “Bodéwadmikik ėthë yéyék/You are on Potawatomi Land.” Created in June 2021 and displayed until 2024, Carlson’s (oil on canvas) mural spanned across five banners and measured 15 feet high and 266 feet long. The land beneath the banner is part of Chicago's lakefill: land that was added to the original lakeshore beginning in the 19th century, after treaties ceding the land up to the lake were signed. Because this land did not exist when the treaties were signed, it remains unceded. In 1917, the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi sued the city for this land, in a case (Williams v. City of Chicago) that went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled against the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi.  In light of the 2020 protests which removed two Christopher Columbus from Chicago, and inspired by the Williams v. City of Chicago (1917), Carlson wanted to create a reminder and declaration of the original inhabitants and their ongoing presence within Chicago. This mural, not only created by a Native artist, but also in community with the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, draws attention to the man-made lakefront as a breach of the treaty agreement. By declaring and reminding audiences that we are on Potawatomi land, Carlson pulls us to recognize that we reside not only on land which was stolen but also that colonial occupation continues today. By placing “You are on Potawatomi Land” in the present tense, she stresses that Indigenous people retain their connections to this place and perpetually belong here.  Representations (and misrepresentations) of Native history and people are present across public art and architecture in Chicago. Other aspects of the built environment feature colonial narratives that marginalize Native people or erase them altogether. On this map, we have selected a examples of iconography to feature, but you can see a full map of many more sites across Chicago here.  There is a duplicate point for this site on the Downtown Walking Tour

Looking northwest across the bridge we can see Merchandise Mart, a well known commercial building, typically known for its Art Deco design and the fact that it was built by Marshall Field & Co and owned by the Kennedy family for a number of years. However, what many don't know is that it was also the site of a Wea Summer Village and a Jesuit Mission from 1696 to 1702. The village, which included Wea people (who were part of the larger Myaamia group at that time), as well as Kaskaskia and Peoria people, pre-dated the Jesuit mission. Jesuits hoping to convert Native people knew that they had to integrate into existing Native communities to have any hope of success, and Native people had long-standing practices of welcoming newcomers into their villages. Today, Peoria, Kaskaskia, and Wea people are recognized within the Peoria Nation of Oklahoma, and Myaamia people are recognized as the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. Both of these communities continue to use a dictionary that was created at this mission for language revitalization efforts.  Several centuries later, after Merchandise Mart was built, it also served as the home of the Office of Indian Affairs (OIA) (today called the Bureau of Indian Affairs) from 1942 to 1947. During this time, delegates from the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine Nation, the Fort Belknap Nation, the Rosebud Sioux Nation, the Uintah and Ouray Nation, the Osage Nation, and the Blackfeet Nation all visited the OIA in Chicago. Though the OIA moved back to Washington D.C. in 1947, the voluntary relocation program that designated Chicago as a relocation city and brought thousands of Native people here was founded just five years later in 1952.  Proceed south two blocks on La Salle, then turn left on Randolph, stopping at the corner of Randolph and Clark in front of the Thompson Center.

The Bo-Sho-Nee-Gee Drop-In Center was created by St. Augustine’s Center for American Indians in 1973 to expand on the services they could provide to the Native community. Administrators, case workers, and other leadership within St. Augustine’s saw the need for a program to help individuals struggling with alcoholism and addiction. Bo-Sho-Nee-Gee began as a program to combat one issue within the community, but it soon expanded to provide other services including meals and counseling. Its efforts towards food security for community members also included students from the Institute of Native American Development (INAD) who received assistance while attending Truman College.