In 1833, representatives from the Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Odawa nations were called to Chicago to negotiate additional land cessions in the Midwest. 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 US was not at war with the Neshnabé people, but they took advantage of the outrage over the Black Hawk War to force a treaty with them, passing a law that allowed commissioners to purchase all the remaining land held by Neshnabé people in the lower Lake Michigan area. In September of 1833, hundreds of Neshnabé people arrived in Chicago to negotiate the cession of land. 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. 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 almost $1,000,000 listed in the treaty. 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. You can explore these routes further in the project’s Removal Map.

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.

The [Chicago Public Schools (CPS) American Indian Education Program](https://www.cps.edu/services-and-supports/language-and-cultural-supports/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.

On August 18th, 1835, roughly 5,000 Potawatomi converged at the Agency House to receive their final annuity payment from the 1833 Treaty of Chicago. At the conclusion of this meeting, the Potawatomi began singing and drumming, and approximately 800 began to dance as a procession formed. With their hair done in a roached style and “decorated with a profusion of hawk’s and eagle’s feathers, some strung together so as to extend nearly to the ground,” Potawatomi mourners began dancing with their weapons in-hand as myriad more beat drums, sticks, and other hollow objects together. Judge John Dean Caton, a resident of Chicago at the time of the procession, recounted before an audience 35 years later at the Chicago Historical Society. As Caton writes, “[f]oreheads, cheeks, and noses were covered with curved stripes of red vermilion, which were edged with black points… [they were] principally armed with tomahawks and clubs… [and] were led (sic) by what answered for a band of music…” From the Council House they marched west, dancing as they moved along the Chicago riverfront “stopping in front of every house they passed,” before crossing the North Branch of the river. After crossing the bridge, the procession made its way south before again crossing the South Branch on the Corduroy Bridge (located roughly at the site of the present-day Lake street bridge). As they crossed, the procession halted in front of the Sauganash Hotel as its patrons stared in awe. The processioners continued to dance, and from the hotel windows, Caton stated that he and the other patrons could see the entirety of the procession as it snaked across the South Branch back up to the North Branch bridge. Caton and other onlookers misinterpreted this procession as a “war dance,” but in fact, it was a mourning procession that served as a visible act of defiance against Chicago’s alleged “founders.” It illustrates that Neshnabé people did not willingly cede the land on Lake Michigan’s shores. It was taken from them, and they protested their loss.

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.

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.

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.

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 [Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative (CAICC)](https://chicagoaicc.com/) 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](https://chicagoaicc.com/native-american-history-hb1633-school-dress-policy-sb1446/): 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.

Founded in 2007 by Dr. Dorene Wiese (White Earth Band Ojibwe), the [American Indian Association of Illinois (AIAI)](https://www.chicago-american-indian-edu.org/) 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 [Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR)](https://cnair.northwestern.edu/) 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.

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.

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.

The [Gichigamiin Indigenous Nations Museum](https://gichigamiin-museum.org/) in Chicago was founded in 1977 after John and Betty Seabury Mitchell donated their collection of Native American artifacts to Kendall College before the museum became its own institution in 2006. It's original name was the Green Bay Trading Co, and until 2024, it was known as the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian. This collection contained objects from tribal nations across North America, leading the initial mission of the museum to focus on the history and diversity of all tribes to match the expansive the collection. After consulting with Native community members in Chicago and throughout the Great Lakes, the museum adjusted this mission to focus more on the histories of Chicago’s Native community and Tribal Nations in the Great Lakes Region of the United States and Canada. It's 2024 renaming reflects this new focus, and the Gichigamiin Indigenous Nations Museum continues to work alongside other organizations to highlight Native representation in literature, music, and art in its exhibits and projects.

"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](https://felt.com/map/Iconography-Map-5qLDiEuoRFanMm87gPzO7C?loc=41.9384,-87.9581,10.99z&share=1).

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.

By the 1893 World’s Fair, Sitting Bull (Lakota) was a national celebrity. He had defeated Custer's forces in the Battle of Little Bighorn. He was then forced to go on tour with Bill Cody's Wild West Shows where he was paid fifty dollars a week as a performer. He was murdered by police in a raid three years before the World's Fair, but this building purporting to be his “cabin” was an attempt to profit from his image.

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.

The [Chicago American Indian Center](https://aicchicago.org/) 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.

Prior to Jean Baptiste Point du Sable’s arrival in Chicago sometime in the 1780s, Native people long used what is now called Chicago as a hub for trade. DuSable, likely born before 1750 in what is now the nation of Haiti, was a newcomer in this established Native world. In order to join that existing trade network, he had to integrate himself into existing relational networks (often called kinship) and build trust with Native people. To do so, he married Kitihawa, a Potawatomi woman who would become essential in his ability to safely and successfully trade and travel through the region. It is likely that Kitihawa would have instructed him about Indigenous protocols for trade. She also probably served as a translator and language instructor for his conversations with other traders (which would mostly have been conducted in Neshnabémwen, the language of the Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Odawa people). Together, they built a home and trading post here in 1789, making the mouth of the Chicago River an even more valuable trading site that rivaled those on the St. Joseph River and at Kekionga (near present-day Fort Wayne, IN). In 1800, the house was acquired by John Kinzie, a fur trader of Scots-Irish descent born in Quebec City, and by 1831, it included as many as five rooms, a front green space, and a small farm in the back with a dairy, bake-house, lodging-house, and stables. Though the Northwest Ordinance outlawed slavery, the Kinzies kept enslaved people in bondage on the property. When the War of 1812 made the Chicago trading post untenable, the Kinzies abandoned it. Another Potawatomi woman, Archange Ouillemette, lived next door and managed the farm and property before the Kinzies returned after the war. *There is a duplicate point for this site on the Downtown Walking Tour*

Our tour begins at the site where the "You Are On Potawatomi Land" banner was displayed from 2021 to 2024. We have intentionally started this tour with the present, to emphasize that although Native people were forcibly removed from this place, the many tribes who still consider Chicago to be part of their ancestral homelands, still maintain connections to this place. These include the Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Odawa, the many tribes within the Illinois Confederation, and the Myaamia, Ho-Chunk, Sauk, Meskwaki, Menominee, Kickapoo, and Mascouten. This mural, created by Ojibwe artist Andrea Carlson in 2021, highlights these ongoing connections. Land in Chicago was ceded through four treaties, but the land on which we stand and over which this mural stood did not exist when those treaties we're signed. In fact, the majority of the land east of Michigan avenue did not exist when those treaties were signed, and thus remains unceded. Originally, the Chicago River curved sharply, forming a protective sandbar ideal for canoes and wildlife. But after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the land was extended into the lake, creating new territory that was not covered by the treaties. In 1917, the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi sued for this land, though the Supreme Court ruled against them. A more recent victory occurred in April 2024 when the Prairie Band of Potawatomi reclaimed 130 acres of land in DeKalb County that was illegally sold, marking a significant moment in the ongoing struggle for land justice. The Prairie Band of Potawatomi is the first federally-recognized tribal nation in Illinois. *Proceed north about .1 miles across the DuSable bridge to the northeast corner, where you will see the Discoverers relief. On you way across, notice the other plaque dedicated to Marquette and Joliet.*

This statue of French explorer and fur trader Robert Cavelier de La Salle was created by artist Count Jacques de la Liang and commissioned by Lambert Tree in 1889. Originally casted in bronze in Belgium and transported to Chicago, this statue commemorates La Salle as he "claims" what is now known as Louisiana in 1682 and searched for the mouth of the Mississippi River. Although unable to reach where the Mississippi flows into the Gulf of Mexico, he extended French claims into Texas, enabling the later US claim following the Louisiana Purchase. Lambert Tree, apart from commissioning another Chicago monument, Cyrus Dallin’s “A Signal of Peace,” also created artist studios hoping to retain visiting artists from the Chicago’s World Fair. 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](https://felt.com/map/Iconography-Map-5qLDiEuoRFanMm87gPzO7C?loc=41.9384,-87.9581,10.99z&share=1).

Founded in the 1970s, the [Native American Support Program (NASP)](https://nasp.uic.edu/) 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.

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](https://felt.com/map/Chicagoland-Village-Site-Map-MlC9A1aS5T9AKwafrD8Eq7DB?loc=41.789,-89.048,8.01z&share=1).

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](https://felt.com/map/Iconography-Map-5qLDiEuoRFanMm87gPzO7C?loc=41.9384,-87.9581,10.99z&share=1).

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.*

A full-scale replica of Fort Dearborn was constructed for the 1933 World's Fair. The fort’s blockhouse and barracks were built on the fair's Midway, overlooking Lake Michigan at the end of 26th Street. Fort Dearborn was used as a symbol of the colonial era of Chicago during the 1903 Chicago Centennial Celebration where the first Fort Dearborn replica was constructed. Native actors, along with white actors portraying colonial soldiers and pioneers, were hired for the Fort Dearborn exhibit. While that dynamic reified an adversarial image of Native people, it created a space where local Native people could tell stories directly to fair visitors. Some of the only Indigenous people who lived in Chicago to work at the fair were hired for the Fort Dearborn exhibit. They posed for photos and worked as guides at Fort Dearborn–sharing stories of Indigenous history. To learn more about the role of Fort Dearborn in Chicago’s Indigenous history, see the “[Re-Thinking Chicago’s Founding City Story](https://map.indigenous-chicago.org/li/3b070b7b-ecba-4eef-85d7-e161890a0839).”

The American Indian Gift Store was among the businesses promoted as “American Indian owned and operated” in the 1982 Chicago American Indian Community Service Directory. Owned by Chee Joe Spencer, a silversmith, it was also listed in the Native American business section in the Chicago Tribune in 1990, demonstrating some acknowledgement of the importance of representation or the continued presence of a Native-owned businesses.

The [American Indian Health Services of Chicago (AIHS)](https://aihschgo.org/), began as a non-profit in 1974 and has continued to be a pillar of the Chicago Native community. It is “dedicated to providing quality culturally competent healthcare to the American Indian and Alaska Native community and other underserved populations.” AIHS offers services including gatherings focusing on mental health, its Senior Socials, counseling services, and general community outreach. These range from their Diabetes Talking Circle, Wellbriety Meetings, a storytelling series, Men’s Talking Circle, and their powwows.  AIHS’s existence and a continued need for their services within the community also show a larger issue that impacts Native American communities: access to quality and knowledgeable healthcare. For Native people who participated in the Bureau of Indian Affairs's voluntary relocation program in the mid-twentieth century and struggled to find consistent work or support from the BIA, affordable healthcare or health insurance was difficult to find without community support. The lack of culturally competent care outside of AIHS and community based efforts had been and continues to be a struggle for Native peoples, especially Native women in cities.   The founding of AIHS followed the same mission as earlier organizations, to provide whatever the Chicago Native community needed. After fifty years of serving the community, AIHS continues to adapt to and serve all Natives of Chicago. 

Founded by Donald 'Eddy' Two-Rivers and Beverly Moeser in the early 1990s, the Red Path Theatre Company originated within the Institute of Native American Development at Truman College. It wrote, produced, and performed plays in Truman College’s theater and in theaters through the Midwest. It was the only Native American owned theater company in Chicago throughout the 1990s, and sponsored Native art and cultural events such as the First Nations Annual Film and Video Festival. They promoted Chicago as a place Native art was created and appreciated. 

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.

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.

Commissioned in 1963, this untitled sculpture by Picasso has become a famous Chicago landmark. However, it is also the site of an encampment for Neshnabé (Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Odawa) people during the 1832 Black Hawk War. 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 people 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. 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 war. 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. *Proceed one block south on Dearborn, then turn left and go one block east on Madison, stopping at the corner of Madison and State (.2 miles).*

The first non-Native settlers in the Chicago region were primarily explorers aligned with the Jesuits, a religious order within the Catholic Church. The order was founded in 1540 and sought to evangelize and “save the souls” of non-Christians around the world through the establishment of missions. In the Great Lakes, the Jesuits who traveled throughout the region were primarily French. Jesuit expeditions throughout the region were ordered and approved by the Catholic Church, which was closely tied to the French government. The primary purpose of Jesuit expeditions was to establish missions and evangelize Native people, but that did not stop them from noticing the land’s natural resources and its potential for settlement, trade, and exploitation. The most famous Jesuit missionaries associated with Chicago are Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet, who traveled up the Illinois River and through the Chicago portage in 1673. Marquette returned to and camped at Chicago again in 1674 after becoming ill. The vast majority of our written records from the late 17th century come from Jesuit materials, These accounts must be read with a careful eye, but they can also provide rich information about Native cultures and peoples. For example, [this passage](https://archive.org/details/jesuits59jesuuoft/page/n187/mode/2up) describes how Native people Marquette had previously encountered brought him food and supplies during his illness, including corn, pumpkins, meat, blueberries, and beaver skins, all of which were essential to his survival.

The [Tunica-Biloxi Chicago Branch Office](https://www.facebook.com/TBTCHICAGO/) is a satellite office for the Tunica- Biloxi Nation of Louisiana. In Chicago, it serves as a gathering place for both Tunica-Biloxi tribal members, as well as the broader Native community in Chicago. The office hosts both educational and cultural gatherings about a variety of subjects, including beading, language, and cooking. Members of the Tunica-Biloxi Nation have been living in Chicago for more than 100 years, even though their an ancestral lands, reservation, and governmental operations are located in Marksville, Louisiana. Tribal members in Chicago began trying to establish a satellite office in Chicago in the 1990s, but it was not until 2019 that the branch office was officially opened.

The [Caroline and Ora Smith Foundation](https://www.carolineorasmithfoundation.org/), housed in Chicago, supports opportunities for Native American girls and women in grade school to graduate programs in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). Founded by Mary Smith (Cherokee) and named after her mother and grandmother, the organization's overall mission is to facilitate a larger number of Native American women in STEM fields. Although it is based in Chicago and working with its first cohort in Chicago and Milwaukee, the Foundation is working to offer community and culturally specific programming to Native women across the United States.

In the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis, the Odawak, Ojibweg, and Potawatomi ceded a [twenty mile wide strip on the western boundary of Lake Michigan](https://felt.com/map/Chicago-Treaty-Map-I7TKoJcaQpyBgCJuz5CKKC?loc=42.145,-86.295,6.11z&share=1), ten miles north and ten miles south of the Chicago River as well as a strip of land extending to the Fox River. This treaty established the Indian Boundary Line, an invisible line that Indigenous people had to move their villages north of; but they still retained the right to hunt and fish on the ceded land. The Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi people who negotiated this treaty were hungry and in dire need of supplies due to the War of 1812 and decreasing amounts of game in the region. They agreed to this treaty in exchange for commitments from settlers to provide $1000 worth of much-needed goods annually for twelve years. In 1937, the city established this plaque at the intersection of Rogers Ave and Clark St. to commemorate the treaty. 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](https://felt.com/map/Iconography-Map-5qLDiEuoRFanMm87gPzO7C?loc=41.9384,-87.9581,10.99z&share=1).

The “Big Chief” steel and fiberglass statue stands at 30 feet tall (current world’s tallest "cigar store Indian") where Mead Ave. meets the Southwest highway in Oak Lawn. Depicting a Native American man with a headdress, the figure is shown with one arm raised covering his eyes from the sun and the other holding a bundle of sticks (possibly tobacco). Created by Wisconsin based company Creative Display, it was first bought for $14,000 by the now closed Cooke County Tobacco Warehouse. Like other so-called “Cigar Store Indians,” this iconography has been used nationally as advertisement for tobacco since the 17th century in England. Sometimes referred to as their much smaller renditions, “Virginie Men,” these tabletop statues were displayed in Eastern U.S. states to advertise tobacco sales but have since been enlarged and displayed outside of businesses for the same purpose. Since the closure of the Cook County Tobacco Warehouse in 1998, Cardinal Liquor Barn Inc. purchased the statue for $10,000. Jim Shirazi, Cardinal Liquor’s owner, has since spent over $30,000 relocating, cleaning, and restoring the statue. In 2015, Shirazi had the statue repainted, reportedly adding greater detail to the headdress plumage, retouching the buckskin traditional clothing and changing the blue sash to green. Another report remarks that since its relocation the repairs had fixed areas on the statue where it had been “pierced by arrows” while sitting on top of the Tobacco Warehouse. 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](https://felt.com/map/Iconography-Map-5qLDiEuoRFanMm87gPzO7C?loc=41.9384,-87.9581,10.99z&share=1).

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](https://felt.com/map/Iconography-Map-5qLDiEuoRFanMm87gPzO7C?loc=41.9384,-87.9581,10.99z&share=1). 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.

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.

Removal did not end the presence of Native people in Chicago or the region. While some of Chicago’s most prominent Native people–such as Archange Ouilmette and Sauganash (Billy Caldwell), removed to reservations West of the Mississippi River. Some fought removal for the rest of their lives. Chechepinquay (Alexander Robinson), who was born Odawa, moved to Chicago after the War of 1812 having lived his entire life on Lake Michigan. He was born to a Odawa mother and a Scottish father at Fort Mackinac after which he grew up in a Potawatomi community on the St. Joseph’s River. Robinson was one of a number of Native people who helped the American survivors of the Battle of Fort Dearborn, and he became involved with the fur trading business in Chicago soon after the War of 1812. He married Archange Ouilmette’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. Robinson became a significant figure in treaty negotiations in the early 1800s. He was given land and money in three different treaties in 1829, 1832, and finally, at the Treaty of Chicago in 1833. In this final treaty, he received a section of land on the Desplaines River North of Chicago. He and his wife, Catherine Chevalier, lived the rest of his life on this “reservation." He died on April 22, 1872, and his family continued to live on the property until the middle of the twentieth century.

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.

[Native American Educational Services](https://naes.info/), Inc. was founded in 1974 by the Native American Committee (NAC), an activist group that focused its efforts towards assisting Native people in Chicago with education. NAES was the first Native-controlled private college to offer a four-year degree, and it partnered with Antioch College to be able to offer an accredited baccalaureate program that still allowed Native community members to retain control over the school’s admissions, policies, and coursework. As a part of its growth NAES opened study sites for its students on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, Fort Peck Reservation, Santo Domingo Reservation, Menominee Reservation, and in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. NAES’s model combined coursework with work in community in order to prepare students to work for Native organizations and positively impact Native people, and graduates of the college were and continue to be leaders in the Chicago Native community and within their tribal nations.  After losing accreditation in 2005, NAES College became affiliated with Eastern Illinois University to support Native American students who sought higher education. After this collaboration ended, the organization adapted to its current form as Native American Educational Services, Inc. and continues to promote community-based education while collaborating with the American Indian Association of Illinois. 

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).

Harvard Anthropologist Frederic Putnam was in charge of the official narrative of Indigenous America at the 1893 World's Fair. He used the Anthropology Building and the American Indian Village (different from the one on the Midway) to describe Native peoples' lives as entirely in the past. This was directly contradicted by the dozens of Native people working at his exhibits and other places in the park. The American Indian Village included sixteen Kwak-waka’wakw people from the Northwest Coast sponsored by Canada, nine Penobscot people from Maine, fifteen Haudenosaunee people in longhouses sponsored by New York, and five Diné people from Colorado. The Native people in the American Indian Village had very different experiences from each other. Some were paid decently and made money selling goods. Others, like the Diné people, were unpaid by their host state, Colorado, and were taken advantage of by the agents who brought them to Chicago.

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 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.

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.

Chicago is, and has always been a Native place. However, many traditional tours of the city continue to erase, or misrepresent Indigenous history. This walking tour takes users across more than five centuries of Native history, connecting Indigenous people to some of Chicago's most famous landmarks, and recentering Native people and perspectives where they have been erased or marginalized. The tour is approximately 2 miles and will take about 1.5 hours to complete. It begins at the southeast corner of DuSable Bridge and ends at the "Defense" relief sculpture, on the southwest corner of DuSable Bridge.

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).*