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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

Native peoples from around the United States came to work at the 1933 World's Fair. Many lived and worked in the American Indian Village where they worked as performers. Performers were paid as much as $1.75 per day with children also working for $0.40 per day. The "Winnebago Village" (Ho Chunk) included at least seventy-five Ho Chunk people from Wisconsin. Many had performed before and after at the Wisconsin Dells where performance of Native identity became an ongoing attraction. By 1933, performance of Native identity had become popular outside of the World's Fair in vaudeville and at tourist sites. Performers like Chief Eagle Feather (Cherokee) promoted themselves by creating a perception of authenticity in their work that was popular among audiences.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

St. Augustine’s Center for American Indians was founded by Father Peter John Powell in 1961 after he began assisting Native people who had moved to Chicago through the Bureau of Indian Affairs's Voluntary Urban Relocation program (1952-1972). Powell started providing this assistance out of St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church on Chicago’s West Side in the mid-1950s, and prior to this, he had been involved with the American Indian Center as both a supporter and member of the board of directors.  St. Augustine’s began as a series of assistance programs and in its first few years handled over 10,000 cases that included grocery, employment, lodging, clothing, and general assistance for Native families or individuals. It also provided tutoring and cultural programs. After Father Powell resigned from the position of Director of St. Augustine’s in 1971, the position was taken up by members of the Chicago Native community. Board members and directors included Matthew Pilcher (Ho-Chunk), Amy Skenandore (Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican), Elmira McClure (Ojibwe), and Arlene R. Williams (Oneida). Under Amy Skenandore (Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican), Bo-Sho-Ne-Gee Drop-In Center was founded under the umbrella of service provided by St. Augustine's to assist community members struggling with addiction and food security. St. Augustine’s also continued to assist people in receiving healthcare and sponsored community events like baby showers. St. Augustine’s continued to serve the Chicago Native community until 2006. When it closed, it had served over 6,000 Native families.

"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 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 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 Midway was separated from the main area of the 1893 World’s Fair, the “White City,” in Jackson Park. It was filled with privately run exhibits popular for their entertainment value as opposed to the state-sponsored exhibits. This is the site of “T. R. Roddy’s American Indian Village.” Ho-Chunk, Potawatomi, and Oceti Sakowin people from Black River Falls, Wisconsin performed here on the Midway during the fair. While other Midway exhibits were known for profiting from dangerous racial stereotypes, the performers at this exhibit reported better treatment and higher pay than the official exhibits. This exhibit demonstrates the complicated experiences that Native people at the 1893 World’s Fair had to navigate.

The Chicago American Indian Center was created in 1953, at a time of great change for the Chicago Native community. Native peoples 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 in a rented space on LaSalle Drive in late 1953.  At the LaSalle 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. Leaders within the American Indian Center and the Chicago Native community including Ben Bearskin, Frank Fastwolf, Tom Greenwood, Dorothy Holstein, Robinson Johnson, Willard LaMere, and many others participated in the planning for the famed Chicago American Indian Conference in July 1961 at the University of Chicago. The conference drew Native activists from across country to Chicago and resulted in drafting The Declaration of Indian Purpose, a document outlining the needs and priorities of Native communities that was delivered to President Kennedy.  In 1963, the center moved to North Broadway for several years, before moving to Uptown on West Wilson Avenue in 1967. Here the Center continued to host annual powwows, hold gatherings, develop programs, and participate in activism that asserted the presence of Native peoples in the city. In 2017, the American Indian Center moved out of Uptown and into its current location in Albany Park.   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.

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

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 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.

The Battle of Fort Dearborn did not occur at the fort, but 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 included in stories of Chicago’s founding, but rarely do these narratives include the larger context of which the battle was one part. In June of 1812, Shawnee leader Tecumseh was coordinating an intertribal resistance movement against American invasion, and he 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. In the midst of this colonial conflict, many Native leaders, including Tecumseh and Chicago Potawatomi leader Main Poc, chose to ally with the British, hoping that the defeat of the Americans would stop the increasing flood of white settlers into Native lands. Knowing this, the commander of Fort Dearborn, Captain Nathan Heald, organized a meeting with Potawatomi leaders on August 15, 1812 to negotiate the American surrender of the fort and secure their safe passage to Fort Wayne (in modern-day Indiana). They came to an agreement, but the US forces instantly went back on their word and destroyed the supplies they had agreed to distribute to the Potawatomi. The night before the battle, a wampum belt was delivered to Potawatomi leader Mad Sturgeon signaling war should begin. Since those at Fort Dearborn had been ordered to evacuate the next day, it was an ideal time to attack the American garrison and the betrayal by Heald had further angered Potawatomi leadership.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. Until very recently, Chicagoans have mistakenly called the events that followed a massacre, but most historians now call it the Battle of Fort Dearborn, in part because of its place within the larger War of 1812 and Tecumseh’s resistance movement.

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 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.

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.

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 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 Newberry Library is a cultural institution whose collections and exhibitions offer a portal to more than six centuries of human history. Among its many collections, the Newberry is home to the Edward E. Ayer American Indian and Indigenous Studies Collection, which includes thousands of print and manuscript materials related to American Indian and Indigenous people. The collection includes content on Indigenous people in North and South America from pole to pole, coast to coast, and beyond into the Pacific. In 1972, Métis author and activist D'Arcy McNickle helped found the Center for the History of the American Indian at the library, which aimed to promote the research of Native American history, increase access to the collection for Native communities, and revise the ways Native peoples had been misrepresented in these histories. The center was later renamed the D'Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, and has provided training to graduate students and presented public programming and project, often in collaboration with the Chicago Native community. Several of its current projects aim toward expanding the accessibility of its collections to tribal communities and collaborating with the Native communities to align with Native perspectives, knowledge systems, and cultural practices. Merge this text with the above: Initially founded in 1972 as the Center for the History of the American Indian, the D’Arcy McMickle Center was established to promote the research of Native American history and revise the ways Native peoples have been misrepresented in these histories. Located within the Newberry Library in Chicago it is named after Salish Kootenai activist, writer, and its first director D’Arcy McNickle. Since its founding the Center has provided training in American Indian and Indigenous Studies to students and presented public programming for the Chicago Native community. Several of its current projects aim toward expanding the accessibility of its collections to tribal communities and collaborating with the Native communities to align with Native perspectives, knowledge systems, and cultural practices.

The California Indian Manpower Consortium, Inc. (CIMC) was founded in 1978 to promote the social welfare, economic development, and educational needs of Native communities in California. Although the nonprofit is based in California, it has created a consortium of tribal nations, tribal communities, and organizations across the United States. As the only field office outside of California, the Chicago office is able to cater to the needs of the Chicago community. CIMC provides job training, educational training, job search or placement, leadership programs, and counseling or career planning.

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, 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.

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. Pokto Cinto is the Koasati (language of the Coushatta) translation of Serpent Twin. The effigy mound is 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. Located in Schiller Woods, Pokto Cinto marks the Des Plaines River on one end of Irving Park road and is bookended by a forthcoming Coiled Serpent mound in Horner Park.  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 which surrounds it.  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 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.

The American Indian Health Services of Chicago (AIHS), 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.

Mark Beaubien built a tavern on the South Side of the river across from Wolf Point. A canoe fairy attached by rope connected the tavern to the houses across the river making it Chicago’s first bridge. He later named it the Sauganash Hotel after Sauganash (Billy Caldwell) a significant Potawatomi leader who helped negotiate the 1829, 1832, and 1833 treaties. Caldwell was born to a Mohawk mother and British father, but was integrated into Potawatomi kinship networks through marriage. He was a skilled negotiator who could successfully work with both Native and American leaders, and he aimed to arrange fair payment and new land for his people in the face of forced removal from the Chicago region. He was given a plot of land in the 1829 treaty on the northwest side of the city that now makes up the Edgebrook and Sauganash neighborhoods, the latter of which bears his name. However, when forced removal came in 1835, he led his people west.

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.

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.”

This beautiful bricolage mosaic mural was created in 2009 by Cynthia Weiss, Tracy Van Duinen, and Todd Osborne after being commissioned by 48th Ward Alderman Mary Ann Smith. Prior to its construction, Weiss, Duinen and Todd facilitated community discussions with various Native community members and organizations in Chicago to discuss how they want to be represented. These discussions spanned across two years before the current design was solidified. The location of the mural was also selected deliberately for how roads like Rodgers, Broadway, and even the general area around the mural’s location, were all former Native trails.  The mural is intended to represent the past and current Native American community in Chicago, but deliberately avoided generalizing “Indian culture.” The imagery on the mural seeks to connect generations of the Indigenous community by incorporating figures from traditional culture alongside ‘gaps’ in the mural in which mirror fragments allow the viewer to reflect how they too occupy a part within this greater art piece and community.   The mural’s name was inspired by Ojibwe artist E. Donald “Eddy” Two-Rivers’ poem “Indian Land Dancing.” Learn more about E. Donald Two-Rivers 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 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.

The Tunica-Biloxi Chicago Branch Office 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Bureau of Indian Affairs created a replica of an Indian boarding school on the 1893 World’s Fair grounds. The United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs Thomas Morgan saw the fair as an opportunity to promote Indian boarding schools to the world. He saw the Indian school and anthropology exhibits as contrasting images that illustrated his white supremacist ideology regarding Indigenous people, stating: “the new \[the indian school building exhibit] and the old \[the Anthropology exhibit] can be sharply contrasted and though the old may attract popular attention by its picturesqueness the new will impress the thoughtful with the hopefulness of the outlook and the wisdom, as well as fairness, of extending to the weaker the helpful hand of the stronger race.”  Morgan’s patriarchal vision of Indian boarding schools worked in tandem with the Anthropology exhibit overseen by Harvard Anthropologist Frederic Putnam to advance the racist policy of the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs. In the Indian school building exhibit, school children pretended to take classes and perform school activities. They were not paid for their performances. Infamous Carlisle Institute leader Richard Pratt refused to bring his students to the exhibit because of its association with anthropologists, who he saw as opposing his assimilationist vision.