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 [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.

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. <br> <br> 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.

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. <br> <br> 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. <br> <br> 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. <br> <br> 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 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. <br> <br> 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. <br> <br> 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. <br> <br> In 1965 the Indian Council Fire was dissolved for failure to file the 1964 annual report and pay the required fee. Although quickly reinstated, there were conflicts within the organization and previous members regarding the merger of the Indian Council Fire organization with two organizations (Indian Council Fire Publications Inc. and Indian Achievement award) started by previous ICF president, Marion E. Gridley. These conflicts are well recorded within the correspondence and position paper written by the Board of Directors of the ICF at the time.

This 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. <br> <br> 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 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. <br> <br> 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. <br> <br> 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. <br> <br> 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. <br> <br> *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).*

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.<br> <br> 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.<br> <br> 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.

Andrea Carlson’s mural along the Chicago rivier waterfront reminds us “Bodéwadmikik ėthë yéyék/You are on Potawatomi Land.” Created in June 2021 and displayed until 2024, Carlson’s (oil on canvas) mural spanned across five banners and measured 15 feet high and 266 feet long. The land beneath the banner is part of Chicago's [lakefill](https://www.whoselakefront.com/lakefill): land that was added to the original lakeshore beginning in the 19th century, after treaties ceding the land up to the lake were signed. Because this land did not exist when the treaties were signed, it remains unceded. In 1917, the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi sued the city for this land, in a case (Williams v. City of Chicago) that went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled against the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi. <br> <br> In light of the 2020 protests which removed two Christopher Columbus from Chicago, and inspired by the Williams v. City of Chicago (1917), Carlson wanted to create a reminder and declaration of the original inhabitants and their ongoing presence within Chicago. This mural, not only created by a Native artist, but also in community with the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, draws attention to the man-made lakefront as a breach of the treaty agreement. By declaring and reminding audiences that we are on Potawatomi land, Carlson pulls us to recognize that we reside not only on land which was stolen but also that colonial occupation continues today. By placing “You are on Potawatomi Land” in the present tense, she stresses that Indigenous people retain their connections to this place and perpetually belong here. <br> <br> 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=41.8713,-87.8547,10.79z&share=1). <br> <br> *There is a duplicate point for this site on the Downtown Walking Tour*

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. <br> <br> 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. <br> <br> 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. <br> <br> 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. <br> <br> 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).

The Institute for Native American Development (INAD) was founded in 1979 after Truman College received a $27,920 grant from the Illinois State Board of Education's Department of Adult, Vocational, and Technical Education. Michael Limas (Diné) proposed the grant and acted as INAD's first director. Under Limas's leadership and INAD's mostly Native staff, the previously low enrollment of Native students in the Chicago City College system gradually rose. <br> <br> INAD focused on the specific circumstances each student faced to attend college, and organized from this approach within the typical structures of a college. Despite facing budget cuts that limited the extent of support they could offer, the program focused on academic counseling, financial aid, and job placement. By the time INAD was shut down and merged with other services to help students of all backgrounds in 2002, it had enabled almost 2,300 Native people to attend Truman College. 

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. <br> <br> 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. <br> <br> 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=41.8713,-87.8547,10.79z&share=1).

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.” <br> <br> 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.

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 [Newberry Library](https://www.newberry.org/) 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](https://www.newberry.org/collection/subjects/american-indian-and-indigenous-studies), 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](https://www.newberry.org/research/research-centers/mcnickle-center), 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 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 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.

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. <br> <br> 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.<br> <br> 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. <br> <br> *There is a duplicate point for this site on the Downtown Walking Tour*

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

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. <br> <br> 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.

The [Native American Chamber of Commerce of Illinois (NACC-IL)](https://www.nacc-il.org/) 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 [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.

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. <br> <br> 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. <br> <br> 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. <br> <br> 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. <br> <br> 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.<br>

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.

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.<br> <br> 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.

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 <br> Alfred Theodore Andreas, *History of Chicago: From the Earliest Period to the Present Time* (Chicago: A. T. Andreas, 1884)<br> Ann Durkin Keating, *Rising up from Indian Country: The Battle of Fort Dearborn and the Birth of Chicago* (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2012)<br> Juliette Kinzie, *Wau-Bun, the “Early Day” in the North-West* (New York: Derby & Jackson, 1856) <br> Jean M. O'Brien, *Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England* (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010) <br> Terry Straus, ed., *Indians of the Chicago Area* (Chicago, Ill: NAES College, 1990).

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. <br> <br> 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.

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

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.<br> 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.<br> 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.<br> Sources:<br> Rosalyn R. LaPier and David Beck, *City Indian: Native American Activism in Chicago, 1893-1934* (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015).<br> David Beck, *Unfair Labor?: American Indians and the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago* (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019).<br> 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.<br> 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.<br>

The Native American Committee (NAC) first formed in 1969 within the American Indian Center to support activism connected to and within the Red Power Movement in Native American communities throughout the United States and Chicago. One of their first actions that received attention from non-Native media was a sit-in at the Bureau of Indian Affairs Chicago Field Office on March 24, 1970 in solidarity with the second Occupation of Alcatraz by the Indians of All-Tribes and to protest Chicago-specific issues including housing, education, and jobs. <br> <br> Members of NAC formally separated the organization from the American Indian Center after disagreements on leadership and the direction of the Center after the death of its director Robert Rietz in 1972. After this separation, NAC dedicated itself to focusing on improving the quality and cultural grounding of Native education in Chicago through the establishment of three different Native education institutions. These included Little Bighorn High School (LBHS), O-Wai-Ya-Wa Elmentary School, and the Native American Educational Services (NAES) College in 1974. <br> <br> NAC leadership also extended the services they provided to the community through a newsletter called the *Red Letter*,  but the grounding of NAC came from a coalition of younger and older generations of Native community members that prioritized educational programming. The legacy of NAC is still felt today through the impact of NAES College and the rich archives it has left in the care of the University of Illinois in Chicago and the American Indian Association of Illinois.

This monument is one of several dedicated to Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette, the first non-Native settler to traverse the Chicago portage in 1673. However he and his party, which included French explorer Louis Jolliet, were guided every step of the way by Native people. Jolliet and Marquette drew maps based on the expertise provided by Odawa people at the Jesuit Mission of St. Ignace on the upper peninsula of Michigan. They were then led by Myaamia guides as they traveled to the Mississippi River via the difficult Wisconsin and Fox River portage. On their way back, Kaskaskia guides led them through the Chicago portage to Lake Michigan. The entire journey would have been impossible without the extensive knowledge of the Native people who had used the portage for generations.<br> <br> In spite of this support, monuments across the city show Marquette leading the journey, while Native guides crouch behind him or turn to the side, in submissive positions. This is one of several depictions of Marquette throughout Chicago, each of which perpetuates a false narrative of the subservience of Native people. <br> <br> 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 [California Indian Manpower Consortium, Inc. (CIMC](http://www.cimcinc.org/)) 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.

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. <br> <br> 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. <br> <br> 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. <br> <br> 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.

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. <br> <br> 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.

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. <br> <br> 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. <br> <br> 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.

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.

When Amundson-Mayfair City College was moved to Uptown in 1973 and renamed Harry S. Truman college, it displaced Native American and other families as housing was demolished to construct the college. However, after opening its doors to students in 1976, administrators worked to connect with the diverse community in Uptown and worked with Native People to create space in the college, supporting Natives who wanted to attend the school through initiatives like the Institute of Native American Development and the Red Path Theatre. Today Truman College still serves the Uptown community. <br>

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

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. <br> <br> 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. <br> <br> 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.

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.

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.

In the centuries following the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the story of this event has been told and retold in various ways, but the most common narratives dehumanize Native people and stoke resentment against them. The term “massacre” comes from one of the earliest published histories of Chicago, Wau-Bun, by Juliette Kinzie in 1856. Kinzie lived in Chicago in the 1830s at the Kinzie mansion which gave credibility to her account of the early days of the American occupation there. Native historians and other scholars disputed her story, but the misnomer stuck. The myth of a “massacre” took on further life during the World’s Columbian Exhibition of 1893, when fair commissioners sought to tell a story that cast the city of Chicago as resilient in the face of disaster. The city was just twenty years removed from the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and the myth of the “Fort Dearborn Massacre'' provided useful inspiration. The fair’s celebration of the battle as connected to colonialism made the event a fitting place to dedicate The Fort Dearborn Massacre, a monument that once stood in this park, but was removed from public view in 1998. Still, other public commemorations of the battle remain. In 1939, the fourth and final star on the Chicago flag was added symbolizing the “Fort Dearborn Massacre.” These representations and other commemorations of the battle within the built environment of the city cement a story of Indigenous violence within the myth of the city’s founding.<br> <br> Today, historians rely on a bevy of evidence to reconstruct the events of the Battle of Fort Dearborn. Few narratives hold more weight than that of Simon Pokagon’s whose father witnessed the aftermath of the battle. Pokagon’s story gathers multiple accounts from Native people, something Juliette Kinzie’s book failed to do. In his story, the Battle of Fort Dearborn was the result of a conflict between complex political entities who were in open war. And he compares the battle directly to massacres of American Indians committed by US soldiers where there were no survivors. <br> <br> 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=41.8713,-87.8547,10.79z&share=1).

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

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. <br> <br> 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. <br> <br> 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).

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. <br> <br> 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. <br> <br> *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.*

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. <br> <br> 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.

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

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.

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. <br> <br> 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.