A postcard created for the 1893 World's Fair showing an imagined view of the 1833 treaty negotiations.
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.
“As Victor Over Fire,” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 10, 1893
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).