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- [00:00]
Don Wildman
Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland. There is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe to bring the Past Alive.
- [00:34]
Acast Announcer
ACAST powers the World's Best Podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend.
- [00:43]
Jameela Jamil
What if you laughed all through your commute? Or if you heard the funniest story while at the gym? Well, now you can. I'm Jameela Jamil and guests on my new podcast Wrong Turns share their most mortifying and hilarious disaster stories. I'm talking people like Mae Martin, but Bob the Drag Queen, Katherine Ryan, Jake Johnson, Margaret Cho, Simon Pegg, Penn Badgley and so many more. So listen wherever you get your podcast. Wrong Terms where dignity goes to die.
- [01:13]
Acast Announcer
ACAST helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com we're lost.
- [01:22]
Traveler 1
It feels like we're going round in circles. I'm going to ask that man for directions. Hi there. We're trying to get to fairgrounds.
- [01:31]
Traveler 2
Well you're going to take a left at the old oak tree at this here road. Nah, I'm just kidding. Let me get my phone out.
- [01:37]
Traveler 1
How is their signal out here?
- [01:39]
Traveler 2
T Mobile and US Cellular are coming together so the network out here is huge. We get the same great signal as the city, saving a boatload with benefits. And there's a five year price guarantee too. Okay, here's the turn.
- [01:51]
Traveler 1
Actually, can you pull up the way to a T Mobile store?
- [01:55]
T-Mobile Advertiser
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- [02:08]
T-Mobile Network Analyst
Best Mobile Network Based on analysis by Ooklo Speed test intelligence data second half of 2025 bigger network the combination of T Mobile's and US Cellular's network footprints will enhance the T Mobile network's coverage price guarantee on talk text and data exclusions like taxes and fees apply. See t mobile.com for details.
- [02:20]
Podcast Host
Lunch was great, but this traffic is awful.
- [02:23]
Ann Durkin Keating
Can we stop at a bathroom?
- [02:24]
Brooke Devard
Are you alright?
- [02:25]
Ann Durkin Keating
I keep having stomach issues after eating like diarrhea, gas and bloating, abdominal pain and sometimes oily stools. Sound familiar? Those stomach issues may actually be a pancreas issue called exocrine pancreatic insufficiency or epi Creon pancrelipase may help manage epi Creon is a prescription medicine used to treat people who can't digest food normally because their pancreas doesn't make enough enzymes.
- [02:48]
Creon Medication Narrator
Creon may increase your chance of fibrosing colonopathy, a rare bowel disorder. Tell your doctor if you have a history of intestinal blockage or scarring or thickening of your bowel wall, if you are allergic to pork or if you have gout, kidney problems or worsening of painful, swollen joints. Call your doctor if you have any unusual or severe gastrointestinal symptoms or allergic reactions. Take Creon as by your doctor and always with food. Do not chew capsules, as this may cause mouth irritation. Other side effects may include blood sugar changes, gas, dizziness, sore throat and cough. These are not all the side effects of Creon. Call 800-633-9110 or visit creoninfo.com to learn more. That's C R E o-ninfo.com I'm asking
- [03:17]
Ann Durkin Keating
my doctor about epi and if Creon could help.
- [03:26]
Narrator
It's the 1850s on the southwestern shores of Lake Michigan, where not too long ago this was just a frontier outpost built on marshy ground at the meeting point of Great Waterways, territories utilized by generations of native peoples trading, hunting, traveling, living according to the land. But now this land is American territory property, and against the odds, a city has risen. Chicago, and it's a boom town. Buildings are erected as quickly as people arrive, brick, limestone and marble facades supported by timber frames. When it rains, the streets become wagon churned mud. When it's dry, they're clouds of dust. The humanity, too, is a contrast. For every rising industrial magnate stepping from mansion to theater to grand hotel, there are tenement blocks of laborers newly arrived from Ireland and Germany, living between shifts in overcrowded, squalid conditions.
- [04:31]
Don Wildman
The rivers, too, are crowded with boats
- [04:33]
Narrator
and increasingly choked with waste. It is growth without pause and not enough plan, an unlikely city rising from uncertain ground and straining against it.
- [04:59]
Don Wildman
Hello there. Greetings and welcome to American History Hit. I'm Don Wildman, your host, and very glad to be speaking today about a
- [05:05]
Narrator
city that looms large on the skyline
- [05:08]
Don Wildman
of America's past and present. So many towns and cities in this nation will were founded after our colonial period. This is a young nation still, but only one of those cities has become a mega city, a staging ground for so much of what has fueled the advances and innovations which made the United States the superpower it is today. As that city grew in size and influence. It imposed itself upon American culture in every conceivable fashion and for that reason it is often called by me for one, the only true American metropolis. That city is of course Chicago. But the origins of Carl Sandburg's City of Big Shoulders are historically quite complicated and it says much about us that the real story of our third largest city is so little understood by so many. So let's understand it. How did Chicago really begin? We discussed this today with Anne Durkin Keating, an author and scholar who has written extensively on the city in books like Building Suburban Developers and the Divided Metropolis, Chicagoland City and Suburbs of the Railroad Age, Chicago Neighborhoods and A Historical Guide and what much of our conversation will concern today. Rising up from Indian Country, Fort Dearborn and the Birth of Chicago, published in 2012. Professor Keating, that is a breathless list of books there. Welcome to the podcast.
- [06:30]
Ann Durkin Keating
Thanks. Glad to be here.
- [06:32]
Don Wildman
Before we dive into the past for our UK listeners, especially who might not know much about Chicago, I'm going to fly through a couple facts about this wonderful town located on the western shore of Lake Michigan in the state of Illinois. Largest city in Illinois but not the capital, which is Springfield. Down south it is called the Windy City for a very good reason and the second city for questionable ones. It has great culture, world class museums, cutting edge restaurants. It was the backdrop for legendary cinema, Sinatra, Ferris Bueller, the Untouchables. Today TV shows like the Bear. It is still the big stop on the transcontinental railroad route which made it an industrial powerhouse. It's the Cubs, the White Sox, Bulls, the Blackhawks, the Bears. It's the Obamas, the Bean deep dish pizza and the Chicago river made green on St. Patty's Day. Not to mention it's a very nice place for a bike ride. That about COVID it Ann?
- [07:28]
Ann Durkin Keating
That's a great synopsis.
- [07:30]
Don Wildman
We could just stop it right there. As you can tell, I have an adoration for Chicago. But what about you Ann? What brought you to the history of Chicago as a subject?
- [07:39]
Ann Durkin Keating
I'm a Chicagoan so I started there. I studied at the University of Chicago for my graduate degrees, but I am fascinated with the built environment of cities. So that's where I got started in all of this. And I started in archeology and then moved to urban history.
- [07:56]
Don Wildman
I share your passion and Chicago is really dear to my heart because you get so much of a concentrated history of what makes the modern American city happen. Today's conversation predates that modern version of Chicago history. One day we will tell that story, I promise you, this was called the city of the century, meaning the 19th century, by all rights. And it shouldn't be there at all, really, when you consider what an unlikely place this really was to build a city. Why was that?
- [08:27]
Ann Durkin Keating
It's on a swamp along the lake shore at the mouth of a very slow moving small river called the Chicago River. And. And you're right, it takes off. And it takes off, as you note, Don, because of the railroad and industry, and it becomes the center for that growth. So when we think about Chicago, it's a city that really emerges out of the industrial age. So in a very real sense, in contrast to cities on the east coast that have their start, as you noted, in the colonial period, this is a city that really grows on industrialization, on railroads, on immigration, and that's at the heart of what Chicago and its built environment right down to the present, all of that.
- [09:11]
Don Wildman
Very personally interesting to me, the more modern version of that history. But today we're going to really talk about the earlier history of this coming out of the early settlements that were going on there. So let's go way back. These are obviously native lands, like everything in the, in the American continent. It was the intersection of several great waterways which allowed those native peoples to travel and trade. They were Algonquin, then Miami. What's interesting and will be a theme of this conversation is how much confederacy there was, how many overlappings of these territories were going on at this time. It seems to inform the place, doesn't it?
- [09:47]
Ann Durkin Keating
Yeah, as you note, it's at the intersection of the Mississippi river basin and the Great Lakes. So the continental divide, it's a very swampy place. It's hard to imagine that it's a continental divide, but it is to the east, from the Chicago river eastward goes into the Great Lakes, into Lake Michigan, to the west goes down to the Mississippi River. So you could portage. There wasn't a river initially, but you could portage between those two waterways. And indigenous people for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years have been using this, the paths between those two waterways. So it's been a very valuable space in that way. It's also, I mean, Chicago's also interesting because it's on the intersection of the eastern woodlands. So Algonquian people really come out of the woodlands of the east and they have culture and customs that come out of the East. We're on the dividing line here at Chicago between that eastern woodland and the prairie. So the prairie starts just. Again, we've got patches of prairie and woodlawn here in Northeast Illinois, to your point, it really defines this, the idea that there are waves of different groups of indigenous people that are going to claim and live and utilize the natural resources in this region over time. Some of them coming out of the west, the Sioux and the Ho Chunk coming from the south with Cahokia and then the Algonquian, Pipi, the Illinois Confederacy, and the Miami, again, all at various points in time, have claimed this region.
- [11:25]
Don Wildman
How fascinating. We, early in this podcast series, we did a show about the Cahokian Mounds, and I've been there myself. And it's right across, for those who don't know, across the river, Mississippi river from St. Louis, generally, and then you head inland from there. And it was an amazing, huge settlement, not even a fair word for it. It was a city, a huge city, and a sign of what had really been accomplished by those societies. And that would have been due south from everything we're talking about right now, which is so fascinating. The early European visitors are French Jesuits. So often the case. Right. The missionaries are coming out, trying to evangelize people, explain how the French find the place and why there.
- [12:05]
Ann Durkin Keating
Yeah, the French are a vital piece of this colonial story of Europeans arriving in this region. So the French are up in Canada, so in Quebec, and also in the Caribbean and New Orleans, eventually New Orleans, but in the Caribbean and up in Canada. And this territory, territory between. And that includes them. What's called. They called the Illinois country, after the Illinois Confederacy, is between those two. That space between them is a territory that the French are interested in claiming as colonial holding. They're interested in creating trading partners. They're interested in, again, in exploring. They're looking for the Pacific Ocean. And third, they are proselytizing. They are missionaries. They're Catholic missionaries that are coming out, and they come into this region and they find dense networks of lots of different indigenous people who have knitted together village life and hunting and farming really, over the course of their seasons. And what they find is they get involved in the fur trade. So the most critical connection that's made with indigenous people in this region by the French is the fur trade, is the missionizing, is creating Christian missions. And again, Illinois, though, is also a transportation route. This area becomes a transportation route for the French between the north and the South.
- [13:35]
Don Wildman
It's so interesting that the identity that many of us carry, think of when we think of Chicago today is actually Roots itself. Then in terms of the mixed populations, people getting along, figuring it out together. That's basically why Chicago feels cool, you know, and it felt cool even then.
- [13:52]
Ann Durkin Keating
Oh, I would agree. I think the idea that the French come in, they're not interested, they want to claim land, but they're not taking land or resources straightforwardly from indigenous people. They continue to hold this land, whether it's Potawatomi, whether it's Miami, Ho Chunk. But instead what we get is that trade network and the French men who come into this region who are, in many cases, they're traders who are going to marry indigenous women. So the trading networks are family networks, are village networks, so that the French who move into this region create. It's a new culture. It's certainly not simply an indigenous culture, but it's rooted in indigenous culture with the addition of European, with French goods, with French ideas, with French religion being a part of the story. So, you know, you'll find they'll remain Indian villages, but many of those villages and then a trading outpost, you'll find French men. And then once those Frenchmen and indigenous women have formed families, there's going to be. This region is filled with mixed descent people, so people who are of French and indigenous heritage. And that is, I think, a crucial part of this story and speaks to the idea that this is a place where there was a possibility of different cultures interacting without destroying each other.
- [15:19]
Don Wildman
In a way, a golden age, wasn't it? I mean, this was a period of, of course, it's the beginnings of what becomes quite dark. But at this point, people are getting to know each other. There's some hope. The first permanent non indigenous settler is a guy, very tellingly, Jean Baptiste Point de Sable. He arrives in this area sometime in the 1770s into the 80s. Right, right.
- [15:42]
Ann Durkin Keating
So, yeah, DuSable is coming out of the south. He's coming from down near Cahokia or I mean, there's some question about whether he's come from Quebec, but my sense is that he's coming from the south. His family may, well, his father and mother may have come from Haiti. That's certainly the oral tradition that I think we need to really keep in mind as we go here. But DuSable comes into the region as one of those mixed descent traitors. Now, he is a mix descent trader of French and African origin. So his mother was of African descent. And again, that's where the Haitian connection comes in. And his father was French. And so the surmise is that he or his mother were enslaved, maybe both enslaved people who gained their freedom. So he comes into this region, though, as a part of this French trading world. He joins in, he's trading over in Michigan, so to the east and at Detroit and up in Mackinac. And he's in this area during the American Revolution. And after the American Revolution, then he decides to settle at the mouth of the Chicago River. So he, again, to your point, is the first non native settler here, but he's setting up a trading outpost. I hesitate to use the word settler because. And I just did. But I realized that's a word that we should use carefully because we often associate it with people who are claiming land or buying real estate. And DuSable did not. Was not claiming land. He was building on a site that was Potawatomi controlled. And he knew that. He marries a Potawatomi woman and he starts his own trading outpost then.
- [17:28]
Don Wildman
Yeah. And Potawatomi is going to be a very important nation to know about as we move through this story. So he's married into that tribe, I guess. John Kinsey, another name, a fur trader who acquired DuSable's house in 1800. It all happens very recently, really, in the scheme of things, isn't it? Everything's been established for hundreds of years in the East Coast. This is all happening around the 1800s.
- [17:49]
Ann Durkin Keating
Yeah. I mean, you want to keep in mind what's going on on the east coast, because this is the time of just after the American Revolution. And the US is in fact claiming all of this Western territory where Great Britain is controlling Canada to the north. The boundary between the US and Canada into the 1780s, into the 1790s is not completely clear. It's not settled really until Jay's Treaty in 1794. And throughout all of that time period, the US government is making this claim about land in the West. And so I think the reason that this picks up speed has got everything to do with the US now coming in and making this claim. It had been French claims, and then after the French and Indian War, it was British claims, although there remained a lot of French traders in the region. And then after the American Revolution. So by the 1780s, the US is claiming this whole territory. So when DuSable's at Chicago in the 1780s and the 1790s, it's not clear whose territory this is going to be in terms of a European overlords here, whether it's going to be Britain or whether it's going to be the US after 1795, with the treaty of Greenville, it becomes clear that the US is going to really make inroads into this territory. And DuSable isn't interested in living, at least it appears, from his exit from this region, when the US Makes it clear that they're going to be in the area, he doesn't want to be in the area. We don't know that for sure. I'm just making a surmise that in 1800 he's gone. And 1800 is when the US says we're coming to build a fort and he exits and he lives down the rest of his life outside of St. Louis.
- [19:40]
Don Wildman
I want to caution folks, because we're going to jump back and forth in time here, because there's a lot that goes into this, and that's the whole sort of quilting of this story that takes place here through these events. But let's nail one thing down, which is the name Chicago. Where does that come from?
- [19:55]
Ann Durkin Keating
So there's Algonquian words that would relate it to wild onion, which I think is the smell of a wild onion is probably where it comes from.
- [20:05]
Don Wildman
I did see that word Chicago. Right. Chicago is the name of that. It's a leek or a wild onion. And I guess they grew all over the place there in that. In that marshy land.
- [20:15]
Ann Durkin Keating
Still do.
- [20:16]
Don Wildman
Probably smelled a lot. Yeah, still do.
- [20:17]
Ann Durkin Keating
Got it. You got it. No, no, that's exactly right. And it did. It had an odor. And again, it goes back to the swampy land that this was in. And so the spring, early spring and into early summ. You'd really get this. You have. You get this aroma walking through the. The woodlands in this area.
- [20:35]
Don Wildman
And that the. Of course, the French explorers are the ones who's writing things down at this point. So they write it as Chicago with an ou at the end that is then Anglicized to Chicago for maps and such until it becomes the accepted name. But Chicago remains in New France until the French and Indian War, makes it British, which in turn then makes it American after the Revolution. And part of what is called the Northwest Territory, which is formally established by the US in 1787, at which point we begin the process of removing native peoples from their ancestral lands. This is one of those big chapters. Chicago is where this project really begins in that area in earnest. Right?
- [21:17]
Ann Durkin Keating
Yeah. And I think you've hit on something. The Northwest Ordinance includes in it the idea that you're going to take land and make it into real estate. The idea. And I mean, it takes the land Ordinance of 1785 and imposes that on this whole territory in the Northwest that includes what becomes Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan, those states, that territory. Then that's when we see this big transition done. To my mind, this is the big moment, because it's when the land that had been, whether it was indigenous controlled with French layer on top or a British layer on top or an American layer. At this point, the US Government says now it's going to be US land and there isn't going to be space for this indigenous culture, indigenous world, that's a trading world, where there's an interaction between Europeans and Africans and indigenous people of various groups here in a place like Chicago. And instead we're going to nail down, we're going to survey and we're going to sell this land. And to your point, then what we see, beginning with earlier than 1795, but certainly with the Greenville Treaty in 1795, is a series of treaties that the US is going to make with Native Americans, some very much forced, some wheedled, but in all cases, treaties that are going to demand that native peoples give up their lands in return for lands further west for annuities, for farm goods, whatever. It's going to be on that list of things that they're going to get. And what you see then is the beginning of this transformation of this indigenous country into what becomes settler colonialism. Right. I mean, up until this point, there hasn't been this thing that we now call settler colonialism in, in this area. We really look at Chicago as this 19th century place because until then, it's a part of an indigenous world that is not tied to real estate in that way.
- [23:25]
Don Wildman
Well, real estate was money, you know, as far as the Americans were concerned, this was the beginning of how to value things in these areas. And you start with real estate. So that was never part of the calculation for, for Native American tribes. And even the French weren't really looking at it that way because they believed it was really just about finding resources for the Treaty of Greenville. Why is it called Greenville, by the way?
- [23:47]
Ann Durkin Keating
Greenville, Ohio. So it's just outside of Toledo is where the treaty took place. And so it's a treaty line that says everything north and west of the treaty line, which from Toledo runs at a northeast southwest axis, the line does everything to the west and north would be left for, to indigenous people. And of course, that was not the case. But in 1795, that was the line the US and the American colonies before, even before the Revolution. That's the kind of we're going to draw a line and there'll be indigenous country on one side and settler colonialism on the other side. And we do that and then we
- [24:28]
Don Wildman
throw it out the window.
- [24:29]
Ann Durkin Keating
Yeah, exactly right. And then there's another treaty
- [24:34]
Nikayla Matthews
Foreign.
- [24:43]
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- [25:45]
Don Wildman
The takeaway here is, I mean, at this point, obviously there's no city of Chicago, and so we're really talking about the vast territories and how the Americans are seeing this, this new land getting divvied up out of this treaty. Native Americans give up six square miles at the mouth of the Chicago river, despite not all Native nations agreeing to this. No representative from Chicago being represented at the signing. This is where Fort Dearborn will be built in 1803 as a military outpost. It is across the Chicago river from the trading post. So this is what happens is we mark this land out. We say, okay, you're over there now. See you later. There's some trading going on. We pay them off, whatever it might be, but we're going to develop over here. And they move only to find more and more settlement, pushing that line further and further west. Story of America at some point, the Native nations begin to fight back, or at least resist, and this becomes what is known as the Battle of Fort Dearborn, August 15, 1812, which your your book is is fully concerned with. So talk to me how this moment arose.
- [26:50]
Ann Durkin Keating
Yeah, I think one thing that that kind of fighting is going on from day one, right? George Washington as president goes out and is fighting. I mean, he's out there on western Pennsylvania and Ohio. So this is why the US Why we have a standing army that gets started up after the war. So we've got that peace. And the Treaty of Greenville comes after a loss by indigenous people at Fallen Timbers that is ongoing. There's a crew of historians who would argue that there's a 60 year war in the West. It really is the late, you know, from the 18th century into the 19th century. And I think there's an argument for that at Chicago. Then in 1803 when the Fort Dearborn is founded, DuSable's left because he didn't want to have anything to do with that or he doesn't have anything to do with that fort. So he exits. Chicago in 1803 is at the far western edge of the United States. So that's worth just keeping in mind is that the Mississippi river is the boundary for the United States. And then the Louisiana Purchase kicks in that same year that the fort is built. Fort Dearborn is now in the middle of the country rather than on the far western edge. So I mean, I think that's a really important part of and why very quickly then we're going to see a push towards even more expropriation of land through treaties in this region. There are people who are going to fight this. So you get someone like Tecumseh, who's probably a familiar name or might be familiar. Tecumseh is a Shawnee warrior who with his brother Tenskwatawa stands and fights. They're not alone. They're nativist leaders. Again, there are a number of them. But Tecumseh is a good stand in for us to have a sense of this. And they are our warriors and indigenous leaders who say we're going to stop, we're not going to let this continue, this ongoing process. We know we have to stand and fight. He and his brother found a settlement at Tippecanoe which is about 120 miles from Chicago. So it's between Chicago and Fort Wayne, which is important in this story, but it's going to be the center for what he wants to be the center of an indigenous country that will not be taken over by the United States states. So he's going to try and draw a pan indigenous movement so north and south of the Ohio river and across, and he's going to try and do that. So Tecumseh is a really important figure for us to be thinking about. He's going to be opposed by the US Government is like, this is not our plan. Our plan is continue to push. And once you've got the Louisiana Purchase, then there's land in the west that indigenous people can be moved to. And that's going to become the process later on. You're going to see it even more in the decades that ensue. So a guy named William Henry Harrison.
- [29:50]
Don Wildman
Yes, right.
- [29:51]
Ann Durkin Keating
Is the territorial government in the Northwest Territory. William Henry Harrison takes it upon himself to burn the villages at Tippecanoe while Tecumseh is away. And he starts basically a war in November of 1811, William Henry Harrison on behest of the US government. So he's operating within the US system. He's the territorial governor, the top treaty negotiator. And so when The War of 1812 between Great Britain and the US begins in June of 1812, the US declares war against Great Britain in June of 1812. And when that happens, the US is already at war with Tecumseh. So that when we get to the summer of 1812, Fort Dearborn is at a flashpoint in both the war with Great Britain and the war with Tecumseh and his allies. And so Great Britain has taken Mackinac. Three weeks after the US Declares war, the British just walk into the fort from the back at Mackinac. And the U.S. troops at Fort Dearborn are ordered to evacuate in August of 1812. And they're attacked while they're leaving the fort.
- [31:07]
Don Wildman
This is a very important moment. You know, often folks wonder, why did these tribes, why didn't these nations work together? You know, if they. There were so many of them, why didn't they just get together and fight the Americans? Well, this is actually where this begins. Tecumseh, who deserves an episode on his own, he's an amazing person. He was coordinating this inter tribal resistance movement from the beginning against this American invasion. And, and you mentioned Fort Wayne. There's a number of these forts throughout this region, of course, so this attack or this resistance will be coordinated between these, these things. And, and interestingly, they were communicated using a kind of code. Right, the wampum belts, very sophisticated planning behind this. These were small beads from. They're made from shells that are strung together and you know, they're used ritualistically anyway to record histories and so forth. But he was using these to communicate messages, secret messages between tribes in order to coordinate attacks.
- [32:02]
Ann Durkin Keating
Right, that's for sure. And he's got quite a bit of support. They're hoping that they're going to get more support in terms of guns and ammunition and other supplies from Great Britain. And so they align with Great Britain in the war. And again, at Fort Dearborn, the attack is made by Tecumseh allies. Tecumseh is not there. Tecumseh is at Detroit alongside the British or near Detroit alongside the British. The US there's about 90 troops at Chicago that are evacuating soldiers and some of their families who are also here, which is a very dangerous thing to have been. When you look at this, this is a flashback point in the west at Fort Dearborn. But they're attacked, I think dozens of soldiers are killed immediately. Many more. Dozens more are taken captive. And, you know, it takes months and months and months to find out who was killed initially, who was killed after, and who survives because people. It just took that long. The captain of the Americans, Nathan Heald, is ransomed by, again, Potawatomi who are more sympathetic to the US who know. I think that. I mean, a lot of Potawatomi, particularly in the regions, have already begun to understand that they want to cut the best deal they can with the US and that Tecumseh is probably. He's looking for something that isn't going to happen, that the future that he's envisioning is not a future that's likely. So there are Potawatomi that are going to align themselves with. With the US and they're going to protect the captain. And the captain, again, to give you a sense of this, I mean, he gets ransomed first. He's ransomed from the Potawatomi, and then he winds up up at Michilimec, he and his wife up at Mackinac with the British and eventually is paroled and makes his way back from Buffalo around. And his wife's family is from Kentucky. And they finally get word that he's and his wife have survived almost. I think it's six, seven months after the initial attack. And by that point, her family had assumed that they had been killed in the attack or in the aftermath of the attack. So there's nothing at Fort Dearborn. They burn it down. The Pottawatomie and their allies burn it down. And for the rest of the War of 1812, there's nothing at Chicago.
- [34:29]
Don Wildman
This is a very controversial moment. I mean, some call this a massacre. And I just want to go over a few of the facts that you just. That you cited there. The morning of the evacuation from the fort, there were 500 native fighters, Potawatomi and Native allies. They attack a convoy of 92. This is what you're referring to. American soldiers, civilians. There were nine women and 18 children there. They're attacked, and 52 of them are killed. The rest are taken prisoner. This is the kind of story that spreads real fast in American circles and becomes the defining event in how to deal with these tribes, you know. And so there was no middle ground here at that Point, we're going in guns a blazing at this moment. In many ways, this leads eventually to two treaties. There are two Chicago treaties. They're called the first one, let's go through that. They're both session treaties. They're both about removing people from the land, which is a term I didn't even know before I started preparing for this. Secession treaties are all over the place. It's basically how we do this. As we've already referred to, let's talk about the first Chicago Treaty. What year does that happen? 1821.
- [35:36]
Ann Durkin Keating
Yeah, 1821. So Fort Dearborn has been rebuilt after the War of 1812. And as a result of the War of 1812, despite the fact that the Potawatomie and their allies win that battle at Fort Dearborn or near Fort Dearborn in August of 1812, the Potawatomi and their allies, the indigenous people in the western Great Lakes, they lose big time in this war. I mean, they have lost this war. Tecumseh has been killed in the Battle of Thames. The whole movement has disintegrated. That, that Pan Indian movement has disintegrated. And instead what you've got is the US Government demanding more and more sessions. And so if I can jump back one, just one more treaty, in 1818, 16, there's a Treaty of St. Louis which may not seem to have anything to do with Chicago, but in 1816, that treaty seeds land that's going to become the Illinois and Michigan Canal. It seeds a quarter of land between the Illinois river and Lake Michigan that's going to make that connection between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. And so there in 1816 is the idea that now we're going to have a canal, that a canal is going to be coming. So I would. To your point, this is really is the moment when we see that Chicago is. It's going to be the end point for that canal. And that is really a defining moment for Chicago. And it's also, to your point, it's a land session. I'm with you. It's a word that I have to. Every time I'm in a classroom, it's like it's C E S S I O N. It's not like a jam session. It's a different kind of assumption. And that land session then starting in 18, will be continued with another series of things. The first treaty then in 1821 at Chicago has less to do with land at Chicago than it does with land further to the east. But what it's doing is it's filling in the land to the east that had not yet been ceded by the Potawatomi and their allies, the Miami and their allies. And what we're going to see then in 1821 is to some degree it's this, this bait and switch. It's bringing people together not where they are asked to seed land, but somewhere else so that it's less incendiary, so that you're not going to find as much argument against it because it's being hosted at a spot that's Chicago in 1821, was by that point, it's a part of that corridor. So it's got the treaty of Greenville, the island of land at the mouth of the river and now the corridor. So Chicago itself then is under US control. So it's a place to have these treaties. And then you get 1829, there's fighting going further north. So up with the Ho Chunk and the Sauk and the Fox further north and 1829 you get even more. Land in this region is ceded to the US government. You see those sessions just piling up.
- [38:48]
Traveler 1
We're lost. It feels like we're going round in circles. I'm gonna ask that man for directions. Hi there. We're trying to get to the state fairgrounds.
- [38:58]
Traveler 2
Well, you're going to take a left at the old oak tree at this here road. Nah, I'm just kidding. Let me get my phone out.
- [39:04]
Traveler 1
How is their signal out here?
- [39:06]
Traveler 2
T Mobile is and US Cellular are coming together. So the network out here is huge. We get the same great signal as the city, saving a boatload with benefits. And there's a five year price guarantee too. Okay, here's the turn.
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Actually, can you pull up the way to a T Mobile store?
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- [40:36]
Don Wildman
That first treaty is negotiated back in August, but is then proclaimed on March 25th. It ceds all lands in the Michigan territory south to the grand river to the United States, with the exception of small reservations. That's basically the first step in really beginning. What we'll see is a clearance of this land 10 years later. I'm sure there are many events between this time, but there is the Black Hawk War, the summer of 1832. Sauk leader, Black Hawk. If you wondered where the hockey team gets their name, this is it. And his community of mostly women and children returned to their ancestral homeland in the northern Illinois. Agents involved. Right?
- [41:16]
Ann Durkin Keating
Yeah. I mean, and Black Hawk's story is an important, important one. So the Sauk have seeded their land going back to the first decade, 1803. So back in the very first years of the 19th century. But since 1803, they were moved across the Mississippi River. But the Sauk villages continue to return to the east side of the Mississippi river to farm every year. So a treaty doesn't necessarily mean that the next year things change. It sometimes takes a while. And that was the case with Black Hawk. So Black Hawk, throughout his early decades as a warrior, is a part of these. And they're large villages. I mean, the Sauk villages could be upwards of 1,000 people moving and living these summer villages. So the women would be farming corn, beans and squash all through the summer in the farm fields east of the Mississippi river right into 1830. And then what happens in the late 1820s, early 1830s, is you' settlers this American settlers moving into these farm fields that the Sauk had held. And they start farming those same farm fields so that when Black hawk comes in 1831 and then in 1832 with again. And why the women? Because it's the women who are farming. They're the ones that are coming across that are farming here on the western edge of Illinois. And they find other people in their farm fields. They find these American settlers in what they saw as their farm fields. But that was on land that had been ceded away decades before, that was a part of the settler colonial enterprise. So Black Hawk. It's at that moment that we're going to see Black Hawk want to fight against this. So Black Hawk goes across northern Illinois, southern Wisconsin, looking for allies. He saw coast. He's looking for allies amongst the Anishinaabe people, and that would include the Potawatomi. And that's. And the Potawatomi split. The younger. Some of the younger warriors would like to join with Black Hawk. But most of the older Potawatomi leaders have seen what happened in 1812, have seen the way that Tecumseh's movement had not led to holding this territory against the US Government. And for the most part, they actually forcibly kept many of their young warriors from joining Tecumseh because they knew that there was another session in the making and they wanted the best deal they could get. So Black Hawk, in fact, Black Hawk doesn't fight very much. But other people who are aligned with Black Hawk fight a couple of battles in Illinois and then up in the north, up in Wisconsin, and it's a very short war. The US Government sends Winfield Scott out here. He's going to be famous during the Mexican American War and then at the beginning of the Civil War. But Winfield Scott comes out here with troops. He brings cholera. So there's cholera in this region in 1832, as well as this fighting that's taking place. Black Hawk is taken prisoner. He's kind of held as a. He's going to be paraded around the east coast in the following years. But the loss that the Sauk and their allies have in 1832 as a result of this war leads to this 1833 Treaty of Chicago. That's kind of the last treaty.
- [44:50]
Don Wildman
Before we get to that, I just want to point out that a lot of people join this effort. This is a very famous conflict going on. And one is a young man named Abraham Lincoln who goes up to join this effort against this. He never actually does fight, but he tries to and signs up for.
- [45:06]
Ann Durkin Keating
And he buries soldiers the day after a battle. So to my mind, I get the idea that he doesn't see battle, but what he does see is the results of battle. And I've always taken that away from thinking about Lincoln in that way.
- [45:21]
Don Wildman
The next year, 1833, comes the second Chicago Treaty. Even more consequential, the US was not at war with the an people, but they took advantage of the outrage over Black Hawk and that war to force A treaty with them passing a law that allowed the commissioners to purchase all remaining land held by the Ashnabi people in the Lower Lake Michigan area. How much land are we talking about there?
- [45:44]
Ann Durkin Keating
It's millions of acres. It's much of what's now southeast Wisconsin.
- [45:49]
Don Wildman
I have 5 million acres. Is that.
- [45:51]
Ann Durkin Keating
That seems completely reasonable. That 5 million acres seems a completely reasonable number.
- [45:56]
Don Wildman
So the American government and the Potawati extreme exchange 5 million acres of land west of the Mississippi for land in northeast Illinois and southeast Wisconsin. We've done an episode on the Trail of Tears, you know, all around in many parts of this world. And in that episode, I said to people, do not forget that this happened elsewhere. This Trail of Tears is an idea more than a specific one. And this is one of those Trails of Tears. Right. This is the Anabi people in a procession west.
- [46:25]
Ann Durkin Keating
Great. And it's several years of this removal. So there's a removal from Indiana and then there's a removal from Illinois. And you are absolutely right. And it's really important to be thinking about the fact that this is something that takes place over and over again in U.S. history. And we do have blinders on about it's a Cherokee removal. And it's like, no, the Trail of Tears is this much broader story of what's taking place. And for the Potawatomi that are removed, they are moved first to Missouri, which rejects Potawatomi claims to land. And Congress has to step in and they're moved to Iowa. And from Iowa, most of them are removed again to Kansas. And from Kansas they're going to be removed finally to Oklahoma Territory. So this is just the beginning of a series of removals or the Potawatomi. But you'll find descendants of. Of those Potawatomi families across Iowa, Kansas and Oklahoma. And so the Prairie Band Potawatomi are now located in Oklahoma.
- [47:32]
Don Wildman
And this is a good summary point. There are two Chicago treaties. This is the one that comes after the Indian removal Act of 1830. So the national government, federal government, has created this whole idea of Oklahoma being where all these people are going to be sent. That's what the difference is here than the first one in 1821. So if 1821 opens the land of Chicago area for American settlement, 1833 clears it.
- [47:55]
Ann Durkin Keating
Yes, I think that's an important way of thinking about this. And it makes it possible then to begin buying and selling that land and you get the first subdivision. So the first plat at Chicago actually precedes the 1832 war. And the 1833 treaty. And because it goes back to that 1816 treaty. So it's the Illinois Michigan canal commissioners make at the mouth of the Chicago river. And that Platte is what becomes downtown Chicago. And that is, to my mind, I mean, if you're thinking about when do you want to start Chicago history, 1833 seems a reasonable moment. 1812, late 1780s, when DuSable is there. 1803, with Fort Dearborn. 1830, though, there's an argument, because that's when land is now real estate, when you can start to sell it. And the US Government is thinking about it in those terms now. It's not the US Government. They have given this land to the new state of Illinois to use to build the canal, but it's government land being sold in that way. So the story now becomes really different.
- [49:01]
Don Wildman
Yeah. 1837, Chicago is officially incorporated as a city. Surprisingly recent, but that's the story of America. As we mentioned before, you've got all those old cities on the. On the east coast, old for our standards. But this is why Chicago is such still a very new city. It is the railroad that will establish Chicago as the modern American city, however, and that all comes later on 1848, the completion of the Illinois and Michigan Canal creates a water link between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi river that is soon overtaken, as all canals are, by the railroads. At 1850, the railroad moves out. Aurora Branch Railroad laid the first tracks into West Chicago. 1860, Chicago is established as American's leading railway center. Fascinating story. Who gets the railroad? Not St. Louis. Chicago gets it. And the rest is history.
- [49:52]
Ann Durkin Keating
Right. I mean, and a big part of that we can make a linkage here in that there's a lot of money made at Chicago in real estate speculation in the 1830s, and that real estate speculation is critical to the money that's needed for investment in railroads, in an industry. The other thing that I think is really interesting in thinking about what you've just laid out is that the federal government agrees to improve the harbor at Chicago. So the harbor at Chicago, there is really not a harbor at Chicago. There's a sandbar at the mouth of the Chicago River. And Beginning in the mid-1830s, the Corps of Engineers comes in and basically cuts through the sandbar and dredges the Chicago river so that it can be used as a harbor. And the federal money comes in with the real estate investors. So you've got real estate investors from New York and other east coast places, and then eventually Chicago investors. And it's those folks and want to stay in Chicago and continue to invest in Chicago. Someone like William Ogden, who will make a lot of money on real estate investment coming out of New York. And then he turns around and he's going to build the first railroad. So he's going to, you know, and he's going to be the guy that brings Cyrus McCormick to Chicago who's developing one of the first reapers.
- [51:18]
Don Wildman
Could there be a better located metropolis? No. I mean, you're on the edge of the Great Plains and all that farming and agriculture that's happening there. You've got the Great Lakes right there for transportation. You got the railroad coming into town. Oh, boy. And you got the economic engine of real estate already taking place. It's a perfect storm of urban development.
- [51:38]
Ann Durkin Keating
You could add in the Civil War. Your point about about St. Louis is that Chicago kind of kibosh's St. Louis aspirations, because Chicago then will become an entrepot for the US during the Civil War and it will continue to grow, continue to industrialize, continue to draw in immigrants through a time period when St. Louis is often under military control.
- [52:06]
Don Wildman
Hmm, interesting. I can't wait to do the part two of this. But that's all for today. Ann Durkin Keating is a historian of Chicago and the American Midwest. She is the doctor C. Frederick Tonighas professor of History at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. Her work focuses on urban growth, regional identity, and the development of the city of Chicago. What can be found in her various books? Rising up from Indian country, the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Birth of Chicago, Chicagoland. Read it all for the history of Chicago. Thank you so much, Anne. Great to meet you.
- [52:37]
Ann Durkin Keating
Great fun. Thank you.
- [52:43]
Don Wildman
Thanks for listening to American History hit. You know.
- [52:46]
Narrator
You know, every week we release new
- [52:48]
Don Wildman
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- [53:03]
Don Wildman
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- [53:23]
Traveler 1
We're lost. It feels like we're going round in circles. I'm gonna ask that man for directions. Hi there. We're trying to get to the state fairgrounds.
- [53:33]
Traveler 2
Well, you're gonna take a left at the old oak tree at this here road. Nah, I'm just kidding. Let me get my phone out.
- [53:39]
Traveler 1
How is there signal out here?
- [53:41]
Traveler 2
T Mobile and US Cellular are coming together. So the network out here is huge. We get the same great signal as the city, saving a boatload with benefits. And there's a five year price guarantee too. Okay, here's the turn.
- [53:53]
Traveler 1
Actually, can you pull up the way to a T Mobile store?
- [53:57]
T-Mobile Advertiser
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