By the end of this exercise, I can… 

• analyze representations of Indigenous peoples in historical images
• assess the trustworthiness of historical images of Indigenous people 
• evaluate the thinking behind and impact of certain representations of Indigenous people

This exercise directly relates to:

• How different European colonies developed and expanded (1790s-1830s)
• Interactions between American Indians and Europeans (1790s-1830s)

This exercise could also be paired with teaching about: 

• Northwest Ordinance (1787). Connect to events leading up to the 1795 Treaty of Greenville
• The election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800. Connect to early land cessions and settler-Native interactions in Chicago
• Manifest Destiny (1790s-1930s). Connect to shifting representations of Native people in Chicago
• Imagery of the West (1790s-1930s). Connect to shifting representations of Native people in Chicago

Geography

• SS.9-12.G.5. Analyze different ways of representing geographic information in order to compare cartographers’ perspectives, biases, and goals.

History

• SS.9-12.H.5. Analyze the factors and historical context, including overarching movements, that influenced the perspectives of people during different historical eras.
• SS.9-12.H.10. Identify and analyze ways in which marginalized communities are represented in historical sources and seek out sources created by historically oppressed peoples. 

An Established Native Place

Before the city as we know it existed, many Indigenous nations had long standing relationships with this place. Indigenous names for this place include Zhegagoynak, Gaa-zhigaagwanzhikaag, Zhigaagong, Šikaakonki, Shekâkôheki, Sekākoh, and Gųųšge honąk, among others. Indigenous languages reflect unique cultures and worldviews, and these Indigenous words for Chicago reveal important details about Native peoples’ relationships with and understanding of this place. It is a sign of respect to use these words instead of French misunderstandings like Checagou or Chicagua, which you will see often on colonial maps. 

You might hear people say that Chicago is named after “the Algonquian name” for wild onion or a similar allium. This isn’t quite right: while several of the words above do translate to “place of wild onions” or something similar, there is no single Algonquian word for such a plant, because “Algonquian” refers to a large group of languages, including those of the Illinois Confederation, Neshnabék, Myaamiaki, Sauk, Meskwaki, and Menominee, among others. In other words, there are many Algonquian words for the place we now call Chicago. 

As Indigenous names for Chicago show us, many wild onions, or ramps, grew in Chicago for generations. These plants were an important food for the Native peoples in this region. Ramps are hard to grow and easy to overharvest. That ramps grew well here for generations tells us that Native people were carefully stewarding the land and the plant population. 

The Chicago landscape made it a welcoming area for people, plants, animals, birds, and insects to live. The marshes and oak savannas had lots of animals, birds, fish, and plants to eat. It’s a unique ecosystem, since it transitions from the Great Plains to the forests around the Great Lakes. The landscape also makes transportation convenient. The waterways and portages connect Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes to the Illinois River, the Mississippi River, and eventually the Gulf of Mexico. Chicago’s location and its abundant food sources have made it a desirable place to live, trade, and gather. Indigenous people had long treated Chicago as a crossroads where many Native people from different cultural and political backgrounds came together (for more on this, see the Convergence module!).

Each Native nation in the region had (and has!) its own language, government system, set of spiritual or religious teachings, and systems for food production, land management, transportation, architecture, and many more. Native people throughout the Great Lakes also established kinship networks and protocols for relationality, which included relationships for family, trade, diplomacy, ceremony, and mutual protection. Indigenous systems of government promoted a balanced system where people contributed to the well-being of the entire community. 

It is a myth that Indigenous people lacked boundaries before colonialism. Indigenous people had long-standing ways of recognizing territorial boundaries between Native nations. This meant that only allies of the people who controlled a territory could live, or pass through the territory for governing, hunting, farming, and other needs. Because Native nations were distinct groups, they had clear protocols for welcoming other tribal nations – outsiders and foreigners – to live and trade on their lands. When Europeans arrived, they were just another new group. The agreements that outlined how Native nations shared or divided space were not one-time papers like the treaties that would come later. Instead, these agreements were rules and protocols for relationships that needed to be renewed on a regular basis. This helped to make sure that the agreements still met everyone’s needs and that everyone knew what they were agreeing to. For Indigenous people before colonization, making agreements with other tribes was a way of ensuring sustainable, healthy coexistence through relationships and respect.

Negotiations for sharing lands made it possible for some Indigenous people to live in Chicago full time, while others passed through Chicago as part of seasonal rounds. These rounds were annual patterns of coming to a particular place at a particular time. Indigenous people developed these cycles based on the growth cycles of plants and migrations of animals. Many Indigenous people lived this way before colonization because it was a sustainable way of life. These seasons followed a predictable pattern for planting, hunting, fishing, and harvesting. Moving this way allowed for communities to regularly renew their connections to each other. In Chicago, some examples of seasonal activities include (among others): 

• Spring: Collecting sap from maple trees to make sugar and syrup, harvesting spring plants like ramps (similar to a green onion) which grow along streams, planting vegetable gardens
• Summer: Fishing for sturgeon, whitefish, trout, walleye, and other fish in the lakes and rivers, tending to vegetables like corn, beans, and squash
• Fall: Hunting migrating birds like ducks and geese, harvesting wild rice in marshes and small lakes, harvesting remaining vegetables grown over the summer 
• Winter: Hunting muskrats, otters, and beavers in marshes, deer in forested areas, and bison on the prairie

Throughout the late 17th and 18th centuries, European settlers traveled through Chicago and stayed there for short amounts of time. No non-Native people lived permanently in Chicago until the late 1700s. However, in the late 1770s, fur trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable arrived in Chicago. Du Sable was a fur trader of African descent who married a Potawatomi woman named Kitihawa, and their story offers an example of early kinship ties between Black and Native people. We know little about du Sable’s background, except that he was likely born near Kaskaskia and was likely enslaved, then later freed, by a French couple. To be successful in the fur trade, non-Native traders like du Sable had to establish and maintain relationships with the Native peoples who controlled these lands. This included joining Indigenous kinship networks, often by marrying Native women. Ojibwe scholar Michael Witgen describes this process clearly: Settlers who were new to the region either became ndenwémagen (relatives in the Potawatomi language, pronounced nih·dihn·way·mah·gehn) or myeg yegwan (foreigners, pronounced mee·yehg·yeh·gwun). In order to be successful in the fur trade, they had to become relatives. 

While we know very little about du Sable’s Potawatomi wife Kitihawa, Native women were  important decision makers in the fur trade. When Native women chose to marry European fur traders, they continued Indigenous practices of and values for incorporating newcomers into their communities. They introduced their fur trading husbands to the people they would need to know to do business. They managed the businesses locally while their husbands traded across the Great Lakes region for long periods of time. They translated across various Native languages. They also educated their husbands (and business partners!) on protocols for greetings, gift exchange, and communication. 

In the late 18th century, du Sable and Kitihawa’s home was the only European-style home in the region. This reflects how Chicago was very much still controlled by Native people at this time. While Britain “claimed” the land after the Seven Years War, and the United States “claimed” the area after the American Revolution ended in 1783, the lands at Chicago remained under Native authority. The records of the fur traders who were passing through mention Potawatomi, Ojibwe, Odawa, Sauk, Mascouten, and Kickapoo villages at or near Chicago throughout the 1790s.

Local political dynamics shifted with the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, which gave the United States access to a 6 square mile area around the mouth of Chicago River. Shortly after that, Thomas Jefferson was elected. He set into motion his plan to assimilate Native people by making them into farmers (using European, not Indigenous, farming methods). He thought this would increase the likelihood that Indigenous people would sell off their lands. Jefferson saw no future for Native people in his version of America – which was made up of white farming families who expanded across the West. Therefore, he worked closely with Indiana Governor William Henry Harrison to negotiate as many land cessions as possible. Most of these early cessions ceded land south along the Ohio River in what are now known as the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Harrison’s use of violence to obtain this land was a major factor leading to the Battle of Fort Dearborn (more on this in Module 4!)

Between 1812-1816, Native people lived in and controlled Chicago with very little influence from Europeans. The settlers who remained in this area were primarily fur traders who had married Native women, or those who had established reciprocal relationships with Native communities. Then came the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The treaty gave the United States control over the Chicago portage route and the land about 10 miles north and south of the mouth of the river. Native people had negotiated under the treaty to be able to continue hunting and fishing in the area. They continued to participate in seasonal rounds in and around Chicago. Native people continued to actively engage with settlers who were living in the region, especially those connected to the fur trade, and settlers were aware that they needed good relationships with Native people to survive in the region. 

The 1816 Treaty was supposed to set clear boundaries for where settlers would stay. But even after the 1816 Treaty, white settlers continued to illegally move into Native territory. Many of these settlers were after resources, including mining. This went against the treaty. In response, a group of Ho-Chunk fighters led by Red Bird organized several attacks against American villages in 1827 in response to groups of lead miners who had trespassed onto their lands. The attacks took place near Prairie du Chien in what is now known as southern Wisconsin. Settlers in Chicago then raised a militia to counter the attack. Native leaders like Sauganash (Billy Caldwell), Shab-eh-nay, and Che-che-pin-quay (Alexander Robinson) were able to calm tensions. Even so, the violence led Congress to reopen Fort Dearborn and? demand that Native leaders negotiate for more land cessions. 

After land cessions in 1829, 1832, and 1833, power began to shift dramatically. But it was still not until later in the 1830s that Native people were actually forced to leave the Chicago area. 

Representations of Native people in settler sources

As settlers increasingly arrived in North America, they created narratives that justified their occupation of Native homelands. Sometimes, they did this through written sources, like letters to each other and to government leaders, or published narratives. Other times, they created visual representations like drawings or maps that showed Native people as savage or uncivilized. These narratives connected to European ideas that people who weren’t Christian and therefore “civilized” could be colonized or dominated. Settlers often misrepresented Native people as part of a prehistoric past, even when there were Native people clearly visible around them. They believed Native people were going to die out, which didn’t happen. Settlers who wanted Indigenous land believed that it was “destined” for the United States’ use and had been set aside for them by God. They thought that Native people did not deserve the land they had because they were not Christian. This would later be called “manifest destiny.” You can see a popular representation of manifest destiny in John Gast’s American Progress. 

Settlers also represented Indigenous people as anti-technology, even though Indigenous people had been developing innovative, sustainable technologies for thousands of years. They created an oversimplified either-or narrative where settlers represented progress and industrialization while Indigenous people represented a primitive way of life destined to die out. Settler imaginations about Indigenous people tend to fall into oversimplified stereotypes, even ones that contradict each other! Most notably, settler narratives tend to show Native people as: 

• savage and violent
• meek and spiritual
• possessing special “magic” or sentimentality relative to the land
• as hypersexualized (this is especially true for representations of women and girls)
• desperately impoverished 
• extremely wealthy
• part of the past (but never the present or future)

These fictionalized settler narratives are part of everyday imaginations in the United States and shape how people think about Indigenous people. For more on this see Anton Treuer’s book Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians but Were Afraid to Ask: Young Readers Edition, among others. 

Images changed over time throughout the late 1700s and early 1800s. While Native people were present (if misrepresented) in earlier images, later ones tended to push Native people to the margins or out of the picture entirely. This is a form of erasure. Where Native people show up in these later images, they are often represented as dying. Historians call this “lasting” – a made-up narrative of the imaginary “last” Native person to do something, which represents Native life ending and settler lives taking over.

Narratives shape how people think about each other. This includes whether people assume Native people are still here or not, and the extent to which people believe the stereotypes listed above. This has real impacts on peoples’ lives: Psychologists have found that when non-Native people assume Native people are part of the past, they trust Native narratives about their own lives less and support Indigenous issues less often. Our ability to see each other and trust each other’s stories about our/their lives shapes our ability to build relationships and work together, now and in the future. 

Today, you can still see issues with Indigenous erasure and “lasting” in statues, monuments, and other plaques within Chicago. These images position Native people as historic; suggest that removal was a natural, pre-ordained, and necessary development; and promote the idea that Native people disappeared. But Native people continue to have relationships with Chicago! Some resisted removal and remained in Chicago. Others who were removed continue to think of these lands as their homelands. Still others returned to Chicago later or traveled here from other Native communities. Chicago is, always has been, and always will be a Native place. 

Sources

Fryberg, S. A., J. Doris Dai, and Arianne E. Eason. “Omission as a Modern Form of Bias Against Native Peoples: Implications for Policies and Practices.” Social Issues and Policy Review. 18 (1) (2024): 148-170. 

Keating, Ann Durkin. Rising Up From Indian Country: The Battle of Fort Dearborn and the Birth of Chicago. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). 

O’Brien, Jean M. Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010). 

Sleeper-Smith, Susan. Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001). 

Tanner, Helen Hornbeck. Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History. 2nd edition. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987). 

Williams, Robert A. Savage Anxieties: The Invention of Western Civilization. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2012). 

Witgen, Michael. An Infinity of Nations: How the Native New World Shaped Early North America. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013). 

Note to teachers: We invite you to use the components of the Indigenous Chicago curriculum that best align with the needs of your classroom. The following suggested steps can be modified as needed, and we invite you to use the teacher’s history brief to inspire new exercises that best meet the needs of your students. Please note that we suggest shortening, rather than modifying, the language of historical sources to best reflect the original source’s context, intention, and voice.  

1. Review the information in the Background section above. What was the balance of power in Chicago like in the late 1700s and early 1800s?

2. Despite the onslaught of early settler invasions and political changes under the treaties, Indigenous people retained their deep connections to their homelands. When Lewis Cass and Alex Wolcott, Jr. wrote to U.S. Secretary of War James Barbour in the 1820s, Native people remained a major local population – and one with significant political and economic influence! Read Source 1, two excerpts from Cass’ 1827 and Wolcott’s 1828 letters. As you do, notice:

• Writing from Chicago, Cass describes Chicago as “firmly within Potawatomi country.” What do these letters tell you about Indigenous power in Chicago in the early 1800s? What do they show about the balance of power between settlers and Indigenous people in this region at the time?

• What do Cass’ and Wolcott’s anxieties about Winnebago (Ho-Chunk) “hostilities” tell you about how Indigenous people were defending their homelands by the 1820s? About how settlers perceived Indigenous people? About how Indigenous people perceived settlers?

• What do their letters show us about settler strategies for taking and keeping Indigenous lands? How did settlers position Native nations (in this case, Potawatomi and Ho-Chunks (Winnebagos) against each other? Why would that have been a strategy settlers used in the region?
  • What reasons did Ho-Chunks have for military defense of their homelands? (see Wolcott’s 1828 letter, at the start of the third paragraph, when he says, “Relieved from the immediate terror occassioned by the presence of our troops in their country, excited by their own and inextinguishable hatred to the Americans and irritated by the confinement and anticipated execution of their chiefs…”) What does this show us about settler military strategies?

• What do their letters show about how Indigenous people banded together against American military violence?

3. Now, take a look  at three images, one in 1779 (Source 2), one in 1820 (Source 3), and one in 1933 reflecting on the so-called incorporation of Chicago in 1833 (Source 4). Copies of these images with additional context are available at the end of this document. For each image, notice where Native people are in each image, what they appear to be doing, and how they are reflected relative to the lands, waters, and non-Native people in the images. The following optional chart can help you organize your thoughts:

• First, look at the 1884 drawing from E. White that is meant to depict Chicago in 1779. 

• • Where do you see Native people (or at least the suggestion of Native people) in the image? 
  • How populated is the landscape in this image? Given what you know about how many Native people lived in Chicago for thousands of years, does this seem accurate?  As a comparison, look back at the 1718 de Fer map from the premodule. Notice how many Native nations are mentioned on the map. 
  • Thinking back to what you know about the idea of “manifest destiny,” why might settlers have wanted to imagine the landscape as empty?

• Now, look at this Seth Eastman drawing from 1854 that is meant to depict Chicago in 1820.

And this close-up of the center portion of the image:

• • How do the buildings in this image compare to those in 1779? 
• • What kind of a change in the imagined landscape does this represent? What does this imply about the artist’s perspective on the balance of power in the region?
• • What are the Native people in the image doing? Does this feel more or less accurate than the previous image, given what you know about Native presence in Chicago at the time from Cass’ and Wolcott’s letters?

• Finally, look at this 1933 image from O. E. Stelzer.

Along with this close-up of the lower portion of the map:

• • The 1933 image is based on an 1833 map and commemorates the formal incorporation of Chicago as a settler city. Chicago was incorporated in the same year as the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, which led to a mass forced removal of Indigenous people from the Chicago region. Where do you see Indigenous people in the image? How does this decorative map represent Indigenous presence relative to the physical location of Chicago?

• • As you know, Chicago had been a Native place since time immemorial. How might an image like this one reinforce settler narratives about Indigenous disappearance? About settlers’ permanence in the region?

• Based on what you know from the Background section and from Cass’ and Wolcott’s letters, how accurate do you think these representations of Native people were?

• Why might it have benefitted the settler artists (and settler society more broadly) to see Native people as disappearing, even when they weren’t?

4. Summing it up! According to Alaska Native researcher Leilani Sabzalian, anticolonial literacy is “the ability to critically read and counter” settler narratives and practices. Historians critically examine primary sources by bringing together multiple sources to get a more detailed sense of what was happening. This can also reveal when a source is based in or contributing to a false narrative rather than representing an accurate story. As you wrap up this exercise:

• Evaluate the trustworthiness of the representations of Indigenous people in Cass’ and Wolcott’s letters and in the 1779, 1820, and 1833 drawings. 

• Describe how settler narratives have worked to erase Indigenous presence in Chicago.

For these questions, use a written, spoken, or artistic format of your choosing!

Lewis Cass was a politician and US military officer. When he wrote this letter, Cass was the Territorial Governor of Michigan Territory and the acting Indian Superintendent of Michigan Territory (a superintendent was responsible for Indian Affairs across a large territory). Cass’s job would have been to report the activities of Native people to his superior, the Secretary of War James Barbour. He reported to the Secretary of War because the US placed the Office of Indian Affairs within the War Department when it created it in 1824. This reveals that the US viewed its relationships with Native nations in the 1820s as related to military defense. 

Alexander Wolcott Jr. was the Indian Agent of the Chicago Agency from 1820-1827. Indian agents were responsible for Indian affairs in a certain territory. The Chicago Agency covered all of what is now called the state of Illinois and what is now called southern Wisconsin. 

Source citations: Louis Cass to James Barbour, July 23, 1827, Letters received by the Office of Indian Affairs, 1824-81, Chicago Agency, Microfilm, Newberry Library; Alexander Wolcott Jr. to James Barbour, March 20, 1828, Letters received by the Office of Indian Affairs, 1824-81, Chicago Agency, Microfilm, Newberry Library. 

1827 Letter from Lewis Cass to Secretary of War James Barbour

Chicago July 23, 1827,

Sir,

I reached here yesterday from St. Louis, and shall proceed to Green Bay tomorrow morning. 

I found the Inhabitants along the Illinois in a state of alarm & they are in great danger. This post is the center of the Potawatomie Country & upon its preservation depends much of our influence over that discontented tribe. It ought not to have been evacuated, & I recommend most earnestly its immediate reoccupation. The system of concentration has been carried too far. I speak the universal sentiment of the Country, and unless the frontier posts are held by our troops we shall in vain look for permanent tranquility. 

The Potawatomies are evidently uneasy, waiting for information from the Mississippi. I shall hold a council with their chiefs this evening and I shall insist upon their securing the peace of their own Country. They must prevent the Winnebagoes [Ho-Chunks] from entering their country, and for this we must hold them responsible. 

I have not time to write more in detail but I shall request Dr. Wolcott the Indian Agent here to communicate to you the result of the Council such information generally with relation to the situation of the Country, as it may be important for the government to receive. Implicit reliance may be placed upon all he may communicate. 

Very respectfully, Sir,

Yr. Mo. Obt. Sevt. [Your Most Obedient Servent]

Lewis Cass

1828 Letter from Alex Wolcott, Jr. to Secretary of War James Barbour

Chicago March 20, 1828.

Sir,

During the past winter I received repeated intimations that our restless neighbors, the Winnebagoes [Ho-Chunks] were planning a renewal of hostilities and on a scale much more extensive than that of last year. To such reports I paid but little attention, believing that the amount of force sent among them last summer, and the celerity with which it was most concentrated in the heart of their country, must have convinced them of the hopelessness of any future official to arms. 

But of late I have received so many warning from the Indians who are coming in daily from their hunting grounds and from traders who have passed the winter among them, of their hostile intentions, and of their plans to carry those intentions into effect, that no doubt is left on my mind of their present determination to try the chance of war. 

Relieved from the immediate terror occassioned by the presence of our troops in their country, excited by their own and inextinguishable hatred to the Americans and irritated by the confinement and anticipated execution of their chiefs, and urged on by the Sioux, who have provided them a secure retreat in their country, should they be viable to maintain themselves in their own, it is not to be wondered as if they, reckless and miscalculating, as they are known to be to be, should listen to the suggestion of revenge rather than reason – Impressed as I am with the conviction that their feelings and intentions are entirely hostile, and that they can be restrained from the commission of the acts of open hostility, only by the presence of a strong military force on their frontier, I cannot, consistently with my idea of duty, refrain from notifying you, sir, of the situation of affairs, and of suggesting – indeed of urging, the propriety, and necessity of re-establishing this post, and of garrisoning it with a respectable force. This post has always been considered, by all intelligent men with whom I have conversed on the subject, as one of the most governing points on our borders, and as calculated, when properly maintained, to protect a greater extent of the frontier, and to keep in check a greater number of Indians, than almost any other. It will always secure the fidelity of the Potawatomies, and prove an effective barrier to the incursions of the Winnebagoes. Should hostilities commence, and this post be left ungarrisoned, this settlement must necessarily be abandoned. It is but eighty miles distant from Kosh-ko-nong, the gathering place of the Rock-River Indians, and can be reached by them in two days, at any time, and being an important post of trade, with large supplies of ammunition, guns, and all other articles necessary for their use, it would doubtless be the first object of their attention. Two companies of infantry, in addition to the citizens now here, will be sufficient to secure this frontier from the Winnebagoes, and overcome any individuals among the Potawatomies who may be disposed to join them or to do mischief in their name.  

I have the honor to be, sir, with profound respect your 

Vry Obt. Sevt. [Very Obedient Servant]

Dr. Wolcott Jr. 

Indian Agent. 

P.S. Should you resolve to send troops here, I hope, sir, you will do me the favour to let me know it without delay. 

A high resolution, zoomable version of the image is available here.

The image below appears in Alfred T. Andreas’s History of Chicago, a three volume history published in 1884, which many people who study the history of Chicago still use today. Andreas was an American historian. He was most famous for his atlases of counties and states across the Midwest. This drawing from the History of Chicago imagines what Chicago looked like in 1779. It shows an open landscape with a small group of ten teepees or lodges with three Indigenous people in them. This imagined portrait of Jean Baptiste du Sable (no image of him actually exists) includes a drawing of his home. While there is some scholarly debate about du Sable’s identity, most scholars think he was a Black man of Haitian descent married to a Potawatomi woman. 

Source citation: Andreas, Alfred T. “An Imaginary View of the Site of Chicago in 1779.” in History of Chicago: From the Earliest Period to the Present Time: in three volumes. Volume 1 (Chicago: A. T. Andreas,1884-1886).

A high resolution version of the image is available here.

Source citation:  Eastman, Seth. “Chicago in 1820.” in Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe, Historical and statistical information respecting the history…of the Indian tribes of the United States. (Philadelphia: Lippincott & Grambo & Co, 1854). 

Seth Eastman was an artist and US military officer known for his illustrations of Native life in the Midwest. He is especially well known for the illustrations that he created for Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s six-volume publication, Historical and statistical information respecting the history…of the Indian tribes of the United States. Eastman’s illustrations were based off of Schoolcraft’s sketches, which were likely drawn based on his own observations. Schoolcraft was an American geographer and writer, and the six-volume work he published was commissioned by Congress. Both Eastman and Schoolcraft had significant experience living in extended kinship networks with Native communities. Eastman was stationed at Fort Snelling in what is today known as Minnesota for a long time. While he was there, he married and had a daughter with Wakaƞ Inajiƞ-wiƞ (pronounced wah·kahn ee·nah·jee·wee), the daughter of Dakota leader Cloud Man. Schoolcraft previously served as an Indian agent in Michigan territory, where he married and had several children with Jane Johnston, the granddaughter of Ojibwe leader Waabojiig (pronounced wah·buh·jee·g). However, at the time that Schoolcraft’s book was published in the 1950s, neither Schoolcraft nor Eastman kept up their kinship connections. Eastman declared that his marriage to Wakan Inajin-win was over when he was reassigned from Fort Snelling in 1833, and Schoolcraft moved to Washington D.C. after Jane’s death in 1846. 

A closer look at the signature line:

A higher resolution version of the image is available here.

Walter Conley (pictured at left) created this image in 1933 to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of Chicago’s incorporation as a town. Conley was a Chicago architect who spent years conducting research to create this commemorative map. Conley worked closely with Caroline M’Ilvaine, who worked at the Chicago Historical Society, and artist Otto Emil Stelzer, who illustrated Conley’s design. Initially, only 100 copies of the map were printed. These were sold at the 1933 Century of Progress World’s Fair. However, Stelzer later printed smaller and less detailed versions of the map (pictured below). These smaller versions were sold more broadly and at a lower price. The map focuses primarily on the settler population of Chicago, as well as some of the recent infrastructure around the city. The image shows Indigenous people only in the cartouche in the lower left-hand corner. 

And a closer look at the image in the lower portion of the map:

Source citation: Conley, Walter M, with Caroline M’Ilvaine and O.E. Stelzer. A Map of Chicago : incorporated as a town August 5, 1833. Chicago: Walter Conley and O.E. Stelzer, 1933.