By the end of this exercise, I can… 

• describe Indigenous ways of relating to land
• describe early European settler ways of relating to land
• compare Indigenous and settler perspectives on land 

This exercise directly relates to:

• European exploration in the New World (1673-1830s)
• Land purchases from American Indian Nations (1795-1830s)

This exercise could also be paired with teaching about: 

• Manifest Destiny (1790s-1830s)
• The settlement of the West (1790s-1830s)

Geography

• SS.9-12.G.9.Explain how landscape, land and resource use, and means of interacting with land, animals, and plants each reflect cultural beliefs and identities.

History

• SS.9-12.H.1. Evaluate the context of time and place as well as structural factors that influence historical developments.
• 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. 
• SS.9-12.H.11. Analyze primary and secondary historical sources from multiple vantage points and perspectives to identify and explain dominant narratives and counternarratives of historical events. 

Land and Relationality

Indigenous creation or origin stories link Native peoples to their lands and waters. The stories provide deep context for each nation’s origins. They teach about each nation’s relationships with and responsibilities to their lands and waters. They are an important source that tells us about a people’s history since time immemorial. Many Indigenous creation or origin stories recognize humans as dependent on lands, waters, plants, and animals for their survival. Rather than seeing humans as better than plants and animals, they see all living beings as interdependent. This is why so many creation or origin stories show humans making mistakes and needing to learn from other living beings. The stories teach humans values around listening to, observing, and otherwise learning from the world around us.

Indigenous values for land include reciprocal relationships. Indigenous peoples’ languages, religions or spiritual teachings, technologies, medicines, and foods come from their relationships with certain lands. This means that for Indigenous people, lands can’t be exchanged. Indigenous peoples maintain deep relationships with their homelands, whether they live there now or not.

Traditional Indigenous laws prioritize the health and well-being of humans, lands, waters, animals, and plants. Indigenous people have been caring for the land since time immemorial. They see the value of the land as inherent: all life has value just for being alive. They also recognize that lands, waters, plants, and animals have their own rights, perspectives, and desires. This means that you can’t really own water – just like you wouldn’t own another person, water has its own rights. In contrast, settler laws value land based on the presence of resources that can meet human wants. Settler systems see the land as inanimate, which means it cannot have its own perspectives or desires. Also, while settler systems see land and water as separate, Indigenous systems see them as intertwined.

For Indigenous people, caring for the land does not mean leaving the land unchanged or untouched (this is a myth). Instead, Indigenous people have managed their lands through Indigenous sciences. Indigenous sciences are based on knowledge developed over generations about one area. Indigenous people have worked with the land to create new technologies for housing, education, food production, defense, healthcare, and the arts. One example of this is using controlled burns to manage ecosystems and increase species diversity.Within Indigenous economies, changes to the land needed to promote collective long term health. This applied to the land and all the living beings that rely on it. Plants, animals, waters, and lands will continue to be healthy and take care of humans if humans take care of them. In contrast, for settler capitalism, changes to the land needed to create a financial benefit. This could mean increasing the production or consumption of goods for humans. This has unfortunately negatively impacted the health of the land. It has also interrupted Native peoples’ ability to maintain their relationships with their lands and waters. We see this in the rerouting of the Chicago river and the draining of regional marshes to build the city.

The Transformation of Chicago’s Waterways  

The Chicago landscape made it a welcoming area for people, plants, animals, birds, and insects to live. The marshes and oak savannahs had lots of animals, birds, fish, and plants to eat. It’s also a unique ecosystem, since it provides a transition between the Great Plains and the forests around the Great Lakes. The landscape also made transportation convenient. Indigenous people relied on rivers like highways because they were one of the fastest ways to get from one place to another. It was also much easier to pile goods into a canoe than to carry them on land. 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. For more on travel and people coming together around Chicago, see the Convergence module and this map of Native travel routes!

From the first settlers that arrived here in the late 17th century, settlers thought about changing the Chicago waterways. They wanted it to be easier to remove natural resources to send back to Europe. They also wanted the land to be easier to travel using European-style boats so that they could travel faster to trade and spread Christianity. For example, early Jesuits wanted to build a canal between the Chicago and DesPlaines Rivers so that they could get to the Mississippi River more easily. They thought it would help them travel faster and reach more Indigenous communities. They were unsuccessful. Chicago was still a Native-controlled area, and Native people successfully protected their lands and communities from settler control. 

The Americans later built a canal in the 1830s. You can explore this in this module’s third exercise. 

Maps and Colonialism 

Indigenous people have long created maps to keep record of lands, waters, relations with each other, and the stars. These maps don’t necessarily look like European maps. Instead of being printed on paper, they might be painted or beaded onto leather, etched into bark, or told orally through stories and place names. When Europeans arrived, they didn’t recognize these kinds of maps. They thought they had to create new ones. They did this by writing places down on paper in their journals and diaries. Some of these maps made their way back to Europe. Copies of these maps were then shared with European explorers and settlers. 

As settlers moved through the Chicago region, they attempted to map the area for several purposes. First, the maps that early explorers and settlers created in North America helped with navigation. Explorers used these maps to learn about waterways, food sources, and the location of various Native communities. Settlers needed knowledge about how to move through Native spaces socially and geographically. Having this knowledge eventually fueled their desire to control the space.  However, these maps could never have been created without heavy influence from Native people. During the early contact period, Jesuits and other early explorers often consulted with Native people at trading centers like Michilimackinac (present-day Mackinaw Island) before going on a journey. They knew Native people had deep knowledge of their territories. They asked Native people to help them understand seasonal changes or the present location of various Native groups, which they then marked on their maps.

Settlers also created navigational maps for military purposes. These maps were often made by people who were not professional mapmakers. For example, an anonymous author created the 1812 Hay Map for Illinois Governor Ninian Edwards. Edwards wanted it to prepare to militarily invade Indigenous territories. By the time the Hay Map was created, it was common for white traders to marry Native women to build kinship ties with Native communities. This was necessary for both their survival and successful trading, and it also meant that traders could access information for mapping. Edwards reached out to several people for information before starting his military invasion. One of those people (and possibly the mapmaker) was French fur trader Louis Buisson, who was married to Sheshi (Suzanne Chevalier), a Potawatomi woman.

Artistic versions of printed maps were used to increase public support for colonialism. Many of these maps romanticized the so-called “New World,” by including colorful images of Native people, plants, and animals. Their goal was to make the “New World” look interesting to investors, so that others would give money to expand colonialism.  Others showed vast empty territory, pretending that the land didn’t have people living on it already. Many of the maps showed areas that settlers had never traveled, and most of the cartographers had never been to the “New World”  so they had often never even seen the land they were drawing. Instead, they used written narratives and measurements of Jesuit expeditions that were sent back to Europe. There could be up to a fifty-year gap between the Jesuits taking their notes and the printing and publication of the maps they created. A lot can change in fifty years! The 1718 Nicolas de Fer map is a good example of this type of map. While these maps aren’t always very accurate, they do tell us a lot about European plans for expansion. They also demonstrate the presence and importance of Indigenous people. This shows that the “New World” was actually a Native world that explorers were entering (not discovering!). 

Colonial powers also used early maps to identify natural resources that could be taken for various reasons. It was common for early French maps to chart copper, saltpeter, and iron mines, among other natural resources. This could help them tell people with power back in Europe about an area’s potential for exploitation. The 1673 map from the Marquette expedition shows various natural resources. This map circulated widely and was meant to inspire support for future colonial endeavors. Once they saw these resources, Europeans used maps to “claim” specific areas in their name, even though Native people were already living there. 

Sources:

Arvin, Maile, Eve Tuck, and Angie Morrill, “Decolonizing Feminism: Challenging Connections between Settler Colonialism and Heteropatriarchy,” Feminist Formations 25, no. 1 (2013): 8–34.

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

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 2015). 

Lewis, G. Malcolm, ed. Cartographic Encounters: Perspectives on Native American Mapmaking and Map Use. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. 

Nelson, John William. Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago’s Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2023). 

Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake. “Looking after Gdoo-Naaganinaa: Precolonial Nishnaabeg Diplomatic and Treaty Relationships.” Wicaso Sa Review 23, no. 2 (2008): 29–42.

Warhus, Marc. Another America: Native American Maps and the History of Our Land (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1997). 

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. 

2. To prepare for the primary sources you’re about to look at, create a chart like the one below (adapted from Nokes, 2022, p. 130):

3. This exercise focuses on the period from 1795 to 1833, when many local Native nations were signing treaties with the United States. Look at Source 1, this map of the treaties in our region. The people who negotiated and signed the treaties had their own ways of thinking about and relating to the land. In this exercise, we’ll look at some of those beliefs and how they shaped treaty making. 

• Which Native nations signed treaties in this region? These nations had relationships with this region’s lands and waters before colonization stretching back thousands of years.  

4. Prepare to watch Source 2, the film Oshkigin: Spirit of Fire. Before viewing, read through the following questions. Then, answer them as you view the film.

5. Think about the relationship between Indigenous people, fire, and the land based on what you saw in the film and wrote in your viewing guide. On the side of the t-chart below labeled “Indigenous perspectives,” list the values you think define Indigenous relationships with land.

6. Now we’re going to look at a source that shows us European perspectives on land. Re-read the Background section on maps. Then, take a look at Source 3, the Carte de la découverte faite l’an 1673 dans l’Amérique septentrionale, also known as “the Marquette Map.” 

7. First, identify the geographic water markers on the map (note that we have turned the map on its side to better reflect Lake Michigan being on the eastern border of the map):

• What do you notice about the waterways on the map? 
• How do they connect to one another? 
• Why might a European traveler in the 1600s want to know about these specific waterways? 

8. Now, look at the map again. Note the locations of the many Native nations whose village sites are listed on the map. These include the Kitchigami, Otoe, Mengakonkia, Peoria, Iillini, Wichita, Kansa, Osage, Missouria, Ho-Chunk, Mascouten, and Kaskaskia. 

• What does map tell you about Indigenous presence in the region? 
• How many Native nations have territories that are adjacent (next to and touching one another) or overlapping? 
• What diplomatic relationships between these nations might have shaped their access to these waterways and lands in the 1600s? 
• Why might traveling Europeans have wanted to know the locations of specific Native nations?

9. Finally, identify the remaining markers on the map. This glossary may help:

• Who do you think Marquette’s audience was? 
• Why might these map points be interesting to his readers?
• Why would readers want to know the location of iron, bloodstone, copper, marble, saltpeter, slate, or coal? 
• Why would they want to know the direction of travel in the river?  

10. Having viewed Marquette’s map from three angles, what ideas about land would have led someone to make a map like this? What values or beliefs about the land does this map represent?

11. Returning to your t-chart above, add in the right column for settler approaches to land at the time of treaty-making. While many of the treaties were negotiated long after Marquette made his map, the values remained consistent within European and American contexts. You can draw on your discussions of the map to fill out the chart.

12. Summing it up!  What you’ve just done is what a lot of historians of Native history do! You pulled together Native sources and colonial sources to get a fuller picture of the past. Now looking across the chart, map, and your viewing guide for Oshkigin, compare Indigenous and settler perspectives on land. Think back to the Hook and Jason Wesaw’s language around lands and waters. Let’s zoom in on copper: Wesaw’s blanket invokes copper as a healing element connected to water and prayer, while Marquette’s map pinpoints copper for extraction, exportation, and profit. Use the stories from this module so far (copper, water, and controlled burns) as you think about these final questions: What were Indigenous perspectives on land? What were European and American perspectives on land? Where are these perspectives similar and where do they differ?

An interactive version of this map, which shows more detail about the treaties, is available here.

The Indigenous Chicago Team at the Newberry Library created this map by using the texts of the treaties and the descriptions of the land tracts ceded. On the interactive version of the map, clicking on each polygon will give you more information about the treaty itself and the conditions surrounding the negotiation.

Source citation: Newberry Library, Indigenous Chicago Treaty Map, 2024. indigenous-chicago.org.

The film is available in full here.

This 16-minute documentary helps us understand Indigenous relationships with land. The film focuses on controlled burns. In the film, Ojibwe fire specialists and non-Native researchers talk about Indigenous fire practices and the US legislation that suppressed them. The film takes place on the Fond du Lac Ojibwe reservation in Minnesota and the Red Cliff Ojibwe reservation in Wisconsin. You can learn more about the making of the film in this recorded discussion.

A higher resolution version of the map is available here, and versions with the sites labeled are available here.

Jacques Marquette was a Jesuit missionary who traveled through the Mississippi River Valley in the late 1600s. He was born in France in 1637 and arrived in Quebec in 1666. Marquette spent time with many Indigenous communities north of the St. Lawrence River and studied several Indigenous languages. In 1673, Marquette left St. Ignace (a French settlement in what is now known as Michigan) with Louis Jolliet, a French explorer. Together, they traveled through present-day Wisconsin to the Mississippi River. Once on the river, they traveled hundreds of miles south to what is now called the Arkansas River. However, on their return journey, Native people told them about a shortcut through the Chicago portage. Even though Kaskaskia people guided Marquette and his group through the portage, he and Jolliet are frequently credited for “discovering” Chicago. 

The original manuscript version of this map was probably meant for other Jesuit missionaries, but the fact that this version is printed and was circulated with Marquette’s published journals tells us this map was for a larger audience. This map is especially interesting for how it documents natural resources as well as trade and travel routes.