Module 3: Convergence

During social upheavals, how do people come together to sustain themselves and each other?

The second core module of the Indigenous Chicago curriculum situates Chicago as a place of convergence, a place where many people have met and come together across time. It highlights the historical significance of the Chicago region’s geography as a continental crossroads connecting the Great Lakes and Mississippi River valley. For several centuries before Europeans arrived on the continent, Indigenous peoples were well aware of this pivotal juncture and related to it in a variety of ways. As European settlement expanded, they too recognized the strategic importance of this site, and Chicago continued to serve as an important location for diplomacy and meetings between Native nations and settlers. Later, it served as the home for several Native organizations involved in national fights for Indigenous sovereignty, which aligned with several other fights for freedom and equality in the second half of the 20th century.  Following the U.S. government’s policy of relocating Native people to cities like Chicago, Native community members organized a range of mutual aid and community programs to meet each other’s economic, health, and educational needs, preserve ties to ancestral cultures, and nourish emergent urban Indian cultures. Use this unit to help students further develop their understanding of how people develop and maintain relationships to a place, and how movement and migration influenced the lives of Indigenous people at different moments throughout history. Note, the bulk of the content on treaties and forced removal is covered in the Land and Environment module. 

While traditional narratives of U.S. history focus on European exploration, expansion, and settlement on the east coast of the United States between the 15th and 18th centuries, the interactions between Native people and settlers near Chicago can help us broaden the time frame for European exploration and expansion, or what might be more accurately described as encounter and invasion. The interactions between Native people and missionaries, traders, and settlers at Chicago range from the late 17th century to the early 19th century. While they are distinct because of the dominance of the fur trade in this region, they also share many similarities with interactions between Native people and settlers on the east coast, and the primary sources in this module would pair well with other lessons about colonial America. 

The first non-Native settlers in the Chicago region were primarily explorers aligned with the Jesuits, a religious order within the Catholic Church. The order was founded in 1540 and sought to evangelize and “save the souls” of non-Christians around the world through the establishment of missions. In the Great Lakes, the Jesuits who traveled throughout the region were primarily French. Jesuit expeditions throughout the region were ordered and approved by the Catholic Church, which was closely tied to the French government. The primary purpose of Jesuit expeditions was to establish missions and evangelize Native people, but that did not stop them from noticing the land’s natural resources and its potential for settlement, trade, and exploitation. As part of their efforts to convert Native people to Christianity, they also created some of the first dictionaries of Native languages, some of which are used by Native communities today for language revitalization. The vast majority of our written records from the late 17th century come from Jesuit materials, compiled within The Jesuit Relations. These are the reports that Jesuit explorers wrote and sent back to their superiors in France, and the Jesuit source in Supporting Question 1 is pulled from this large collection. These accounts  are rich with information about Native cultures and peoples, but they must be read with a careful eye. We must always remember that they were written by people who considered Native people to be savage and less than human and attend to how that impacted what they wrote. In many ways, they are an ideal way to teach primary sources and their limitations, so we encourage you to explore them with your students. The sources are translated and available online here. The most famous Jesuit missionaries associated with Chicago are Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet, who traveled up the Illinois River and through the Chicago portage in 1673. Marquette returned to and camped at Chicago again in 1674. Later explorers like René-Robert Cavalier Sieur de la Salle, who traveled through Chicago in 1682, reported directly to the French government. 

When the first non-Native explorers arrived in the region, Native people within the Illinois Confederation showed them the Chicago portage, which was a space between the Chicago and DesPlaines River that travelers would carry their canoes, allowing them to travel from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River Valley, and guided them through the landscape. The portage fluctuated greatly across seasons. At times there was so much flooding that the need to portage completely disappeared and the rivers merged. Other times, there was so little rain or snowmelt that the space between the rivers was several miles long and required a portage, in which ingeniously crafted lightweight canoes were carried across land. Similar conditions existed for portages along today’s Calumet River and Hickory & Thorn Creeks. You can imagine how confusing this might have been for settlers who were attempting to map the region. But Native people knew this place and understood its seasonal shifts. They had gathered extensive knowledge of this place over centuries of trading, farming, and making their homes along Chicago’s waterways. When Europeans arrived in this part of the continent, whether as missionaries, fur traders, or more permanent settlers, they were entirely dependent on Native knowledge, technologies, and guides to maneuver routes that they sought to incorporate into their imperial schemes. 

Native people throughout the Great Lakes and Inohkinki (the Illinois Country) also had established kinship networks and protocols for relationality. As settlers moved through the region – which Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Odawa people know as Neshnabéwaki – they depended on Native people for directions and safe passage. Native people educated settlers on protocols for greetings, gift exchange, and communicating intentions and introduced settlers to other Native nations with whom they maintained long-established and peaceable relations. While narratives of colonization often position European settlers as dominating Native people and easily forcing their removal, it’s important to understand that for at least a full century before the first land cessions in the Chicago-area began, settlers were dependent on Native people for guidance, and they incorporated themselves into established Native kinship networks in order to trade, marry, exchange culture, and learn from the people who already lived here. European powers laying claim to large swathes of the continent through their maps were actually projecting fantasies of a continental empire in territories over which they had minimal influence (in reality, they had to rely on their Native allies to uphold their rights to be in these territories). Native kinship networks became increasingly important as conflicts between Indigenous nations that were exacerbated by colonial changes spread across the Great Lakes throughout the 17th and 18th century (see more on this below). In these moments, Native nations built relationships with people as either ndenwémagen (relatives in Bodéwadmimwen, or the Potawatomi language or myeg yegwan (foreigners in Bodéwadmimwen). Being a relative was essential for a settler’s ability to survive and trade, so many of these bonds were formed through marriages with Native women. Potawatomi women like Kitihawa and Archange Ouilmette connected their husbands, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable and Antoine Ouilmette (respectively) with local kinship networks. While most of these marriages were between Native women and French men, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, who was a free Black man likely born in Haiti, provides a unique example of early kinship between Black and Native communities. We encourage you to explore the Native Women “city story” on the Indigenous Chicago website as a way to further explore the extensions of kinship network with your students.

Many Native nations were open to integrating settlers into their kinship networks because European invasion was already causing significant transformations in their homelands. Between 1628 and 1701, the Great Lakes region was wracked by a series of conflicts known as the Beaver Wars (sometimes also known as the Iroquois Wars or the Mourning Wars) that dramatically transformed the life circumstances and relations of numerous tribal nations. From their homelands in the eastern Great Lakes and along the St. Lawrence River, Haudenosaunee peoples, armed with Dutch and British guns, sought to expand their territory and locate additional beaver for their pelts. This pushed many Algonquian peoples (a term used to group many Indigenous nations whose languages are in the same family)–including the Potawatomi, Ojibweg, Odawak, Illinois Confederation, and Myaamiaki–further west into the southern and western Great Lakes and as far north as present-day Wisconsin. In addition to tremendous loss of life, these conflicts severely disrupted existing French and Native trade networks and family life and generated several streams of refugees who congregated in multiethnic villages and had to learn how to provide for themselves and reconstitute their communities in other nations’ homelands. All of this violence and upheaval can substantially be traced back to the European demand for beaver pelts and the greed of those profiting off the fur trade. 

In the first half of the 18th century, a conflict known as the “Fox Wars” caused additional changes within the Great Lakes. Hoping to secure their control of the flow of furs and European weapons between the trans-Mississippi West and the Great Lakes, the Meskwaki (also called Fox by Europeans) raided and took captives from Potawatomi, Odawa, Myaamia, and other villages–who frequently retaliated in kind–and larger scale conflict erupted between the Meskwaki and a broad French-Algonquian alliance. The French desire for Native captives that could be enslaved was also a major driver of the war. Ultimately, the Meskwaki position was greatly weakened by these conflicts and the relentless French pursuit led the severely diminished numbers of Meskwaki to take refuge among the Sauk. The Potawatomi and Illinois Confederation emerged from the Fox Wars as regional military and economic leaders and favored French allies. After the close of the conflict, the Potawatomi, along with several other Algonquian groups, also began to develop more friendly relations with Meskwakis in the wake of the aggressive French campaign, which some scholars have characterized as genocidal. Both the Fox Wars and the Beaver Wars demonstrate the significant impact that European settlement and demand for fur and captives who could be enslaved had on Native peoples, leading to the destabilization of existing trade and kinship networks. These conflicts resulted in major shifts in the ways Native nations interacted with each other and their environment. 

The third conflict that led to major changes in the Great Lakes and ultimately paved the way for the first land cessions was the American Revolution. Scholars in Native Studies and History now see the American Revolution as being significantly motivated by and leading to the dispossession of Native land. Among the many British transgressions identified by American colonists, refusal to allow migration across the Appalachian Mountains (in the Proclamation of 1763) is understood by historians as a major factor leading to the revolution – a hunger for Native land was one of the major reasons that colonists pursued independence from Great Britain. Following the success of the war and the formal creation of the United States, settlers poured across the Appalachian Mountains and began acquiring Native lands through treaties, the negotiations of which often involved coercion or fraud. The establishment of American forts throughout the Great Lakes region, such as Fort Dearborn, also shifted the dynamics in established Native places like Chicago, as an increased American military presence disrupted existing Native settlements and trade routes. 

In addition to the numerous Indigenous groups that had permanent settlements at Chicago, others incorporated the area into their seasonal rounds – annual patterns of coming together (aggregation) and moving away (dispersal) based on the growth cycles of plants and seasonal migrations of animals that were essential for sustenance. Each community had their own distinct lifeways, but in general, several clans or other groupings would congregate for the summer at villages in which women typically tended to agricultural fields while men brought in hauls of fish. In the autumn, men hunted the millions of migrating birds passing through the Great Lakes while women harvested wild rice in marshes and rivers from canoes. In the winter, communities dispersed into smaller family groups to hunt game–which around Chicago included deer, elk, and bison–and fur bearing animals like beavers, otters, and racoons. In the spring, communities gathered again to tap maple trees for syrup. They also harvested spring plants, like the ramps that once grew throughout the Chicago area. Communities also came together seasonally for cultural and social events like storytelling, various types of celebrations, and ceremonies. These activities predate contact with Europeans, persisted throughout colonization, and are still practiced today. We encourage you to explore the Seasonal Rounds “city story” on the Indigenous Chicago website as a way to further explore the growth of this community with your students.

This political economy–which balanced agricultural production, hunting, fishing, and foraging and through which Native women exercised considerable authority–structured relations as French and then British settlement expanded into the western Great Lakes. The high European demand for fur pelts made places like the Chicago portages even more vigorous conduits of trade. Settlers and Native people alike often traveled up the western shore of what Odawa people know as Gchigmiing (Lake Michigan) to Michilimackinac (Mackinaw Island) and back down what Myaamia people recognize as the inohka asiipiomi (River of the Illinois People or Illinois River) into the Mississippi River Valley. Individuals also traveled along the southern shore of Gchigmiing to the place Potawatomi people call Wawyatenak (Detroit), or the place of the whirlpool.

While Native men hunted the animals that supplied Europeans with pelts, Native women played a central role in regulating access to that supply. In order to be successful and safe in the fur trade, white traders had to establish and maintain relationships with the Native peoples who controlled these lands, including by becoming part of existing kinship networks. Marriages to Native women often facilitated early connections, and their continued success depended on guidance and support from their wives. At times, Native wives took part in the trade directly, such as Marie-Madeleine Saint-Jean, an Onondaga woman married to French fur trader François Francouer. In 1692, Saint-Jean signed a contract for the sale and transport of beaver pelts between Chicago and Michilimackinac on behalf of her husband. This is an excellent primary source to examine with your students as a way to consider what role Native women played in the success of these trade routes. A century after Saint-Jean, Kitihawa and Archange Ouilmette, wives of French traders Jean Baptiste Point du Sable and Antoine Ouilmette respectively, are said to have assisted with the management of their husbands’ businesses, enabling their husbands to travel across the Great Lakes region for long periods of time. As a trader of likely Haitian descent, Du Sable’s story provides us with an important example of a freed Black man creating kinship ties with Native communities. He and Ouilmette are often remembered today as heroic founders of the city. Unfortunately, contemporary versions of this history too often hide the work of Native women like Kitihawa and Archange who taught them how to survive here. In their own time, Du Sable and Ouilmette would have been acutely aware that their success and well-being depended on Native women who enabled them to exist within a dynamic Native world.  

In the late 19th and 20th century, thousands of Native children were removed from their communities and sent to Indian boarding schools across the country (more on this in the soon-to-come Module 5). After leaving the schools, many students returned home, while many others moved directly to cities. Later in the 20th century, the U.S. government began a formal relocation program (more on this below). At the urging of the federal government, as well as for personal or professional reasons, many Native people returned or moved to Chicago in the 20th century. As the Native population grew across the 20th century, community members mobilized to create spaces to build relationships and provide support, often in place of services promised by the federal government that never came. Native organizations like the Indian Council Fire were created and became hubs of both social life and advocacy. Founded in 1923, the ICF provided housing, legal, education, and employment support to Native people in Chicago and the Midwest. The American Indian Center opened in 1953 and soon became a crucial site for community gatherings and community building. From 1964-1972, they operated the Canoe Club, an important site of intertribal interaction across the city. They also held (and continue to hold) frequent powwows, which serve as sites for community gathering, cultural connection, and joy. St. Augustine Center was another organization that provided significant support for Native people who moved to Chicago as part of the U.S. government’s relocation program (see below). Open from 1961-2006, St. Augustine’s provided casework and supportive services to Native people who lived in the city, especially those that were new to Chicago and had few resources. Other organizations like St. Kateri Center (opened in 1982) and the American Indian Association of Illinois (opened in 2007) have continued to provide spaces for community support and gathering. Native people in Chicago also organized educational programs to support Native youth. These included creating schools and colleges, like O-Wai-Ya-Wa Elementary, Little Big Horn High School, the Institute for Native American Development at Truman College, and the Native American Educational Services (NAES) College, as well as supporting in-school programs like Indian Education. Community members also organized youth programs for tutoring, culture, and athletics through the American Indian Center and other community spaces. 

Today, Native organizations in Chicago continue to provide a mix of social services, educational programming, cultural activities, and advocacy efforts to those within and beyond the Native community. Many of the organizations work together through the Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative (CAICC), a coalition of organizations in Chicago that serve the Native community. Recent collaboration between these institutions has led to changes in legislation within the state of Illinois related to the passage of House Bill 1633 that requires schools to teach Native American history and Senate Bill 1446 that affirms the right of Native American students to wear religious and culturally significant regalia at graduation. We encourage you to explore the Uptown Native Community walking tour on the Indigenous Chicago website as a way to further explore the growth of this community with your students.

The Voluntary Relocation Program (1952-1972), which the government officially authorized under Public Law 959 (frequently referred to as the 1956 Indian relocation act), was created by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to encourage Native people to leave their rural reservations and relocate to urban centers like Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Seattle. The Bureau of Indian Affairs used promotional posters, photographs, and videos to craft a vision of what life could supposedly be like for Native people who moved to urban centers. They promised relocatees that they would receive housing and employment assistance, but few ever saw these benefits. Most Native people who relocated faced significant poverty as a result of discrimination that led to unemployment or poor work opportunities. Many felt isolated from their communities and traditional cultures. Encourage your students to explore the Indigenous Chicago Relocation Map, which shows the many communities from which people came to Chicago and surrounding suburbs.

It is important to understand this policy within a larger effort by the US government to eliminate Native nations and take control of Native land. Native nations are sovereign and have a nation-to-nation relationship with the federal government. Today, most of their land is held in trust by the federal government and protected from private sales. However, historically, the federal government has passed several federal policies that attempted to break up these land bases and eliminate Native nations. Following the end of the so-called “Indian Wars” in the late 19th century, the U.S. government pivoted to a policy of assimilation, in which they attempted to destroy Native languages and cultures and in doing so, dissolve Indigenous community ties and governing structures. Native children were removed from their families and taken away to Indian boarding schools, where they were forbidden from speaking their languages and practicing their religions and cultures. This was part of a larger set of policies to eradicate Indigenous cultures. Concurrently, in 1887, Congress passed the General Allotment Act, which confiscated tribal land bases, dividing them into individual plots and providing for the sale of “surplus lands” and, later, Native-controlled plots to non-Native people, significantly diminishing tribal land bases. The 1956 Indian relocation act, and its sister policy, the 1953 Termination Act, were an extension of these earlier assimilation attempts that sought to eliminate Native nations. The Termination Act proposed that tribal nations who were “sufficiently assimilated” should have their status as sovereign nations removed, and relocation attempted to remove Native people from their communities and further diminish a shared sense of tribal identity and belonging. The sovereign status of a number of tribal nations was revoked as a result of Termination; of these, many are still fighting for the return of their federal recognition. Throughout the 20th century Native people have subverted these policies by retaining their cultural identity and connections to their homelands, forming clubs within intertribal organizations to preserve specific tribal practices, maintaining links to reservations, or returning home. 

As we will see in the next module on Activism and Resistance, Native people responded to these policies and the lack of resources for those who did relocate through direct activism and protest, and many of their actions aligned with other social movements like the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement, and the movement for LGBTQ+ Equality. However, like other communities fighting for their rights, Native leaders also came together to craft policy statements and politically organize. The Chicago American Indian Conference of 1961 was one of these coming together moments in Chicago as Native and non-Native people convened at the University of Chicago in June 13-20, 1961 in response to a new administration with the election of President John F. Kennedy. After the impact of the Voluntary Relocation Program, the Termination Act, the Indian Relocation Act, and the lack of federal studies on the conditions of Native people since the Meriam Report (1928) Native and non-Natives believed that a national conference could drive the goal of self-determination. The Declaration of Indian Purpose, presented to President Kennedy in 1962 by the NCAI, was the result of this Native led conference. After the conference and a series of workshops on Indian affairs, a coalition of Native youth formed as the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC). The Chicago Conference brought Native people together with an objective: to create and present a statement on the issues in the management of Indian Affairs. The conference also facilitated intertribal connections, connecting Native people on a national scale. 

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Edmunds, R. David and Joseph L. Peyser, The Fox Wars: The Mesquakie Challenge to New France. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993).

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Tom Greenwood Papers, Box 1, Foldes 1-14. Newberry Library. 

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

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