How do we know what we know about Indigenous peoples’ relationships with their lands and waters in the Chicago area?

By the end of this hook, I can… 

• think about how history unfolds on different time scales

Inquiry

• SS.9-12.IS.4 Determine the kinds of sources that will be helpful in answering compelling and supporting questions, taking into consideration multiple points of view represented in the sources, the types of sources available, and the potential uses of the sources. 

Geography

• SS.9-12.G.6. Analyze and explain how humans affect and interact with the environment and vice versa.

Abandoning the Bering Strait Theory

Indigenous people have been here since time immemorial – a phrase that means before human memory, or since the beginning of time. Each of the Native nations with a historical connection to Chicago has their own unique creation or origin story that tells them how they came to be. These stories explain Native peoples’ relationships to their homelands and describe relationships between people, as well as plant and animal relatives. 

Native peoples’ teachings testify to their origins here in North America – this is what it means to be Indigenous. One way Indigenous peoples narrate their connections to lands and waters is through story. In Indigenous contexts, stories are not myths or legends – rather, they are complex teaching tools. In hearing the stories, listeners can pull out lessons that help them figure out how to live sustainably with each other and with lands and waters. Some Indigenous stories are creation or origin stories. These stories and other oral traditions contain information about ecology and ethnobotany, medicine, language, arts, history, and politics, among others. These stories often also teach us about civics – how we should treat one another to build sustainable, balanced, interrelated societies. We can look to Indigenous stories as historical texts that teach us about Native nations’ long-standing connections to the Chicago area.

In Indigenous communities, you might hear the same story many times throughout your life. As a listener, your job is to listen carefully each time you hear the story because you will hear something new based on where you are in your life at the time. Indigenous storytellers know how to shape the story based on what the audience needs. They might tell more or less detailed versions of stories based on the audience. They might also leave out certain information (especially if information in the story is considered sacred) because not everyone has a right to all information all the time within Indigenous storytelling. This is because in Indigenous contexts, knowledge is shared with you when you’re ready, when you need it, and/or when you can use it to help the community be well.

Creation or origin stories link Indigenous people to specific homelands, and they can also talk about journeys or migrations from one area to the next. Homelands can be a broad term that includes lands and waters across a large area. It is also common for Indigenous people from different nations to have overlapping connections to specific places! And while a story might link to one location at one moment, the Indigenous people of that nation might have long-standing connections with the broader region through seasonal trading, hunting, and fishing routes, among others. 

Anthropological Eras

You may have seen textbooks that use phrases like the Woodland Period, the Mississippian Culture, or Paleo Indians. Anthropologists and archaeologists invented these terms because they wanted to categorize large groups of Indigenous peoples over large periods of time. Contemporary Native nations do not use these terms to identify themselves or their ancestors. 

Most anthropology draws a boundary between “prehistory” and “history” at the invention of writing systems. Anthropologists made up this distinction to help organize their writing, but the distinction usually gets applied in a racist way that sees European writing as more advanced than the communication systems of other cultures. In North America, Native cultures have developed elaborate and sophisticated communication systems and technologies, including systems of writing, mapping, and memory-keeping. Early European and American anthropologists did not recognize the validity or complexity of Indigenous communication systems. This is because they were often looking for confirmation that Native people were “less civilized” or “more primitive” than Europeans. Europeans used these narratives of “civilization” to justify enslaving and dispossessing Native people. Narratives of Indigenous “primitivism” also help people believe that Native people are part of the past, rather than part of the present and future. 

These narratives also undermine the importance of oral traditions for Indigenous people. Oral traditions cannot be written off as simple or silly tales. Rather, these are complex stories that have been carefully passed down through generations. Unlike European memory keeping systems, which prioritize writing things down to remember, Native memory keeping systems often prioritize careful and deep listening to be able to retell a story accurately over time. While settler narratives often cast doubt on the trustworthiness of oral traditions as sources, many Indigenous cultures around the world have documented traditions of keeping oral records that go back thousands of years. 

False narratives like these are hard to undo, but archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and other researchers are working hard to recognize Indigenous expertise. Keep an eye on how they’re doing this in the sources in this module.

An Established Native Place

Before the city as we know it existed, the many Indigenous nations who lived and had long standing relationships with this place knew it as Zhegagoynak, Gaa-zhigaagwanzhikaag, Zhigaagong, Šikaakonki, Shekâkôheki, Sekākoh, and Gųųšge honąk, among other names. Mispronunciations and misspellings of these words as  “Checagou” or “Chicagua” appear often in early colonial maps. 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 prioritize these words over French misunderstandings like Checagou or Chicagua. 

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 served as an important form of sustenance for the Native peoples of this region. Ramps are hard to grow and easy to overharvest. That ramps grew here in abundance 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 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. 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!).

Chicago was also important as an intersection of several waterways, and its rich landscape drew many Indigenous peoples to the area. Each Native nation 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 had established kinship networks and protocols for relationality, which included relationships for family, trade, diplomacy, ceremony, and mutual protection with other nations. It is a myth that Indigenous people lacked boundaries before colonialism. Indigenous people had long-standing ways of recognizing territorial boundaries between Native nations for governing, hunting, farming, and other needs. 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, peaceful coexistence through relationships and respect.

These negotiations for shared place 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

Historical Methods

Historians use a variety of sources to analyze and interpret the past. We typically call these primary and secondary sources. Primary sources were created by someone who witnessed a specific historical event or time period first-hand. Secondary sources are interpretations and analyses of that event or period created by other historians. Using primary and secondary sources, historians reconstruct historical events. They use these sources to understand social and historical contexts, and they develop their own narratives about how things occurred in the past. 

Different types of historians focus on different types of sources. For example, many historians focus on archival materials. These are usually written documents like journals, letters, and government documents. They can also include maps. Literary historians focus on published texts like books, novels, poetry, and other types of writing. Environmental historians (people who study the history of the land and/or how humans have related to the land over time) additionally look at the land itself as a historical source. Those who study Native history also rely on the knowledge of Indigenous people, including oral traditions that have been carried through generations. 

Native people are the best representatives of their own history, and it is important that they are involved in the telling of their stories. To understand how this works in practice, let’s think about historians who study Native history in the pre-colonial and early colonial period. While all historians use critical thinking and skepticism to check their sources’ reliability and bias, this is especially important for researchers who study early Native history. That is because many of the archival sources from this period were authored by non-Native people. Scholars studying this period who want to know Native perspectives have to read “between the lines” to look for Native presence and actions. Working directly with Native people who carry knowledge of their ancestors is essential to this process.

In addition to analyzing sources, historians also look at historical events within broader social, economic, and political contexts. It is especially important that historians working on Native history today think about the broader context of colonial violence. Understanding Native actions within these larger contexts helps uncover underlying causes and influences that shaped historical outcomes. It also can help current historians push back on previous inaccurate historical narratives. 

Historical methods help historians create a coherent and accurate understanding of the past. As historians study Native history, it is essential they include sources that represent Native knowledge. 

Sources

Andersen, Chris and Jean M. O’Brien, eds. Sources and Methods in Indigenous Studies. (London: Routledge Press, 2017). 

Augustine, Stephen J. “Oral Traditions.” Indigenous Foundations, indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca. 

Bauer, William. “Oral History,” in Sources and Methods in Indigenous Studies, ed. Chris Andersen and Jean M. O’Brien (New York: Routledge, 2017). 

Mahuika, Nepia. ReThinking Oral History and Tradition: An Indigenous Perspective. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). 

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

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

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. Historians often get information about the past from written sources like diaries, journals, government documents, and many others. While written texts are very useful and an important part of how historians do what they do, historians also draw from many other types of materials. As we learn about humans’ relationships with lands and waters, we can also use place names, material culture, and maps to fill out our picture of the past. Review the information in the Background section above about how historians do what they do, as compared to archaeologists and anthropologists. Note especially the work of environmental historians. What kinds of sources do historians use? 

2. According to western history, only humans have memories because only people are thought to have the kind of spirit and mental capacity necessary to hold memory. But many Indigenous histories talk about humans as the last to be created. Humans in these systems have the shortest memories. Examples from Indigenous languages can help us think about this difference. For Indigenous people, some concepts that in English are inanimate are actually animate. For example, in Ojibwemowin, or the Ojibwe language, the word for rocks (asin, pronounced uh·sihn) is actually animate. That means that for Ojibwe people, rocks are considered to have life, and therefore also their own perspectives, memories, and priorities. Similarly, in Ojibwe, the word for tree (mitig, pronounced mih·tig) is also animate. 

• • Think about the oldest trees you know. What memories do you imagine they hold?
  • Think about the mountains you’ve visited. What memories do you imagine they hold?
  • Think about the bodies of water (rivers, lakes, oceans, etc.) you’ve been to. What memories do you imagine they hold? 

3. As you might imagine, history unfolds on much longer time scales than just those noticed by humans! Dr. Megan Bang is an Ojibwe and Italian researcher who grew up in Chicago and teaches at Northwestern University. She helped write a program called Learning in Places. An exercise from Learning in Places can help us think about Chicago across six time spans: 

• • the long memories of lands and waters (mountains, oceans, glaciers, etc.)
  • the long memories of plants, lands, waters, and animals that go beyond human memory
  • the millenia-long relationships of Indigenous peoples to this place
  • the relatively short history of settlers in this place
  • the relatively short histories of the contemporary city of Chicago and its relationships with other places around the world
  • and the potential futures of the Chicago area.

Look back at the Background section. Use this adaptation of the Learning in Places socio-ecological histories walk to think through the different people, lands, waters, and more-than-human relations who have shaped this place. You might have to do some extra research! 

4. With your chart filled in, discuss these questions with your classmates:

• • After this exercise, how would you describe Chicago as a place geologically, ecologically, politically, and/or socially?
  • What are the relationships between humans and the lands, animals, plants, and waters of the Chicago area (now and in the past)?
  • How might the different time scales, particularly between Indigenous people and settlers or nation-states, impact their senses of their responsibilities, relationships, and connections with these lands and waters?

5. Summing it up and looking ahead! Who and what has shaped this place? How do our shared histories in this place shape our shared presents and futures? Create a visualization that shows the different time scales and how different living beings have experienced them.