By the end of this exercise, I can… 

• describe how historians look at both form and content
• analyze an archival object for its form

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. 
• SS.9-12.IS.5. Gather and evaluate information from multiple primary and secondary sources that reflect the perspectives and experiences of multiple groups, including marginalized groups.

Geography

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

Simon Pokagon and the 1893 World’s Fair

Many Neshnabék experienced violent and painful removals from their homeland during the late 1700s and early 1800s. Many Native people resisted removal. After the Treaty of 1833, for example, the Pokagon Band used their strong association with the Catholic Church to remain in their homelands. You can read more about this on the Pokagon Band’s website under “History.” 

The 1893 Chicago World’s Fair was a major event in Chicago history and occurred only 60 years after the Treaty of 1833. The fair was also known as the Chicago Columbian Exposition. 1892 marked 400 years after Christopher Columbus’s invasion of North America, so the 1893 event was meant to celebrate colonialism and four centuries of “progress.” At the fair, anthropologists organized an American Indian building and village. The village reinforced stereotypes about Native communities as prehistoric, uncivilized, and backward. The fair falsely showed Native people as the opposite of progress and innovation. The fair also included an exhibit on Indian boarding schools, which were violent institutions to assimilate Native children. Instead of showing them as violent, the fair used performances by Native children to promote the schools as efforts to “civilize” Native people. 

Hundreds of Indigenous peoples from across the United States and the hemisphere came to work at the fair for their own reasons. Some simply came for the adventure, some came to make money, and some came to protest how white settlers represented Native people. You can learn more about Native people at the 1893 and 1933 World’s Fair in the project’s City Story on this topic. 

One famous response came from Potawatomi leader Simon Pokagon, who pushed back on settlers’ ideas of Native people as “uncivilized.” Simon Pokagon was a leader of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi during this time. He had Potawatomi, Odawa, and Ojibwe ancestry, which was common due to how closely related Neshnabék are. During his life (1830-1899), Pokagon wrote several books about Potawatomi history and culture. He was an advocate for his people. For example, he met with President Lincoln several times to petition for money that the government owed his community. Pokagon also used his writing to assert Potawatomi peoples’ claims to their homelands. As a well-known Native leader, Pokagon appeared on one of the parade floats and wrote a speech that was delivered at the fair. He also presented the mayor of Chicago with a copy of the 1833 Treaty of Chicago printed on birch bark. Most notably, Pokagon also printed a booklet called The Red Man’s Greeting (also called The Red Man’s Rebuke) on birchbark. His booklet critiqued the World’s Fair and colonization. The booklet confronts the impacts of colonialism for Native people, as well as the lands, waters, and other living beings of the Chicago area. Pokagon worked with publishers to print, sell, and gift copies of the book both during and after the fair.

Pokagon’s choice of birchbark marked his book as different from the paper pamphlets and booklets other people shared at the fair. As he says in the book’s opening, Neshnabék people have used birchbark for many reasons for millenia; his book represents generations of Neshnabék knowledge about how and when to harvest, process, and use birchbark. Creating the book was a massive effort: unlike paper that could be run through a printing press many pages at a time, copies of the Greeting had to be printed one page at a time. The printing of the books probably took many people to harvest the bark, cut it and treat it appropriately, set the pages, and bind them together. 

Pokagon makes clearly anticolonial statements throughout his text and emphasizes Chicago as an established Native place. He also makes calculated choices about how to reach a mostly non-Native audience. This reflects a long-standing Potawatomi practice of using the spoken or written word as a form of diplomacy. For example, he makes some statements about the disappearance of Native people. The damaging myth that Native people will someday die out was common during Pokagon’s time. It may feel strange to see Pokagon – a living Native person with strong ties to his community – using words that seem to play into these misrepresentations. Pokagon was likely being strategic: many Indigenous intellectuals during this period made similar comments, which were meant to capture the interest (and sympathies) of white audiences. 

Colonial archives

When people talk about archives, they often mean physical collections of books, letters, journals, and other manuscripts that are held by libraries, universities, governments, and historical societies, among others. Collections tend to represent the perspectives of the people who collected them. Since formal archives are often part of settler institutions, they often have more materials that show the perspectives of settlers. Because of this, they can be limited sources of information about Indigenous histories. However, sometimes we can read settler-created archival items “against the grain,” or by reading for alternative perspectives that might not be immediately apparent on the surface of a document. 

Historians also look at more than just texts. They can look at material culture, or the items people use that reflect information about their lives, which can also be held in archives or museum collections. Whether looking at documents or material culture, historians are interested both in the content (what it says) and the form (how it’s made). Looking at how something was made can help historians understand a lot of things, including how people have interacted with their environments. How and what people use to make things can tell us about their cultural values, technologies, histories, and environmental contexts.

The Indigenous material culture in settler collections have often come from anthropologists or collectors in ways we would say are not ethical today. This means that we should be careful about how we use them. Many museums and archives today are rethinking how they got their items. In addition, some Indigenous people are using archives to reconnect with knowledges and histories that colonial policies suppressed. 

To learn Indigenous histories, it’s important to seek out sources created from Indigenous perspectives. Sometimes, we can find these items in colonial archives, and other times we have to look for other collections or types of resources. In this exercise, we’re going to look at an Indigenous authored book that you can find in a colonial archive. 

Sources

Beck, David R. M. “Fair Representation? American Indians the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.” World History Connected 13:3 (2016). https://worldhistoryconnected.press.uillinois.edu/13.3/forum_01_beck.html

Beck, David R. M. Unfair Labor? American Indians and the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019).

Low, John. Imprints: The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the City of Chicago. (Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2016). 

Morseau, Blaire, ed. As Sacred to us: Simon Pokagon’s Birch Bark Stories in their Contexts. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2023).

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 use archives and material culture to learn about the past. In this exercise, we’re going to use Pokagon’s 1893 book The Red Man’s Greeting as an example to learn about how historians learn from the materiality, or form, of historical objects. Review the information in the Background section above. 

Pokagon made his book out of birchbark rather than commercial paper, even though commercial paper would have been widely available and easier to print multiple copies on. Let’s make some hypotheses. Why do you think Pokagon chose to use birchbark?

2. Let’s practice how historians look at an archival object. First, we need to build some background knowledge on the materials Pokagon uses. Check out this CBC documentary about working with birchbark. [Teachers we suggest viewing 0:00-1:23 for the introduction and cultural background and then 4:29-7:39 for information on when and how to harvest birchbark.]

• • What is the cultural significance of birchbark for Neshnabék? 
  • What have Neshnabék created using birchbark? 
  • What special properties does birchbark have that makes it useful for baskets, canoes, etc.
  • How do Neshnabék know when to harvest birchbark?
  • What do you think the artist meant when she described the birchbark tree as her teacher? What does this tell you about how Neshnabék respect birchbark trees?

3. Now that you know more about birchbark, let’s look at Simon Pokagon’s book physically. You can look at pictures of the book here. 

• • What do you notice about the form of the book? What is it made from? How is it put together?
  • What relationships, trainings, or knowledge about birchbark did Pokagon need to have to create the book? 
  • Think about where birch trees grow (across northern North America and widely throughout the Great Lakes). What does Pokagon’s use of birch trees tell us about Potawatomi relationships with these specific lands and waters? 

4. Let’s check our thinking by listening to Pokagon’s perspective. Simon Pokagon begins The Red Man’s Greeting (which you’ll read more about in Module 4!) with this explanation:

My object in publishing the “Red Man’s Greeting” on the bark of the white birch tree, is out of loyalty to my own people, and gratitude to the Great Spirit, who in his wisdom provided for our use for untold generations, this most remarkable tree with manifold bark used by us instead of paper, being of greater value to us as it could not be injured by sun or water.

Out of the bark of this wonderful tree were made hats, caps and dishes for domestic use, while our maidens tied with it the knot that sealed their marriage vow; wigwams were made of it, as well as large canoes that outrode the violent storms on lake and sea; it was also used for light and fuel at our war councils and spirit dances. Originally the shores of our northern lakes and streams were fringed with it and evergreen, and the white charmingly contrasted with the green mirrored from the water was indeed beautiful, but … this tree is vanishing from our forests. 

• • What does Pokagon want readers to understand about birch bark? About Potawatomi relationships with it?
  • How does Pokagon’s approach to printmaking reflect Indigenous histories in this place?

5. Summing it up! Historians can analyze the form of an object to understand how people related to the places where they live. Simon Pokagon used birchbark to speak back against colonial harms to his homelands. Based on this exercise, what additional questions about the lands, waters, and peoples of Chicago do you want to learn about? How do you imagine using historical objects in the archives, including material culture, as a source of information about the past?