Digital Resources Story Map
In this Story Map
Welcome to the Digital Resources Story Map page for the Indigenous Chicago project. On this page, you will find more than a dozen new maps and graphics that re-interpret Chicago’s history from Native perspectives. The narrative below also links out to many of the points on our Urban Archive map, a point-based map showing more than five centuries of Indigenous history in Chicago.
Indigenous knowledge, curiosity, and priorities have shaped these digital resources from the start. All digital resources linked below were created by the Indigenous Chicago project team with guidance from the Indigenous Chicago Mapping Committee unless otherwise noted.
To open any of the maps below in a new, interactive page, simply click the expand arrows in the upper right hand corner of the map. To see a full list of digital resources and learn more about each map and how to use it, please visit our “How to Use the Digital Maps” page. For more information about the communities mentioned below and the names we have chosen to use across the project, please visit our “Guide to Indigenous People Who Call Chicago Home” page.
Chicago Has Always Been a Native Place
Chicago is, and has always been, an Indigenous place. Dozens of Indigenous communities have long lived on this land, traveled through the many waterways, and gathered at this important place that connects the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River watershed through the Chicago portage.
In the image above, Myaamia artist Megan Sekulich uses shapes reflecting Great Lakes embroidery style and beadwork to highlight the importance of waterways and the many Native plants and animals that have long been significant to people Native people in this area. You can read Megan’s full description for the piece, along with a list of the plants and animals, on our blog.
As homelands of the Neshnabé (Potawatomi, Odawa, Ojibwe), Illinois Confederation (Peoria, Kaskaskia, and others), Myaamia, Wea, Sauk, Meskwaki, Kickapoo, Mascouten, Ho-Chunk, and Menominee peoples, this area has been a crossroads for Indigenous nations for thousands of years. It continues to be home to a diverse and flourishing urban Native community.
Indigenous connections to the land now known as Chicago pre-date European contact, and the many names for this place and others in the central Great Lakes attest to the long-standing and ongoing connections that Native communities have to these lands. Some of these languages, such as Bodéwadmimwen, Ojibwemowin, and Nishnaabemwin (the languages of the Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Odawa people, respectively) are similar and share many similarities. Others, like Hoocąk (the language of the Ho-Chunk people) are part of an entirely different language family. This diversity reflects the rich history of the many tribal nations who have called Chicago home across time.
You may also hear people say that Chicago is named after “the Algonquian name” for wild onion or a similar allium, but this is a misnomer. Though many of the place names for Chicago do reference wild onions, or “ramps,” 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 now called Chicago.
Prior to the arrival of Europeans, Chicago was home to many Indigenous nations. Some lived in Chicago permanently while others traveled to the area seasonally to participate in seasonal rounds, annual patterns of coming to a particular place at a particular time. These more temporary sites are labeled as “camps” on the map. Indigenous people developed these cycles based on the growth cycles of plants and migrations of animals, and moving this way also allowed for communities to regularly renew their connections to each other.
The presence of so-called “chipping sites” near many villages attests to the type of seasonal labor that likely took place in these sites. Stone used to create tools and weapons does not disintegrate quickly, making it apparent in archaeological excavations, but these sites were also likely used for activities like processing wild rice, weaving baskets, and maple sugaring. Therefore, we have renamed them as “Community Work Sites.”
The established kinship networks and protocols these nations held with each other included guidelines for diplomacy and sharing space, and as such, many of the villages in the Chicago area were international – meaning they included people from several different Indigenous nations.
Native people were forcibly removed from Chicago in the 1830s, but many returned or found ways to remain. For example, Neshnabé gigdownene (representative) Chechepinquay (Alexander Robinson) returned to Chicago shortly after his community was removed, and lived the remainder of his life on land that had been reserved for him in the 1829 Treaty of Prairie du Chien. Other Native people traveled to Chicago temporarily for various reasons, such as to participate in the 1893 and 1933 Worlds Fairs. Carlos Montezuma (Yavapai Apache), shown here, was a practicing physician in Chicago and began publishing a monthly newsletter here in 1916.
Later in the twentieth century, the Bureau of Indian Affairs ran a voluntary relocation program that encouraged Native people to leave their communities and relocate to urban centers like Chicago. The program was part of larger efforts to assimilate Native people by separating them from their communities and culture, but it failed. Instead, Native people who relocated to Chicago (many of whom lived in the Uptown neighborhood) created new, intertribal community spaces built on mutual aid.
Today, Chicago is home to a diverse Native community representing hundreds of different tribal nations. The culture of mutual aid and the creation of intertribal spaces continues through many Native organizations, many of whom are part of the Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative (CAICC). In this video created for the Indigenous Chicago exhibition by Casey Brown (Ho-Chunk) and Julia Pello, Native community members discuss what Chicago means to them today.
Story Map Sections
Sources and Citations
Bowes, John P. Land Too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Removal. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016).
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).
LaGrand, James B. Indian Metropolis: Native Americans in Chicago, 1945-75. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2005).
LaPier, Rosalyn R. and David R.M. Beck, City Indian: Native American Activism in Chicago, 1893-1934. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015).
Low, John. Imprints: The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the City of Chicago. (Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2016).
Miller, Douglas. Indians on the Move: Native American Mobility and Urbanization in the Twentieth Century. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina 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).
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).
Witgen, Michael. An Infinity of Nations: How the Native New World Shaped Early North America. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).