Removal and Erasure
As white settlement in the Midwest continued to expand, the United States was eager to negotiate more land cessions, especially those that would allow them to control the important Chicago portage. The 1816 Treaty of St. Louis was a major turning point in this effort, ceding land around the portage, as well as the connection between the Des Plaines and the Illinois rivers. This treaty was made with the explicit intent of creating a canal that would simplify travel across the portage. It also created the Indian Boundary Line, which limited where Neshnabé (Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi) people could live in the area.
Subsequent treaties in 1829 and 1832 ceded the remaining land in what is now called Chicago, and the 1833 Treaty of Chicago orchestrated the removal of Neshnabé (Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Odawa) people west of the Mississippi River. Many of these treaties were coercive, made on unequal footing, and later broken. But it’s too simple to say that Native nations didn’t know what they were signing or didn’t understand land ownership. Indigenous communities had long-standing practices for recognizing territorial boundaries that pre-date colonization, and they made difficult decisions that considered the interests of future generations. Treaties are binding agreements that uphold legal obligations still intact today.
As removal occurred, white settlers also began to transform Chicago from an environment carefully managed by and suited for Indigenous needs to one that would support a settler economy. Prior to these changes, both the mouth of the Chicago River and the portage were shallow waterways ideally suited for canoes. The mouth of the river that lay just behind a submerged sandbar, the shallow Chicago and Des Plaines Rivers, and the wetlands south of Lake Michigan were important habitats for both plant and animal relatives that Indigenous people relied on, especially wild rice and fur-bearing aquatic mammals like beaver and otter. However, since larger American ships often ran aground in these shallow waters, U.S. officials began planning to alter the waterscape to benefit Euro-American shipping.
Surveys of the land began immediately after the 1816 treaty, and by 1822, Congress gave permission for the creation of a canal along the existing portage route, breaking ground on the Illinois-Michigan Canal in 1836. Plans to reroute the river and create a harbor suitable for larger ships also began in this period. Congress earmarked funding for harbor improvements in 1828 and 1831 and began construction in 1833. The buzz around these engineering projects drew incoming waves of American settlers and land speculators, many of whom expressed their disdain at the wetland and marsh-dominated region. In order to make the land more desirable for these buyers, U.S. officials began several draining projects in 1832. These efforts would continue over the next decades, ultimately destroying 367,485 acres of wetlands.
As Native people were forced to leave Chicago and settlers transformed the landscape, they also created narratives and public representations that erased Indigenous people or, as in the above map meant to depict Chicago in 1833, quite literally pushed them to the margins. These are examples of what Ojibwe historian Jean O’Brien calls “lasting narratives,” stories and representations that declare Native people are the “last of” communities that will naturally disappear. These narratives helped to justify the taking of Native land by suggesting that Native people being removed was inevitable, rather than a result of U.S. policies.
Today, narratives like these unfortunately continue. Native people are selectively represented in various types of monuments, murals, and other public art in Chicago, but the vast majority of these representations portray historical (often romanticized) Native people. By only depicting Native people in the past, these representations make it difficult for the public to understand that Native nations are contemporary, sovereign governments with a nation-to-nation relationship with the United States. Other types of public art in Chicago featured images that erase Indigenous people altogether or glorify colonialism. These representations send a powerful message about who we celebrate, who should be valued, and who belongs. Still, Native people have critiqued many of these representations, and also created some of their own that celebrate Indigenous cultures and lifeways.