Most modern histories of Chicago cite the arrival of Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette and explorer Louis Jolliet in 1673 as the beginning of the city’s story. But Chicago’s history didn’t start in 1673, and it’s time to revisit that narrative — as well as others — as we celebrate National Native American Heritage Month.
Chicago was an established place that Native people used for centuries before Europeans arrived. Their names for this place, Zhegagoynak (Potawatomi), Zhigaagong (Ojibwe), Zaagawaang (Odawa), ikaakonki (Myaamia, or Miami), Shekâkôheki (Sauk), Sekakoh (Menominee) and Guu ge honak (Ho-Chunk), among other names, pre-date European arrival.
While it’s often said that Chicago was inhabited by “Indians” prior to the European explorers’ arrival, this simple statement overlooks a more nuanced reality — that at least a dozen distinct Indigenous nations used this place in myriad unique ways. Chicago was a center for meeting and trade, and at some points in history, it had more permanent village sites. Other tribal nations came into the area seasonally to harvest food sources or traveled through the portage to access the Great Lakes or the Mississippi River.
Even after the first land cession in the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, the majority of the land we now call Chicago remained under Native control for several more decades, particularly by the Anishinaabeg, a confederation of Potawatomi, Ojibwe and Odawa people, who were the primary Indigenous nations in Chicago by this time. Few non-Native settlers lived in the area, and those who did depended on Anishinaabe people to survive.
Among these early settlers was Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, an important early settler who is often cited as the founder of Chicago. Remembering DuSable as an early Black settler and discussing the many intersections between Black and Native histories is important. But naming him as Chicago’s founder erases the many Indigenous people who had previously lived at the site and established it as an important place long before 1779. Indeed, there were well-documented Ho-Chunk, Illinois, Anishinaabe, Sauk, Miami, Wea and Meskwaki villages at Chicago well before then. It also overlooks how dependent he and other early settlers were on Anishinaabe people, in particular Anishinaabe women. To incorporate newcomers across the Great Lakes, Native people and early settlers often looked to marriage as a strategic move.
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Non-Native traders brought connections to other trade goods and networks, and Native people had established kinship and trade networks that were essential for Europeans’ survival. Marriage transformed someone from a foreigner to a relative. DuSable’s Potawatomi wife, Kitihawa, and other Native women frequently served as translators, instructed their husbands on trade and communication protocols, and assisted with day-to-day business. Along with other Anishinaabe guides, they also provided navigation through the labyrinth of waterways connected to the fluctuating Chicago portage. They were essential to the survival of DuSable and others, and the trade businesses that these men are credited with running and that continued to draw more settlers to Chicago would have crumbled without these women’s support.
As a historian, I’m often asked what people can do to right past wrongs. One of the first things I talk about is reframing narratives. The stories we tell ourselves about Native and non-Native histories have a tremendous impact on how we understand the land we live on today. Do the reframed narratives outlined above make you reconsider who should be celebrated and remembered when we talk about the history of Chicago?
This month, I encourage you to reconsider common narratives such as these by looking to Native people themselves. Explore the place name lists that nations like the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi and the Menominee Nation have created for our region. Read about other Chicago moments you might have heard of such as the Battle of Fort Dearborn on the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Heritage Center’s website. Consider this explanation of Chicago’s name written by experts at the Myaamia Center, the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma’s educational initiative. Identify and read historical books and manuscripts written by Native people about Chicago, many of which can be found in the Newberry Library’s collection, such as Potawatomi leader Simon Pokagon’s 1893 work “The Red Man’s Greeting.” Explore upcoming events and initiatives on the Chicago American Indian Community Collaborative’s website.
Native peoples have been on this continent since time immemorial. It is time we hear their stories and correct the erasure narratives that have long been ingrained in white society. That can start right here in Chicago.
Rose Miron is director of the D’Arcy McNickle Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies at the Newberry Library in Chicago.
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