The Poetic Protester: Potawatomi Chief Simon Pokagon Fought Racism with Words
The front page of the Chicago Daily Tribune, October 4, 1893, screamed the news:
POKAGON THE POET.Famous Redskin Bard Will be Here Chicago Day.WAS AN EARLY SETTLER.Massacre of 1812 and Land Deal 1833 Recalled.
Chicago Daily Tribune, Page 1, October 4, 1893.
When Simon Pokagon accepted the invitation to speak at Chicago’s World Columbian Exposition of 1893 he was a 70-year-old legend. Known as the “Indian Longfellow” and called the “Famous Redskin Bard” by the Chicago Daily Tribune, Pokagon was renown for his two visits with Abraham Lincoln at the White House, his writings on Indian affairs in national magazines and his speaking engagements along Chicago’s Gold Coast.
David Dickason sums up Simon Pokagon’s repute:
His contemporary reputation was such that the editor of the Review of Reviews referred to “this distinguished Pottawattomie chieftain” as “one of the most remarkable men of our time. . . His great eloquence, his sagacity, and his wide range of information mark him as a man of exceptional endowments.” (Dickason, David, “Chief Simon Pokagon: ‘The Indian Longfellow,’ ” Indiana Magazine of History, June.)
But what made Simon Pokagon invaluable to the World’s Fair of 1893 was the fact that he was a linchpin between Chicago’s frontier past and its eagerness to be seen as a world-class city of the the future.
As Lisa Cushing Davis explains:
Officials for the city of Chicago were also keen to showcase both progress and civilization. They envisioned the Exposition as an announcement to the world that their city, a mere Indian trading post in 1812 and devastated by fire in 1871, had risen from the ashes to become a world-class metropolis. . . To effectively demonstrate the progress made, however, organizers deemed it necessary to emphasize the events of the past, including the massacre of ‘peaceful’ white settlers by ‘savage’ Indians at Fort Dearborn. (Davis, Lisa Cushing. "Hegemony and Resistance at the World's Columbian Exposition: Simon Pokagon and The Red Man's Rebuke." Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society)
Chicago Tribune, Section 1, August 12, 2012.
Simon Pokagon embodied Chicago’s past, present and future. His father, Potawatomi leader Leopold Pokagon, had embedded his mind with stories about the bloodletting at Fort Dearborn and about the signing of the Chicago Treaty of 1833. Leopold Pokagon was a signatory of this agreement ceding lands on which Chicago was built for three cents an acre.
“The Great Indian Council, Chicago - 1833” by Gustaf Dalstrom.
As the special guest of Mayor Carter Harrison, Simon Pokagon was scheduled to ride on a float in the Chicago Day Parade depicting the Fort Dearborn Massacre as well as participate in the reenactment of the Chicago Treaty of 1833. Simon Pokagon had a reputation as an adept politician—being able to nimbly move between the white world and his own Potawatomi people. But how could he maintain his integrity? How could he advocate for his people while participating in a reenactment of a treaty the that gave away Potawatomi land for three cents an acre to the U.S. government—monies he was still trying to recoup for his tribe 60 years later? How could he not appear to be implicitly condoning the white world’s version of the Fort Dearborn battle when riding on a float depicting the ‘massacre’? It seemed to be a challenge that would require all the agility of Harry Houdini.
But Simon Pokagon had brought a booklet he had written. It was entitled The Red Man’s Rebuke and was printed on birch bark. Its sixteen pages of text offers a fierce, poetic protest.
Pokagon, Simon. The Red Man's Rebuke. C.H. Engle, publisher, 1893. To read the book, click on the image.
Pokagon wasted no time getting to his rebuke. The first paragraph—
In behalf of my people, the American Indians, I hereby declare to you, the pale-faced race that has usurped our lands and homes, that we have no spirit to celebrate with you the great Columbian Fair now being held in this Chicago city, the wonder of the world.
In the next sixteen pages, Pokagon describes how the pale-faced people destroyed the environment—
. . . the forests of untold centuries were swept away; streams dried up; lakes fell back from their ancient bounds; and all our fathers loved to once gaze upon was destroyed, defaced, or marred, except the sun, moon, and starry skies above, which the Great Spirit in his wisdom, hung beyond their reach.
How wildlife was wantonly hunted—
. . . the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air withered like grass before the flame—were shot for love of power to kill alone, and left to spoil upon the plains.
And what the Europeans brought to America—
They brought among us fatal diseases our fathers knew not of . . . They pressed the sparkling glasses to our lips and said, “Drink and you will be happy.”
Pokagon concludes his treatise by imagining a judgement day. God tells the white man—
I shall forthwith grant these red men of America great power, and delegate them to cast you out of Paradise, and hurl you headlong through its outer gates into the endless abyss beneath—far beyond, where darkness meets with light, there to dwell, and thus shut you out from my presence and the presence of angels and the light of heaven forever, and ever.
In 1897—four years after his appearance at the Chicago World’s Fair and just two years before he died— Pokagon wrote the “Future of the Red Man” concluding with a question—
. . . and generations yet unborn will read the history of the red man of the forest, and inquire “Where are they?”
In 1893, Simon Pokagon captivated Chicago,seventy thousand people came to listen to Red Man’s Bard, the Potawatomi Poet and Chief, speak in the White City on Chicago Day at the World’s Fair of 1893. them with words rather thanwon with words, not weapons. He was an enigma. Not understood by his people or the white man. He said,
Pokagon