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“The Indian Side of the Question”: Settling the Story of Potawatomi Removal in the Twentieth-Century Midwest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2024

Zada Ballew*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA
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Abstract

In 1893, Simon Pokagon, a leader of the “unremoved” Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, published a birchbark pamphlet titled The Red Man’s Rebuke. This story condemned settlers for dispossessing Native peoples of their lands and removing them west of the Mississippi River in service of their “civilization.” Pokagon’s Rebuke remains one of the most cited texts in Native American history. But what happened to Pokagon’s message after the Chicago World’s Fair? This paper analyzes five Potawatomi Removal stories told at the turn of the twentieth century. It argues that Midwestern settlers found their answer to “the Indian side” of the Removal question by telling the “Potawatomi” perspective of local history; featuring “authentic” representations of Native peoples in their stories and as witnesses to their efforts; perpetuating a myth that all the Potawatomi had been removed; condemning the actions of their “dishonorable and dishonest” forefathers; and publicly acknowledging that they were occupying stolen land. By claiming that the sons of the present were not the forefathers of the past, non-Indians were settling the story of Potawatomi Removal. In the process, they gave their community and their region a past that was simultaneously romantic and tragic, positioning themselves as its inheritors and interpreters.

Type
SHGAPE Graduate Student Essay Prize
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (SHGAPE)

Their local newspaper promised it would be “the most important historical event that has ever occurred in the county.”Footnote 1 On September 4, 1909, thousands of settlers throughout Plymouth, Indiana, and the surrounding region gathered together to witness the unveiling and dedication of the Chief Menominee monument and replica chapel. According to the Plymouth Weekly Chronicle, this statue was the “first monument erected in the United States by legislative enactment in honor of Indians,” and attendees travelled from miles around to be a part of this historic ceremony.Footnote 2 The event was organized by “the man who knows the most about the red men who were removed from here”: Plymouth settler Daniel McDonald.Footnote 3 Known locally as the “lover of the Indian,” McDonald delivered the historical address at the event.Footnote 4 As he stood before the crowd, he explained that “it seems important on this occasion that the facts should be stated and that the truth may be known and the cruel treatment of the rightful owners of the beautiful country stretched out before us in driving them away and robbing them of their homes without compensation.”Footnote 5

From there, he offered a history of Potawatomi Removal told not only from the perspective of the “white race” but, for the first time ever (according to McDonald), from “the Indian side of the question.”Footnote 6 Some may have wondered why McDonald, a first-generation northern Indiana settler, was presenting this version of the story. To McDonald and others, however, it was only natural that he would be the person to tell this history because “the Pottawattomie Indians once so numerous here are now all gone—not one is left to tell the story … Their villages and Chapel have all been utterly destroyed … leaving only memories of a vanished race and a past generation.”Footnote 7 Those present at this ceremony might have believed this statement, if not for one crucial detail: Julia Pokagon Quigno, a member of the unremoved Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the granddaughter of the late Potawatomi leader Simon Pokagon, had been invited as the guest of honor to this memorial in memory of the Potawatomi.

This paper asks why settlers at the turn of the twentieth century began to tell the story of Potawatomi Removal from, in their words, “‘the Indian side of the question.’” It argues that, when confronted with a local history that could not be traced back to a series of nationally significant and benevolent institutions, coupled with the incompleteness of the nineteenth-century Indian Removal project, non-Indians in the Midwest wrote, told, and incorporated a more comforting history of Potawatomi Removal into their local narrative as they entered the twentieth century. Taking “the Indian side” of the Potawatomi Removal story involved telling the “Potawatomi” perspective of local history; featuring “authentic” representations of Native peoples in their stories and as witnesses to their efforts; perpetuating a myth that all the Potawatomi had been removed from the region; condemning the actions of their “dishonorable and dishonest” forefathers; and acknowledging they were occupying land that “rightly belonged” to the Potawatomi. By telling stories of Indian Removal based on Indian sources and told from a “Potawatomi” perspective, settlers may have believed they had provided adequate justification for why they deserved to continue occupying land they now publicly admitted had been stolen.

To understand how this process unfolded, this study considers five Potawatomi Removal stories told at the turn of the twentieth century: a Rebuke/Greeting, a novel, a local history, a play, and a monument dedication ceremony. Taken together, these stories reveal how settling the story of Potawatomi Removal began with a powerful reminder of its incompleteness and ended with an elaborate acknowledgment of its unjustness.

But what, exactly, did it mean for settlers to take “the Indian side of the question”? This idea brings together Patrick Wolfe’s theory of settler colonialism, Jean O’Brien’s process of “firsting and lasting,” and Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang’s concept of “settler moves to innocence.” First, this study builds from the premise that settler colonialism in the United States is a structure, not an event. According to Wolfe, settler colonialism is a type of colonialism whereby the “settler colonizers come to stay” and, in the process, “destroy” the existing systems in place on the land to “replace” them with the settlers’ own.Footnote 8 Wolfe asserts that the “elimination of the Native” can take a variety of forms, and this study seeks, in part, to understand how this process has unfolded in the context of the turn-of-the-twentieth-century Midwest. If settler colonialism is a structure, settlers taking “the Indian side of the question” can be thought of as a process occurring within this structure.

Similarly, in her study of settler colonial projects that took place in nineteenth-century southern New England, O’Brien found that settlers engaged in a process of “firsting and lasting.” “Firsting” involved local historians insisting that non-Indians were the first people to “erect proper institutions of a social order worthy of notice.”Footnote 9 By publishing local histories, erecting monuments, and more, settlers perpetuated a myth that the newcomers had fully replaced Indians on the landscape of southern New England.Footnote 10 In this process, local historians insisted that Indians were prehistoric antecedents to the rightful owners and occupants of the land: the settlers. “Lasting,” or what O’Brien calls the “‘last of the [blank]’ syndrome,” allowed settlers to insist that if any Indians remained in the region, it was only a matter of time before all would eventually vanish from the landscape. By constructing a master replacement narrative premised on Indian extinction and Euro-American exceptionalism, settlers worked to deny Native peoples the ability to be both present and modern. Though there are similarities between the project unfolding in the nineteenth-century East and that which was taking place in the turn-of-the-twentieth-century Midwest, the regional and temporal differences between each project merit serious consideration and analysis.

Finally, this study engages with Tuck and Yang’s theory of “settler moves to innocence” to try to understand why settlers assumed “the Indian side of the question” to tell the story of Potawatomi Removal. According to these theorists, “directly and indirectly benefitting from the erasure and assimilation of Indigenous peoples is a difficult reality for settlers to accept.”Footnote 11 In their effort to seek reprieve from the guilt of colonization, settlers make “moves to innocence,” which are “those strategies or positionings that attempt to relieve the settler of feelings of guilt or responsibility without giving up land or power or privilege, without having to change much at all.”Footnote 12 This study builds on our understandings of settler moves to innocence by tracing the history of similar practices to at least the turn-of-the-twentieth-century Midwest.

Taking “the Indian side” of the Potawatomi Removal story occurred when a new generation of settlers confronted the previous generation’s unsuccessful attempt to eliminate the Native. Therefore, this study considers the history of one “unremoved”Footnote 13 Tribal Nation—the Pokagon Band of PotawatomiFootnote 14—as a case study to understand how settlers who occupied their land responded to their continued presence in the region. The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi was named after Leopold Pokagon, a leader of the Potawatomi who negotiated with the United States to allow for his people to remain in their Great Lakes homelands during and after the 1830s Indian Removal era.Footnote 15 The history of the unremoved Pokagon Band allows us to see how the incompleteness of the nineteenth-century Indian Removal project continued to shape generations of settlers who occupied stolen Potawatomi homelands.

Settlers were confronted with the incompleteness of Indian Removal on October 9, 1893, at the World’s Columbian Exposition. On that day, Simon Pokagon, leader of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi and son of Leopold Pokagon, spoke at the fair and delivered a “Rebuke” to settler society. Although Pokagon’s speech compelled the audience to see American Indians and settlers as equals in the eyes of God—“‘the red man is your brother and God is the father of all’”—the message he sold to audiences varied remarkably in “tone and content.”Footnote 16

Simon Pokagon’s birchbark pamphlet, The Red Man’s Rebuke (also published as The Red Man’s Greeting), is a fiery condemnation of settler celebration at the expense of American Indians.Footnote 17 In it, Pokagon excoriated settlers for dispossessing Native peoples of their most valuable lands, removing them west of the Mississippi River in service of their “civilization,” and commemorating this history with a story of U.S. American “progress” without consequence:

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.

No; sooner would we hold high joy-day over the graves of our departed fathers, than to celebrate our own funeral, the discovery of America. And while you who are strangers, and you who live here, bring the offerings of the handiwork of your own lands, and your hearts in admiration rejoice over the beauty and grandeur of this young republic … do not forget that this success has been at the sacrifice of our homes and a once happy race.Footnote 18

The pamphlet was published in protest of the of the world’s fair in Chicago, a place the Potawatomi and other Indigenous peoples had long called home.Footnote 19 After witnessing how American Indians were being represented as uncivilized “savages” in the early months of the fair,Footnote 20 Pokagon took out his frustrations on the pages of birchbark,Footnote 21 threatening his audience with nothing short of rapture for the harm, pain, and agony the “pale-faced race” had caused Indigenous peoples.Footnote 22 Above all, Pokagon’s story forced settlers to confront their “civilization’s” history of Indian Removal: for where once stood the “red man’s wigwam,” was now the settlers’ “‘Queen City of the West.’”Footnote 23

After publishing his Rebuke, Simon Pokagon became a celebrity, prolific writer, and known throughout the country as “the last chief of the Pottawatomie.”Footnote 24 Following his appearance at the fair, the demand to hear and to see him speak and publish his writings skyrocketed throughout the United States.Footnote 25 Newspapers from New York to California published the story of “the old Pottawattomie Chief’s” provocative world’s fair address, and he was frequently invited to lecture throughout the Great Lakes region and beyond.Footnote 26 At the same time, Simon Pokagon was also becoming a prolific writer, publishing at least twelve articles in Harper’s, Chautauquan, Forum, and other newspapers and magazines between the years 1895 and 1898 alone.

When Simon Pokagon ascended from relative obscurity to national fame in less than ten years, it likely came as a shock to many when it was announced in late January 1899 that he had passed away from pneumonia. Newspapers throughout the country published his obituary, speaking to the national significance of his passing.Footnote 27 People who may never have heard of Simon Pokagon were now learning that “the last chief of the Pottawattomie Indians” had died, leaving no heirs to take his place as leader of the tribe.Footnote 28 In this context, Simon’s transformation into the “last” Potawatomi chief allowed settlers to mourn the loss of the last “real” leader of the Potawatomi, thereby discrediting any contemporary Potawatomi chiefs who continued to govern their non-vanishing bands.

With “the last chief of the Pottawattomie” gone, those close to Pokagon decided to carry on his memory and, possibly, make some money in the process. Perhaps seeing an opportunity to capitalize on Pokagon’s fame, in the months following his death, Pokagon’s lawyer, publisher, and executor of his estate, Cenius (C.) H. Engle, began displaying “Chief Simon Pokagon’s Last Wigwam” directly outside his home in Hartford, Michigan.Footnote 29 Engle also published a novel that Simon had been writing before he passed away, Queen of the Woods. This was another Potawatomi Removal story told in the spirit of his Rebuke, reminding settlers not only of their civilization’s history of Indian Removal but also offering a plea for settlers to stop ongoing, modern attempts to eliminate the Native as both entered the twentieth century.

Simon Pokagon’s only novel, O-gî-mäw-kwê Mit-i-gwä-kî, originally written in “the Algonquin language” and translated into English as Queen of the Woods, presents audiences with a story the author hoped would inspire audiences to help Indigenous peoples survive colonialism in the present and future.Footnote 30 It tells the semi-autobiographical tale of Pokagon falling in love with Lonidaw (Loda), whom he calls his “Queen of the Woods.” Though specific dates are never provided, readers can reasonably assume the events are unfolding in the late 1840s or early 1850s, when Pokagon was a young man. Upon returning from the “white man’s school” in Twinsburg, Ohio, Simon journeys from his home in southwestern Michigan to the land of the unremoved Odawa in northern Michigan.Footnote 31 There, he encounters a “little maiden” whose hair falls in “raven tresses” that float in the breeze, and he believes that “‘it must be that she is from Man-i-to Au-ke (the spirit world) beyond.’”Footnote 32 Over the course of the novel, Loda falls in love with Pokagon and the couple raise their two children together. The entire story takes place on unceded Native land in the post-Removal era United States, reminding readers that not all Indigenous peoples had been removed from east of the Mississippi River.

The Potawatomi Removals of the 1830s play a major role in the plot of Queen of the Woods. In the novel, readers learn that Lonidaw was born while her mother, Kobunda, hid from U.S. authorities who were removing the Potawatomi from their homelands. The reader finds out that “the whole country was alive with white warriors catching Au-nish-naw-bay-og, to kill or drive them toward the setting sun.” Pregnant, alone, and scared, Kobunda hid in a swamp at night, and by morning Loda was born.Footnote 33 As a novel intended primarily for non-Native audiences, Pokagon goes to great lengths to show the injustice done the Potawatomi in the hands of the U.S. removal agents.

While the novel makes it clear that removal had devastated the Potawatomi in the nineteenth century, Pokagon argues that it was not what Native peoples and the United States should be focused on as they both entered the twentieth century. Written during the high tide of the temperance movement, Pokagon used his story to explain that the most pressing concern for Indigenous peoples in the present and future was alcohol, originally introduced to their communities by the “white race.”Footnote 34 In the novel, Pokagon and Loda are persuaded by a priest to send their son away to the “white man’s school.”Footnote 35 Though Lonidaw does not want him to go, the “Queen of the Woods” reluctantly agrees to send her son away on one condition: “He should be cared for, and strongly guarded against the intoxicating cup, that deadly enemy of our race.”Footnote 36 Upon her son’s return to the family’s wigwam years later, however, Loda can see that he is not right. In her “native tongue” she exclaims: “‘Ne-gris! … (My son! …) waw nind aian ap-ine? … (what have you done? …)’ … ‘From ont o-don (his mouth) I smell o-taw-a-gam-eg (the dragon’s) breath!’”Footnote 37 Soon, “his young life went out and left us in the midnight of despair.”Footnote 38

Sometime later, while Simon is away on a hunt, Loda watches from the shore as their daughter, Hazeleye, fishes in her birchbark canoe. Suddenly, two white men “paralyzed by that deadly drug” crash into Hazeleye’s canoe, capsizing it, and drowning the young child.Footnote 39 Lonidaw jumps into the water to save her daughter but nearly drowns in the process. Simon returns from his hunt to find Loda on the shore with Hazeleye nowhere to be found. The next morning, Pokagon can tell that his “Queen of the Woods” is not herself. His suspicions are confirmed when Lonidaw reveals she will soon be entering “‘manito aukee we-de (the spirit land beyond),’” and her last dying wish is for Simon to dedicate the rest of his life to fighting against “‘tchi ni-boma (that destroyer) of our race’”: the white man’s alcohol.Footnote 40 Following the tragic, untimely passing of the “Queen of the Woods,” Pokagon devotes the rest of his novel to teaching readers that “the only safe ‘ako-bim’-iwan’ (fortress) of ‘in-ini’-jimo-win’ (refuge) against the ravages of ‘tchi-maw-tchi’ (that curse) is total abstinence.Footnote 41 In Pokagon’s story, the Queen of the Woods who survived Potawatomi Removal was a martyr in the “war” against “King Alcohol.”Footnote 42 Like the Rebuke published six years earlier, this Potawatomi Removal story forces audiences to confront what colonizers have done to Native peoples: dispossessed them of their lands and introduced them to alcohol, a symbol of death, estrangement, and dependency.

It seems, however, that writing a story of Potawatomi Removal from a Potawatomi perspective required the help of a settler source to tell this story. When discussing the events that led up to the “Queen of the Woods’” mother fleeing from her village and hiding out from U.S. troops near “Nijode sagaiganog (Twin Lakes),” Simon cites the first known historical address delivered on the topic: Daniel McDonald’s article read before the Indiana Historical Society of South Bend in 1898, the year before Engle published Pokagon’s novel.Footnote 43 There are at least two reasons why Simon cited McDonald in his discussion of Removal. On the one hand, since Simon Pokagon would have been less than ten years old at the time of Potawatomi Removal in the 1830s, it may have been difficult or nearly impossible for him to remember or speak to the experience of the Potawatomi during that time, relying mostly, if not entirely, on oral histories of the event to construct his narrative. On the other hand, as a novel intended primarily for white audiences, perhaps Pokagon, or his publisher Engle, thought that citing a settler source gave his Potawatomi perspective of Indian Removal history greater credibility for a non-Indigenous readership. Either way, it is important to consider who was claiming authority over the history of Indian Removal from a “Potawatomi” perspective and why.

To understand how Pokagon’s Removal stories transformed over time, we must consider one of the primary storytellers: Daniel McDonald. He was born on May 6, 1833, in Fayetteville, Indiana. In 1836, at the height of Potawatomi Removal, McDonald and his parents traveled from southern Indiana to the Potawatomi land that would become Plymouth, Marshall County, Indiana, while the Potawatomi were still living there,Footnote 44 making the McDonalds at least partially responsible for dispossessing the Potawatomi of their homelands. Upon their arrival, they established a homestead, and by 1855 the family used the profits from their farm to start the first local newspaper, the Marshall County Democrat. Footnote 45 Daniel served as editor of the paper for nearly thirty years, and he frequently wrote and published articles on the early history of Marshall County, giving particular attention to the Potawatomi.Footnote 46 Throughout his career, McDonald used his newspaper to shape the narrative of Potawatomi history and its relationship to the settlers’ history.

In addition to his professional commitment to writing and publishing newsworthy local history, McDonald also had personal and fraternal incentives to document his community’s aboriginal past. As the founding member of the Aubbeenaubbee Tribe of Plymouth, Indiana, in 1872, a division of the Improved Order of the Red Men (IORM), McDonald took pride in his role as the “great sachem” of the “tribe.”Footnote 47 The IORM, according to McDonald, was “founded on the old Indian customs of adoption and aims to bring the novitiate from a supposed low and degraded state to an improved and perfected condition of manhood.”Footnote 48 McDonald’s participation in the IORM was not unusual for men of his social standing during this era. “Playing Indian,” as historian Philip Deloria argues, allowed white Americans in fraternal organizations such as the IORM to see themselves as historians and “worthy keepers of the nation’s aboriginal roots.”Footnote 49 According to Deloria, “by insisting that real Indians were disappearing or had already vanished, the Improved Order was able to narrate and perform a fraternal Indian history without having to account for the actions of real Indian people.”Footnote 50 While this may have been true for many of the IORM members, it certainly was not the case for McDonald. Present at the founding of Plymouth while the Potawatomi were still there, coupled with the knowledge that Pokagon and his tribe remained in the region long after the supposed end of the Indian Removal era, McDonald had to account for the actions of real Indian people he knew had been, and continued to be, on the land he and his fellow settlers were occupying.

Accounting for the Potawatomi who remained in the region, whose parents and grandparents experienced the trauma of Indian Removal firsthand, required breaking from historiographic precedent. Between the years 1898 and 1908, McDonald published at least four studies and nearly 1,000 pages of local history that recognized and incorporated Potawatomi history as part of the settlers’ own, a move that was rare in the nineteenth century.Footnote 51 As historian Steven Conn argues, in the nineteenth century a U.S. historical consciousness developed, in part, because Euro-Americans did not know where Native peoples in the Americas fit into their understandings of “history.” As the formal practice of history became increasingly professionalized, its framers worked to establish empirical boundaries between what was and was not considered official “history.” According to their understandings of the past, the place of Native peoples was either in “prehistory” or in the newly created discipline of anthropology. By 1890, according to Conn, “Native Americans could very well have a past, but they did not, by and large, have a history.”Footnote 52 Though this may have been true in 1890, by 1898 and thereafter, McDonald insisted that Potawatomi history was part of the settlers’ history, and he encouraged his non-Indigenous neighbors to think about their land’s past from the perspective of the Potawatomi.

But McDonald was not the only person determined to shape (and profit from) public knowledge of the Indian Removal story. In addition to incorporating Native history as part of the settlers’ founding narrative, Daniel McDonald collaborated with Pokagon’s executor, lawyer, and publisher C. H. Engle in 1904 to bring Engle’s version of the Potawatomi Removal story to audiences throughout the United States. Taking inspiration from McDonald’s 1899 book, Removal of the Pottawattomie Indians from Northern Indiana, Engle dramatized Pokagon’s novel into the play, Indian Drama … “Queen of the Woods.Footnote 53 In the press and in the published play, Engle repeatedly insisted that the dramatic version of Queen of the Woods was his creation. The love story between Simon Pokagon and Lonidaw was based on the novel, but the “tragic features” of the history of Potawatomi Removal were taken from McDonald’s study.Footnote 54

C. H. Engle’s play was part of a larger industry, one that historian Katrina Phillips has usefully called “salvage tourism.” Since at least the 1900s, enterprising towns have dramatized local American Indian history to draw tourists to their communities. Those who attended these productions, and witnessed dramatizations of Indian history, became part of the boosters’ project. “By performing the act of tourism,” according to Phillips, “and by witnessing these performances of the past, tourists partake in what we might consider a historical communion.”Footnote 55 Those tourists who attend these performances could, in turn, “find sanctuary, safety, and security in the performance of a remembered past.”Footnote 56 Similarly, Engle’s Queen of the Woods promised audiences an Indian love story with an “Indian maiden” as its heroine. Those who purchased a ticket could witness the drama of Potawatomi Removal, venture into the wilderness with “authentic” Indian guides and experience a heartfelt story of Pokagon and his “Queen of the Woods” falling in love. And, after the curtain had been called, attendees could go back to their homes, safe from the events that took place in a tragicomic past.

Engle’s play encouraged audiences to empathize with the Potawatomi, rather than those who had attempted to remove them. While there are similarities between Pokagon’s and Engle’s versions of Queen of the Woods, the differences between the two, especially regarding Potawatomi Removal, are quite revealing about each author’s goals for their project. As previously stated, Pokagon’s novel claims that although Indian Removal had devastated Native peoples in the nineteenth century, the greatest existential threat to Indigenous peoples in the twentieth century was the “white race’s” alcohol, which stood as a symbol for other maladies Indigenous peoples were confronting in their communities at this time.

In Engle’s production, however, Potawatomi Removal was the greatest obstacle that the heroes of his story confronted and overcame using the “white race’s” greed to their advantage. The play opens with Governor David Wallace of Indiana receiving word that the settlers are petitioning to have the “Injun[s]” who are about to “take the war path” and are threatening to “scalp all the white folks” removed from their homelands.Footnote 57 Upon hearing this news, Governor Wallace orders General John Tipton to organize a state militia for the purpose of removing all the “Pottawattomie Indians” from northern Indiana.Footnote 58 The audience is then introduced to Leopold Pokagon and his son, Simon. According to the play, Leopold Pokagon and his followers narrowly escaped removal thanks to the chief strategically throwing gold coins on the ground—double the amount the soldiers were offered in exchange for removing the Potawatomi—which the men quickly scoop up as Pokagon and his Band flee.Footnote 59 This story, however, deviated significantly from Engle’s source material. As Pokagon explained in his novel, “My father, Chief Leopold Pokagon, by special contract with the government for himself and his band, were permitted to remain in Michigan.”Footnote 60 But this diplomatic history of unremoval was not nearly as satisfying as watching several of the evil Indian Removal agents flopping around on the stage while our Potawatomi heroes narrowly escape. Rather than identifying with the Indian Removal agents, Engle’s version of the story encourages audiences to laugh at their greed and foolishness and to empathize with the true heroes of this story: the Potawatomi.

Whereas the central conflict of the play was Indian Removal, the climax of the production was Indian romance. Making space in the story for this alternative ending, however, required removing the more depressing elements from the Potawatomi’s version. Pokagon’s Queen of the Woods ends with the tragic, untimely death of martyr Lonidaw, but C. H. Engle’s Queen of the Woods provides the audience with a happy ending for the Indian love story. After the Potawatomi confront and overcome Indian Removal, the rest of Engle’s play follows the love story of Simon Pokagon and Loda. The “Queen of the Woods” and Simon Pokagon take the audience on authentically “Indian” adventures in the Odawa wilderness of northern Michigan, and the couple receive many visitors to their wigwam. In the end, after Pokagon spends much of the play trying to convince Lonidaw’s mother that he and Loda should be married, she finally agrees to preside over their marriage: “‘In accordance with our ancient custom, in the presence of a mother’s love, and in the presence of the Great Spirit above I pronounce you husband and wife.’ (With joined hands raised above their heads they kiss each other as curtain falls.)”Footnote 61 While temperance remains a theme in both productions, the Queen of the Woods’ martyrdom in the war against “King Alcohol” is noticeably absent from C. H. Engle’s version of the story. Instead, Engle has presented the audience with a satisfying conclusion to the Pokagons’ love story, one in which they are not forced to confront what the “white race” has done to Native people. By ending his story with the marriage of Pokagon and Lonidaw, he made the “Indian romance” a founding tale for his community without accounting for any trouble their history might still present.

As Engle’s play hit the stage, Daniel McDonald attempted to have his version of the Potawatomi Removal story set in stone. In 1904, McDonald ran for the Indiana State House of Representatives. Once elected, one of the first bills he put forward would allocate $2,500 of state funds for the erection of a monument to the memory of Chief Menominee and his band of 859 removed Potawatomi Indians.Footnote 62 To increase the bill’s chances of passing in the House, McDonald delivered an appeal on behalf of the Indians on the floor of the Indiana State House of Representatives. In his speech, McDonald provided his fellow legislators with his history of Potawatomi Removal from northern Indiana, which he repeatedly insisted was part of their state’s history. According to McDonald’s story, the Potawatomi were the “rightful owners” of the land until their forced removal in the 1830s.Footnote 63 At that time, Chief Menominee, the “leader and principal spokesman” for the Potawatomi, refused the U.S. agents’ demands to relinquish his lands. In his speech, McDonald did not mention the descendants of Menominee’s march who survived the Potawatomi “Trail of Death,” many of whom had reestablished themselves and their communities in the West by this time.Footnote 64 He also did not discuss the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, who continued to live in their homelands long after the supposed end of the Indian Removal era. What mattered most to McDonald, according to his speech, was that his local community remember the tragedy of Potawatomi Removal at the expense of Indigenous resistance and resilience. McDonald encouraged his fellow legislators to work collectively to ensure that such atrocities the Potawatomi faced would never again happen to the people who had “inherited” their land and its tragic history.

While awaiting the passage of his monument bill, McDonald published a series of articles based on his interpretation of Simon Pokagon’s Queen of the Woods to increase the public’s interest into the unknown aspects of “the Indian.”Footnote 65 In addition to summarizing the plot of the novel, these articles also informed the local community that there was an opportunity for them to honor the memory of the removed Potawatomi and to reconcile their land’s troubled history in the present. In “Beautiful Indian Romance: The Love Story of Po-ka-gon and Lonidaw,” the anonymous author (probably McDonald) ends a detailed, vivid, and devastating account of Simon and Lonidaw’s tragic love story with an intriguing cliffhanger:

Thus ended the romance, and the chief of the Pottawattomies seldom smiled thereafter. Since his death five years ago the tribe has been without a real chief. There are so few of them left that the government agents easily manage their affairs. Representative McDonald of Marshall county knew Pokagon well and greatly admired him.

With the appropriations sought from the state Mr. McDonald hopes to rebuild the Indian chapel at the old Menominee village, near Twin Lakes, and erect a plain, but substantial monument to the memory of Menominee and his tribe.Footnote 66

In this article, we learn that the author recognizes the continued presence of the Potawatomi east of the Mississippi River (although “[t]here are so few left that the government agents easily manage their affairs”). We learn, too, that the author was less concerned with the Potawatomi who remained in the region and those whose descendants had survived the Indian Removals of the nineteenth century. This author was, instead, more interested in garnering public support to remember those who had been violently and unjustly removed from their land in the all-but-almost-forgotten past. Readers are left not only with an entertaining story about love and loss but also with an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past and take part in McDonald’s efforts to memorialize the memory of Chief Menominee and the 859 Potawatomi Indians removed from their lands.

Once the bill passed, it was time to plan a proper ceremony. In 1909, two of the monument’s three trustees met at Daniel McDonald’s “wigwam” to plan the monument dedication ceremony.Footnote 67 To ensure the Chief Menominee monument and chapel dedication ceremony would be the “most important historical event that has ever occurred in the county,” local newspapers promised there would be historical addresses, live music, and appearances from some of the most gifted orators of their community. There were even rumors that President William Howard Taft would dedicate the monument, but this never came to be.Footnote 68 Copies of the program, including a synopsis of the twelve-part elaborate ceremony, were frequently published in local newspapers in the months leading up to this event to encourage settlers to take part in what was promised to be a historic and entertaining memorial.Footnote 69 With the support of the state of Indiana and the local community behind him, McDonald could properly honor the memory of the removed Potawatomi in the form of a monument.

Given how closely McDonald’s history of Potawatomi Removal overlapped with Pokagon’s and Engle’s versions of Queen of the Woods, it is no wonder that, in the months leading up to the September 4, 1909, dedication, some local newspapers were confused about which Potawatomi was being honored with a ceremony. According to the Culver Citizen, a monument to Simon Pokagon, the “last leader of the Maxinkuckee Pottawattomies,” was being unveiled and dedicated “in commemoration of Pokagon’s virtues and of the aboriginal settlers of the Lake Maxinkuckee region … secured through the efforts of Hon. Daniel McDonald.”Footnote 70 Perhaps it was an accident. Or perhaps the editors knew that people familiar with Simon Pokagon and his work would have been more interested in witnessing the memorialization of Pokagon rather than the lesser-known Potawatomi Chief Menominee. Either way, the confusion shows just how easy it was to forget who the settlers intended to remember.

In their attempt to acknowledge “the Indian side” of their local history, it seems as though some felt that it would take more than simply admitting that the Potawatomi had been unjustly dispossessed and violently removed. Instead, the organizers wanted their ceremony to include a guest of honor, a witness to their efforts, and an “authentic”Footnote 71 representation of the Indian side of the removal story. As such, Julia Pokagon Quigno, granddaughter of Simon Pokagon, great-granddaughter of Leopold Pokagon, and member of the unremoved Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, was invited to unveil the monument.

Throughout the festivities, Julia Pokagon Quigno’s relation to her deceased celebrity grandfather was emphasized, while her marriage to her living husband and kinship with other members of the unremoved Pokagon Band were diminished or erased entirely. In the weeks leading up to the event, local newspapers advertised that the “beautiful Indian Maiden from Michigan” would be the one to unveil the monument, the highest honor of the ceremony.Footnote 72 When Julia Pokagon Quigno was mentioned by name, she was almost always renamed to more closely associate her with Simon Pokagon, her celebrity grandfather, and the author of Queen of the Woods. When papers referred to her by a name, it was almost always a variation of either “Julia Quakano Pokagon,”Footnote 73 “Julia Q. Pokagon,”Footnote 74 or Julia Qua-ko-na Po-ka-gon,”Footnote 75 thus inverting her maiden and married names. Furthermore, although Julia was married at the time of the ceremony, the papers referred to her as “Miss,” never “Mrs.”Footnote 76 Additionally, a photograph that has survived from the event invites us to remember Julia Pokagon Quigno as “Julia Po-ka-gon,” the guest of honor, and the granddaughter of Chief Menominee.Footnote 77 The evidence suggests that Julia Pokagon Quigno was invited to the monument dedication ceremony both to encourage settlers to take part in the event and to unveil the monument as a character, “Miss Julia Qua-ko-na Po-ka-gon,” granddaughter of either Chief Menominee or Chief Pokagon (whichever garnered more public interest) (Figure 1).

Figure 1. “Unveiling Chief Menominee Monument By His Granddaughter Julia Po-Ka-Gon Sept 4th 1909. Twin Lakes, Plymouth, Ind. Photo By Steele.” Image courtesy of the Marshall County Historical Society.

There are several similarities between Julia Pokagon Quigno’s representation at the festivities and the fictional character of Lonidaw in Simon Pokagon’s novel, begging the question as to whether the settlers intended for Julia to attend the ceremony as the fictional “Queen of the Woods” character local audiences would likely have recognized. Julia Pokagon Quigno and her husband Michael (Mike) Quigno, their children Joseph and Catherine, and Julia’s mother, Lizette Morsaw, were all invited to take part in the ceremony. This family structure—mother, father, grandmother, son, and daughter—is identical to the one depicted in Pokagon’s novel. When the family arrived at the ceremony, C. H. Engle had even brought his Chief Simon Pokagon wigwam (which, following the death of Pokagon in 1899, was always displayed outside Engle’s home in Hartford, MichiganFootnote 78) for the Quignos to camp in during their stay in Plymouth.Footnote 79 Having the same family arrangement as depicted in the novel, photographed in front of “Chief Simon Pokagon’s last wigwam,” seems to be an allusion to the story of Potawatomi Removal described in Queen of the Woods, one that audiences might have recognized and enjoyed.

Furthermore, although most of the area around the Chief Menominee monument had already been cleared in anticipation for the crowds that McDonald and others hoped would attend the event, the family is photographed in “nature.” According to a local newspaper, the photograph was staged, “about a mile and a half from the monument” on the banks of a nearby lake.Footnote 80 In this photograph, Julia and her family are, quite literally, “in the woods.” Rather than grappling with their history of Indian Removal, as Simon Pokagon’s novel insisted they do, or confronting the modernity of the Pokagon Potawatomi who continued to live, work, and remain in their homelands, audiences could enjoy the entertainment of an “authentic” Indian family in the woods, safe from Potawatomi Removal and alcohol, forever remembered in their “traditional” past (Figure 2).

Figure 2. From left to right, Michael (Mike) Quigno, Joseph Quigno, Julia Pokagon Quigno, Julia’s mother, Lizette Morsaw, and Catherine Quigno. Julia Pokagon Quigno is directly in front of “Chief Simon Pokagon’s last wigwam” holding a bow and arrow. She is dressed in “true native style,” similar to what Lonidaw was wearing in Simon Pokagon’s description of her in Queen of the Woods and in Engle’s production of Indian Drama … “Queen of the Woods.” Cornelia Steketee Hulst, Indian Sketches: Père Marquette and the Last of the Pottawatomie Chiefs (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912), 88.

Julia was not the only person invited to the ceremony to help settlers consider “the Indian side of the question.” Speeches from several attendees show that all the orators were willing and eager to acknowledge their ancestors’ historical part in removing the Potawatomi from their homelands.Footnote 81 Senator Harry Grube, representing the state of Indiana, urged his constituents to remember the American Indian as a “hero,” who should be honored for his ultimate sacrifice: removing from his homelands in service of “civilization.”Footnote 82 Plymouth resident Herb Hess, representing the local community, mourned the loss of the Indians, whose destiny it was to “slowly but surely be exterminated.”Footnote 83 He compelled his fellow citizens not to dwell on this tragic past but to instead assume the positive traits of the departed Indian and “make our lives count for better homes, a better state, and a better nation.”Footnote 84

Moreover, Reverend E. C. Wareing, representing the Protestant community, insisted that “the Indian” was particularly worthy of the “white race’s” honor and memory because of his exceptional character relative to other “inferior races.”Footnote 85 It was Wareing’s job to introduce the crowd to Julia before she unveiled the monument. His concluding remarks are representative of the rhetoric used by the speakers who acknowledged their land’s difficult history that day:

Julia Qua-Ka-No Po-Ka-Gon, granddaughter of the late and last chief of the Pottawattomie tribe of Indians, I bring you an expression of the whiteman’s appreciation of the character of your people and the injustice done them. I ask you in the name of my people to accept this monument. I ask you to receive it in the spirit in which it is given, that of gratitude and appreciation. I regret that you give it back not to us, but to the World, that you unveil it in the presence of Almighty God and these witnesses that it may declare to future generations the character of your great and good chief Menominee and the injustice done you in that day when your fathers were driven from their homes against their protests in prayers and tears. When your work is done and this day is passed future generations shall read of the good chief Menominee and his 859 Pottawattomee Indians and also the whiteman’s sons who came and built this monument in memory of his goodness and their suffering.Footnote 86

In this speech, as in C. H. Engle’s play, Wareing drew comparisons between the “whiteman’s sons” and the removed Potawatomi, not between the “whiteman’s sons” and the Indian Removal agents. He argued that this monument served as a reminder not only that the Potawatomi had been deported but also that the “whiteman’s sons” had officially admitted it. All that was left, according to Wareing, was for Julia Pokagon Quigno to accept their offer as compensation for the harm the settlers’ forefathers had done to Julia’s.

Julia Pokagon Quigno also spoke that day, but her words were translated and framed at the settlers’ discretion. Following Reverend E. C. Wareing’s address, Julia unveiled the monument and then, according to the newspaper, “In response, Julia Qua-ka-no made a most appropriate speech. Composed and dignified as Indians always are, she spoke as an experienced lecturer. She gladly accepted the monument in behalf of her people, she appreciated the spirit in which it was given, and was glad that it was erected.”Footnote 87 Although full-length speeches delivered at the ceremony were all published in the same local paper, Quigno’s speech was the only one paraphrased.Footnote 88 When the only Native woman who spoke at the event actually did, the settlers ventriloquized her response to fit their narrative.Footnote 89 Julia was not there to present “the Indian side” of the removal question. Instead, it appears that she was invited to “authentically” represent the settlers’ memorial to the removed Potawatomi and to witness them setting the story of Potawatomi Removal in stone for themselves and their “future generations.”Footnote 90

Despite their appeals to the contrary, those who commissioned the monument did not intend for Julia Pokagon Quigno nor most Potawatomi to be remembered as individuals or contributors long after the end of the ceremony. The engraving on the Chief Menominee monument reads as follows:

In Memory of Chief Menominee
And His Band of 859 Pottawattomie Indians
Removed From This Reservation
Sept. 4, 1838 By A Company of Soldiers
Under Command of General John Tipton,
Authorized By Governor David Wallace.
Governor of Indiana, J. Frank Hanly.
Author of Law
Representative Daniel McDonald, Plymouth.
Trustees
Col. A.F. Fleet, Culver,
Col. William Hoynes, Notre Dame,
Charles T. Mattingly, Plymouth.
Site Donated By John A. McFarlin
1909

On the monument in memory of Chief Menominee and his band, eight Indiana settlers’ names are carved in stone and 859 Pottawattomie Indians remain an anonymous number. From this inscription, we can remember who removed the Indians, authorized this monument, represented this structure, directed funds, and “donated” land for this commemoration. Audiences are not invited to remember anything more about Chief Menominee and his band of 859 Potawatomi Indians besides the fact that they were removed from this reservation in 1838. Julia Pokagon Quigno is also nowhere to be found even though she was the guest of honor at the ceremony. McDonald and others who spoke that day repeatedly insisted that this was a monument in memory of the history of Potawatomi Removal from “the Indian side of the question,” but it is clear from the engraving that they were more interested in acknowledging their own efforts to right a historic wrong, rather than honoring any specific or identifiable Potawatomi people, aside from Chief Menominee.

As Daniel McDonald concluded his address that day, he believed that what his forefathers had done to the Indians was wrong and that a monument in their memory was an adequate way for the settlers to acknowledge this history:

A great wrong was perpetrated against these ignorant and helpless Indians through the influence of dishonorable and dishonest men … thereby robbing them of their lands and destroying their homes and the monument here unveiled and dedicated … is erected by the great State of Indiana, as an acknowledgement of that fact.Footnote 91

By taking “the Indian side of the question” and condemning the actions of their “dishonorable and dishonest” forefathers, Midwestern settlers had acknowledged their history of Potawatomi Removal and incorporated this story as part of their land’s tragic past, making way for a more triumphant present and future. From the settlers’ perspective, the story of Potawatomi Removal had, at least for the time being, been settled.

Long after the end of the ceremony, newspapers and historians praised the efforts of Indiana, Daniel McDonald, and C. H. Engle for acknowledging the state’s difficult past and for forever holding its “good Indians” in memory.Footnote 92 According to the Herald-Press, through this monument to the removed Potawatomi, the state of Indiana had officially paid a debt long deferred and had finally righted a historic wrong.Footnote 93 Many reports lauded Indiana for constructing the “first monument ever raised in honor of Indians through legislative enactment.”Footnote 94 The hero of this story, according to the press, was Daniel McDonald, who was “directly responsible for this tribute to a tribe who were cruelly wronged by their white brothers.”Footnote 95 Three years after the dedication ceremony, midwestern educator and local historian Cornelia Steketee Hulst published a sympathetic history of the “last of the Pottawatomie chiefs,” which included comprehensive biographies of Simon and Leopold Pokagon. This Pokagon Potawatomi-centric history was dedicated to the “true friends of the Indian”: Daniel McDonald, who “persuaded his State’s legislature to raise the monument to Menominee,” and C. H. Engle, “who assisted the Indians” and “helped Chief Simon Pokagon publish his writings.”Footnote 96

In the years following Simon Pokagon’s 1893 Rebuke, Midwestern settlers found their answer to “the Indian side” of the Removal story by writing and reading their local histories from a “Potawatomi” perspective; dramatizing and attending plays at which they could laugh at the greedy, evil removal agents and fall in love with Simon Pokagon and his “Queen of the Woods”; and by hosting and witnessing a monument dedication ceremony in honor of both Chief Menominee and the 859 Potawatomi Indians and “the whiteman’s sons” who were the first to admit that their ancestors had stolen the land that “rightly belonged” to the Potawatomi. By taking “the Indian side of the question,” and claiming that the sons of the present were not the forefathers of the past, non-Indians were settling the story of Potawatomi Removal. In the process, they gave their community and their region a past that was simultaneously romantic and tragic, positioning themselves as its inheritors and interpreters.

Acknowledgments

Migwėtth (thank you) to my advisor, Stephen Kantrowitz, who believed in this article from the first to the final draft and the many he read in between. Migwėtth to mentors and friends, such as Kelly Wisecup, Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, Sasha Maria Suarez, Matt Villeneuve, Leslie Abadie, Paige Glotzer, Brian Collier, Verenize Arceo, Nicki Day-Lucore, Matthew Farrelly, Ethell Gershengorin, Ryan Hellenbrand, Brigid Nannenhorn, Winifred Redfearn, and Emma Wathen, for the training, opportunities, and fellowship that made this study possible. Migwėtth to Fritz Swanson, Aly Corey, Timothy Connolly, and the anonymous readers for sharing their resources, time, and feedback. Migwėtth to my family, Monica Brazeau, Eva Ballew, Richard Ballew, and Jen Brazeau, for their love and support. And, finally, migwėtth to my husband, Gabe Tauro, for his humor, home-cooked meals, critiques, and hard-won compliments. He’s read every word I’ve ever written and challenged every claim I’ve ever made; if future readers have found this article useful, we all have Gabe to thank.

References

Notes

1 “September 4 Selected,” Plymouth (Indiana) Weekly Chronicle, May 13, 1909.

2 “September 4 Selected.”

3 “Dedicate the Monument,” Plymouth (Indiana) Weekly Chronicle, Apr. 1, 1909. For a copy of the program, see: “Marshall County, Indiana,” www.potawatomi-tda.org/indiana/chiefms.htm. (accessed Aug. 10, 2023).

4 “Dedicate the Monument,” Plymouth (Indiana) Weekly Chronicle, Apr. 1, 1909.

5 “The Indian Monument Is Dedicated,” Plymouth (Indiana) Weekly Chronicle, Sept. 9, 1909. This behavior predates Cherokee Removal commemorations that took place in the south during the 1920s and thereafter. According to historian Andrew Denson, commemorating the Cherokee Trail of Tears involved settlers making “monuments to absence,” which involved “expressions of regret for Cherokee loss and even apologies for the injustice of the Trail of Tears.” See Denson, Andrew, Monuments to Absence: Cherokee Removal and the Contest over Southern Memory (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 “Indian Monument Dedicated Sept. 4,” Argos (Indiana) Reflector, Sept. 9, 1909, 1; “The Indian Monument Is Dedicated,” Plymouth (Indiana) Weekly Chronicle, Sept. 9, 1909, 1.

7 “The Indian Monument Is Dedicated,” Plymouth (Indiana) Weekly Chronicle, Sept. 9, 1909, 8.

8 Wolfe, Patrick, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of Genocide Research 8 (Dec. 2006): 388 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 O’Brien, Jean M., Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, xii. As historian James Joseph Buss and literary scholar Lucy Maddox have shown, removing Native peoples from their homelands in the nineteenth century required both physical and literary violence directed towards the owners and occupants of the land. For more on the role of language and literature in nineteenth century Indian Removal projects, see Buss, James Joseph, Winning the West with Words: Language and Conquest in the Lower Great Lakes (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Maddox, Lucy, Removals: Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Politics of Indian Affairs (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 O’Brien, Firsting and Lasting, xxiii.

11 Tuck, Eve and Yang, K. Wayne, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society 1 (Sept. 2012): 9.Google Scholar

12 Tuck and Yang, “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor,” 9.

13 This language remains imperfect, imprecise, and Euro-American-centric. For now, I reluctantly borrow “unremoved” and “unremoval” from the most comprehensive study of how the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi avoided removal written to date, W. Benjamin Secunda, “In the Shadow of the Eagle’s Wings: The Effects of Removal on the Unremoved Potawatomi” (PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, 2008). For a study of Northern Indian Removal, see Bowes, John, Land Too Good for Indians: Northern Indian Removal (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016)Google Scholar.

14 In this paper, I use the terms “Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians,” “Pokagon Band of Potawatomi,” “Pokagon Band,” and “Pokagon Potawatomi,” to refer to the ancestors of the contemporary Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Nation. I use “Native American,” “American Indian,” “Native,” and “Indigenous” interchangeably. When directly quoting from primary and secondary sources, and when considering Progressive Era worldviews and vernacular, I use “Indian.” When problematizing the appropriation of “Indian” for settler memorialization purposes, I use “non-Indian(s)” to challenge their claims to Indigeneity.

15 According to anthropologist W. Benjamin Secunda, Pokagon’s Band of Potawatomi avoided removal due to Simon’s father Leopold Pokagon’s insistence that he and his followers were Catholic and “civilized” and, therefore, deserved to stay in the region. Pokagon’s refusal to remove eventually resulted in U.S. treaty negotiator George Porter agreeing to add a supplemental article to the 1833 Treaty of Chicago that allowed Pokagon’s Band of Potawatomi to remain in the region “on account of their religious creed.” Only after this stipulation was written on the document did Leopold Pokagon agree to sign the treaty. Pokagon’s Band of Potawatomi later used this provision to stay in their southwestern Michigan homelands, where the Tribal Nation remains to this day. Secunda, “In the Shadow of the Eagle’s Wings,” 528. For the 1833 treaty, see Charles Kappler, ed. and comp., Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, 2nd ed., 7 Vols., (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904), 2:413. For accounts of Pokagon Potawatomi survival, resistance, and persistence in the region see Low, John N., Imprints: The Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the City of Chicago (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2016)Google Scholar; Wetzel, Christopher, Gathering the Potawatomi Nation: Revitalization and Identity. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015)Google Scholar. For a history of Northern Indian Removal beyond the Pokagon Potawatomi experience, see Bowes, Land Too Good for Indians.

16 “Triumph of Peace,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Oct. 10, 1893; Vigil, Kiara M., Indigenous Intellectuals: Sovereignty, Citizenship, and the American Imagination, 1880–1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 27 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Pokagon, Simon, The Red Man’s Rebuke (Hartford, MI: C. H. Engle, 1893)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pokagon, Simon, The Red Man’s Greeting (Hartford, MI: C. H. Engle, 1893)Google Scholar. There were several editions of Simon Pokagon’s The Red Man’s Rebuke and The Red Man’s Greeting published in 1893. As of the writing of this paper, we do not know in which order these texts were published, nor if they were published simultaneously. We are certain, however, that although the title of the text was framed as both a “Rebuke” and a “Greeting,” the content and tone of the pamphlets was nearly identical across texts. Aly W. Corey, interview with author, May 8, 2023. Kelly Wisecup finds there is disagreement among scholars as to whether the book was issued originally as The Red Man’s Rebuke and subsequently reissued as The Red Man’s Greeting for “diplomatic purposes.” Wisecup, Kelly, Assembled for Use: Indigenous Compilation and the Archives of Early Native American Literatures (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2021), 258 Google Scholar. For other discussions and interpretations, see Cenius H. Engle, “Publisher’s Notes” in Simon Pokagon, O-gî-mäw-kwê Mit-i-gwäkî (Queen of the Woods) (Hartford, MI: C.H. Engle,1899), 10; Berliner, Jonathan, “Written in the Birch Bark: The Linguistic-Material Worldmaking of Simon Pokagon,” PMLA 125 (Jan. 2010): 73 Google Scholar; Rosalyn LaPier, R. and David, R. M. Beck, City Indian: Native American Activism in Chicago, 1893–1934 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015), 26 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. “Rebuke” will be used for the remainder of the study both in the interest of clarity and because I agree with LaPier and Beck that the text reads more like a “rebuke” than a “greeting.”

18 Pokagon, Red Man’s Rebuke, 1–2.

19 Low, Imprints, xi.

20 For “savages,” see Simon Pokagon quoted in Cornelia Steketee Hulst, Indian Sketches: Père Marquette and the Last of the Pottawatomie Chiefs (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912), 93. For Pokagon’s responses to, and valuations of, Native American representations at the fair, see Melisa Cushing-Davis, “A Fire That Could Not Be Extinguished: Sovereignty and Identity in the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, 1634–1994” (PhD diss., Loyola University Chicago, 2016), 207–10; 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 108 (Spring 2015), 46–47Google Scholar.

21 Unfortunately, analyzing the significance of birch bark to this protest is beyond the scope of this article. For Simon Pokagon’s explanation as to why he used birch bark, see Pokagon, Simon, “By The Author,” The Red Man’s Rebuke (Hartford, MI: C. H. Engle, 1893)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For other discussions, see Oa Sjoblom, “Conservation and Study of Simon Pokagon’s Birch Bark Books” (presentation, Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Twelfth Annual Meeting, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, May 13, 2023); Low, Imprints, 38, 41–42, 46–49, 52–53, 57, 64, 166; Cushing-Davis, “A Fire That Could Not Be Extinguished,” 207; Wisecup, Assembled for Use, 195–7.

22 Pokagon, Red Man’s Rebuke, 2, 14–16.

23 Pokagon, Red Man’s Rebuke, 2. Simon Pokagon’s Rebuke and participation in the Fair remains one of the most cited texts and events in the Native American historiography of the turn of the twentieth century. Frederick Hoxie considers it an example of a Native person “talking back to civilization,” noting that Pokagon’s Rebuke was the “most widely disseminated statement of its kind delivered by a living tribal leader” prior to 1900. Frederick E. Hoxie, Talking Back to Civilization: Indian Voices from the Progressive Era (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001), 31. Kiara Vigil argues that Pokagon was the first in a cohort of “Indigenous intellectuals,” determined to define public perceptions of Indianness on their terms. Vigil, Indigenous Intellectuals, 1–33. Kelly Wisecup theorizes Pokagon’s Rebuke to be an “account book” or a record of debts settlers owe Indigenous peoples for colonizing their homelands. Wisecup, Assembled for Use, 21, 171–202. Other discussions of Simon Pokagon and his Rebuke are included in LaPier and Beck, City Indian, 26–7; Deloria, Philip J., Indians in Unexpected Places (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 104; Davis, “Hegemony and Resistance at the World’s Columbian Exposition,” 32–53; Peyer, Bernd C., “The Thinking Indian”: Native American Writers, 1850–1920s (New York: Peter Lang, 2007)Google Scholar. For additional sources, see Low, “Appendix 2: Selected Essays, Articles, and Monographs Regarding Simon Pokagon,” Imprints, 201–03.

24 “Books and Writers,” Brooklyn (New York) Daily Eagle, Sept. 7, 1895.

25 In fact, all 25 of the writings that historian John Low has found and attributed to Simon Pokagon were published during and after the year 1893, suggesting that Simon and his work would not have been as widely known or documented had it not been for his appearance at the Columbian Exposition of 1893. Low, Imprints, 205–06.

26 “All Records Eclipsed,” Republic (Columbus, Indiana), Oct. 10, 1893.

27 This collection is not exhaustive, but it is geographically representative of the distance this information traveled: “Chief Pokagon Dead,” Record-Union (Sacramento, California), Jan. 28, 1899; “Death of Simon Pokagon,” St. Joseph (Michigan) Saturday Herald, Feb. 4, 1899; “Chicago—Past and Present,” Springfield (Vermont) Reporter, Feb. 17, 1899; “Chief Simon Pokagon Is Laid to Rest,” Daily Iowa Capitol (Des Moines, Iowa), Jan. 30, 1899; “The effects of civilization among the Pottawattomie Indians appeared …,” Eutaw (Alabama) Whig and Observer, Aug. 24, 1899; “Chief of the Pottawatomies,” Fall River (Massachusetts) Daily Herald, Feb. 2, 1899.

28 “Chief Pokagon Dead,” Record-Union (Sacramento, California), Jan. 28, 1899.

29 Roland, Captain O. W., A History of Van Buren County Michigan: A Narrative Account of Its Historical Progress, Its People, and Its Principal Interests, vol. 1 (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1912), 1112 Google Scholar.

30 In one of the novel’s introductory essays, “The Algonquin Language. By the Author.” Simon Pokagon explains that “the manuscript was first written in the Algonquin language, the only language spoken by me until fourteen years of age” until it was translated into English in preparation for publication. The English title, “Queen of the Woods,” will be used for the remainder of the paper. Pokagon, Simon, O-gî-mäw-kwê Mit-i-gwä-kî (Queen of the Woods), Also Brief Sketch of the Algaic Language (Hartford, MI: C. H. Engle, 1899), 35 Google Scholar.

31 For a brief explanation of how the northern Michigan Odawa avoided removal, see McDonnell, Michael, “Conclusion: Persistence in an Era of Removal,” Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2015)Google Scholar.

32 Pokagon, Queen of the Woods, 62, 64.

33 Pokagon, Queen of the Woods, 82.

34 Pokagon, Queen of the Woods, 205.

35 Pokagon, Queen of the Woods, 169.

36 Pokagon, Queen of the Woods, 170.

37 Pokagon, Queen of the Woods, 172.

38 Pokagon, Queen of the Woods, 175.

39 Pokagon, Queen of the Woods, 176.

40 Pokagon, Queen of the Woods, 179.

41 Pokagon, Queen of the Woods, 212.

42 Pokagon, Queen of the Woods, 189.

43 Pokagon, Queen of the Woods, 79–80.

44 Daniel McDonald, History of Marshall County (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Company, 1908), 5.

45 The name of the newspaper changed several times over its lifespan, including Plymouth Democrat and Plymouth Weekly Chronicle.

46 McDonald, History of Marshall County, 291–94.

47 McDonald, History of Marshall County, 228.

48 McDonald, History of Marshall County, 228.

49 Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 65. In addition to his involvement with the IORM, Daniel McDonald also called his summer cabin on Lake Maxinkuckee his “wigwam.” “Celebrate at Wigwam,” Plymouth (Indiana) Weekly Chronicle, July 15, 1909.

50 Deloria, Playing Indian, 65.

51 McDonald, Daniel, Removal of the Pottawattomie Indians from Northern Indiana: Embracing Also a Brief Statement of the Indian Policy of the Government, and Other Historical Matter Relating to the Indian Question (Plymouth, IN: D. McDonald & Co., Printers, 1899)Google Scholar; Daniel McDonald, “Address of Representative Daniel McDonald of Plymouth: Delivered in the House of Representatives, Indianapolis, Friday, February 3, 1905 on The Bill to Erect a Monument to the Pottawattomie [sic] Indians at Twin Lakes, Marshall County,” Indianapolis: [publisher not identified], 1905; McDonald, Daniel, History of Lake Maxinkuckee (United States: Maxinkuckee Lake Association, 1905)Google Scholar; McDonald, History of Marshall County.

52 Conn, Steven, History’s Shadow: Native Americans and Historical Consciousness in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 Engle, C. H., Indian Drama … “Queen of the Woods,” Dramatized and published by Engle, C. H. (Hartford, MI: Day Spring Power Presses, 1904)Google Scholar.

54 “County History Is Staged,” Bremen (Indiana) Enquirer, Mar. 31, 1904; “Indian Love Story Has Been Dramatized,” Culver (Indiana) Citizen, Mar. 31, 1904.

55 Phillips, Katrina M., Staging Indigeneity: Salvage Tourism and the Performance of Native American History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021), 78 Google Scholar.

56 Phillips, Staging Indigeneity, 7.

57 Engle, Indian Drama, 2.

58 Engle, Indian Drama, 3.

59 Engle, Indian Drama, 12. This, of course, it not at all how Potawatomi (un)Removal happened. See Secunda, “In the Shadow of the Eagle’s Wings”; Bowes, Land Too Good for Indians, 177–181; Clifton, James A., The Pokagons, 1683–1983: Catholic Potawatomi Indians of the St. Joseph River Valley (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984)Google Scholar; Edmunds, R. David, The Potawatomis: Keepers of the Fire (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978)Google Scholar; Low, Imprints; Sleeper-Smith, Susan, Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

60 Pokagon, Queen of the Woods, 80. For the treaty, see Kappler, Indian Affairs, 2:413.

61 Engle, Indian Drama, 54–55.

62 McDonald, “Address of Representative Daniel McDonald of Plymouth.”

63 Declaring local Indians to be the “rightful owners” of the land the settlers continued to occupy happened elsewhere in the United States, too. Jean O’Brien has also identified east coast examples in O’Brien, Firsting and Lasting, 161.

64 Kelli Jean Mosteller, “Place, Politics, and Property: Negotiating Allotment for the Citizen Potawatomi, 1861–1891” (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2013); McKee, Irving, “The Centennial of ‘The Trail of Death,’Indiana Magazine of History 35 (Mar. 1939): 2741 Google Scholar; Benjamin Marie Petit and Irving McKee, The Trail of Death: Letters of Benjamin Marie Petit (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1941).

65 Daniel McDonald, “An Indian Wooing: Portrayal of Pottawattomie Character by Daniel McDonald,” Culver (Indiana) Citizen, Mar. 22, 1906.

66 “Beautiful Indian Romance: The Love Story of Po-ka-gon and Lonidaw,” Weekly Republican (Plymouth, Indiana), Feb. 28, 1907.

67 “Prepare for Dedication,” Plymouth (Indiana) Weekly Chronicle, July 29, 1909.

68 “September 4 Selected”; “Taft to Dedicate the Monument,” Grand Rapids (Michigan) Herald, July 30, 1909.

69 For a copy of the program, see: “Marshall County, Indiana,” www.potawatomi-tda.org/indiana/chiefms.htm. (accessed Aug. 10, 2023).

70 “Pokagon the Chief: Last Leader of the Maxinkuckee Pottawattomies and the Mouument [sic] Soon to be Unveiled,” Culver (Indiana) Citizen, June 17, 1909.

71 For discussions of Indigenous “authenticity” at this moment, see Paige Raibmon, Authentic Indians: Episodes of Encounter from the Late-Nineteenth-Century Northwest Coast (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).

72 “Monument Work Begun,” Plymouth (Indiana) Weekly Chronicle, June 3, 1909; “Indian Maid Will Come,” Plymouth (Indiana) Weekly Chronicle, Aug. 5, 1909; “Monument Unveiling,” Argos (Indiana) Reflector, Aug. 5, 1909.

73 “In Memory of Indians,” Fort Wayne (Indiana) Gazette, Aug. 31, 1909.

74 “Shaft Erected in Indians’ Honor,” North Adams (Massachusetts) Transcript, Sept. 4, 1909.

75 “Good Indians Held in Memory,” Daily Republican (Rushville, Indiana), Sept. 4, 1909.

76 “Indiana Honors Indians,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept. 4, 1909; “In Honor of Indians,” Portsmouth (New Hampshire) Herald, Sept. 4, 1909; “Good Indians Held in Memory.”

77 John Low’s 2016 analysis of this event continues this tradition, writing that “Julia Pokagon” and “Julia Quigno Pokagon,” the “daughter” of Simon Pokagon (rather than granddaughter), was the person who unveiled the monument and delivered an address. Low, Imprints, 171–75.

78 Roland, History of Van Buren County Michigan, 11. After the world’s fair, Simon Pokagon kept this structure outside his home in Hartford, Michigan. Low, John N., “The Architecture of Simon Pokagon—In Text and on Display,” in Pokagon, Simon et al., O-gî-mäw-kwê Mit-i-gwä-kî: Queen of the Woods: A Novel (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2011), 19 Google Scholar.

79 “Indian Maid Will Come,” Plymouth (Indiana) Weekly Chronicle, Aug. 5, 1909, 1; “Monument Unveiling.”

80 “The Indian Monument Is Dedicated,” Plymouth (Indiana) Weekly Chronicle, Sept. 9, 1909.

81 This practice continued in Indiana well into the twentieth century. In his study of Muncie, Indiana and the adoption of Cyrus Dallin’s Appeal to the Great Spirit monument as a local symbol in the 1960s–1970s, James Joseph Buss found that settlers incorporated certain elements of the monument and its history into their understandings of their city’s identity. Whereas Buss has found this process occurring during the second half of the century, my research suggests that this tradition began forming earlier in the twentieth century. See James Joseph Buss, “Appealing to the Great Spirit: Founding Fictions and Settler Histories in Middletown America,” Middle West Review 2 (Spring 2016), 144.

82 “The Indian Monument is Dedicated,” Plymouth (Indiana) Weekly Chronicle, Sept. 9, 1909. On the program it states that “Congressman Henry Barnhart” was scheduled to give an address, but according to local newspapers Indiana State Senator Harry Grube spoke in his place. For a copy of the program, see: “Marshall County, Indiana,” www.potawatomi-tda.org/indiana/chiefms.htm. (accessed Aug. 10, 2023).

83 “The Indian Monument Is Dedicated,” Plymouth (Indiana) Weekly Chronicle, Sept. 9, 1909.

84 “The Indian Monument Is Dedicated,” Plymouth (Indiana) Weekly Chronicle, Sept. 9, 1909.

85 “Indian Monument Dedicated Sept. 4,” Argos (Indiana) Reflector, Sept. 9, 1909; “The Indian Monument Is Dedicated,” Plymouth (Indiana) Weekly Chronicle, Sept. 9, 1909.

86 “Indian Monument Is Dedicated,” Plymouth (Indiana) Weekly Chronicle, Sept. 9, 1909.

87 “Indian Monument Is Dedicated,” Plymouth (Indiana) Weekly Chronicle, Sept. 9, 1909.

88 “The Indian Monument Is Dedicated,” Plymouth (Indiana) Weekly Chronicle, Sept. 9, 1909. When analyzing this event in her 1912 book, historian Cornelia Steketee Hulst claims that Julia Pokagon Quigno replied, “‘[The Chief Menominee Monument] will stand as a monument of humanity, teaching generations yet unborn that the white man and the red man are brothers and God is the father of all.” In his 2016 book, historian John Low briefly discusses this ceremony and cites Hulst’s quote as evidence that Julia Pokagon Quigno “read” this monument differently from her peers. However, there is no citation in Hulst’s history to confirm the validity of this quote, and this phrase bears a striking resemblance to the speeches Simon Pokagon delivered in the last several years of his life. Based on local newspapers that covered this event and included everything but Julia Pokagon Quigno’s words in incredible detail, it is unlikely that Hulst found a source that documented Julia’s words verbatim. Hulst, Indian Sketches, 74; Low, Imprints, 172.

89 In the program it is stated that “Michael Williams (Indian),” another member of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, was scheduled to give an address titled, “Civilization and the Indian Race.” Although it was widely reported in newspapers published outside of Plymouth, Indiana that Williams attended and spoke at the event, according to the Plymouth Weekly Chronicle, he never showed, his address was never delivered, and an explanation for his absence was never published. “The Indian Monument Is Dedicated,” Plymouth (Indiana) Weekly Chronicle, Sept. 9, 1909. John Low claims that Michael Williams was present and gave a speech titled “Civilization and the Indian Race,” but the only evidence provided to support this assertion is the monument dedication ceremony program, which, as we know from comparing the precirculated program with post-ceremony newspaper reports, last-minute changes to the festivities were not reflected in the monument dedication ceremony program. Low, Imprints, 172, n. 28.

90 “Indian Monument Is Dedicated,” Plymouth (Indiana) Weekly Chronicle, Sept. 9, 1909. C. H. Engle later reflected on the event, writing “I was present on that occasion [Chief Menominee monument dedication]. Her speech was wonderfully eloquent, insomuch the great crowd was moved to tears. That night I said to her ‘Julia, during your talk, I saw not a dry eye.’ She simply said ‘I wept too.’” Given his affinity for dramatizing Indigenous experiences, I cannot confirm if this exchange occurred. Two years after her appearance at the Chief Menominee monument and chapel dedication ceremony, Julia Pokagon Quigno was also invited to dedicate Chief Simon Pokagon’s wigwam when it was sold to the State Normal School of Michigan (now Eastern Michigan University) in 1911. There, she told a version of the Potawatomi Removal story that spoke of its incompleteness and accounted for the complexities of the Indian Removal experiences. Roland, History of Van Buren County Michigan, 8, 12–13.

91 “Indian Monument Is Dedicated,” Plymouth (Indiana) Weekly Chronicle, Sept. 9, 1909.

92 “Good Indians Held in Memory,” Daily Republican (Rushville, Indiana), Sept. 4, 1909.

93 “Indiana Pays Debt,” Herald-Press (St. Joseph, Michigan), Sept. 10, 1909.

94 “Indiana Pays Debt,” Herald-Press (St. Joseph, Michigan), Sept. 10, 1909.

95 “Indiana Honors Indians,” Morris County Advance (Council Grove, Kansas), Sept. 8, 1909.

96 Hulst, Indian Sketches, vi. Hulst was not the only historian to praise the efforts of Daniel McDonald. According to historian Jacob Piatt Dunn, Potawatomi history in the Midwest ended when Daniel McDonald secured payment for a monument in their honor: “the Indians are not forgotten. In 1905, Daniel McDonald, of Plymouth, who is thoroughly conversant with the story of their wrongs, and has called public attention to it, introduced in the Indiana Legislature a bill for an appropriation to erect a monument to the Pota-watomis at Menominee village, and rebuild the Indian chapel … in due time a fitting memorial will be made to these people, who, it must be confessed, suffered hard treatment at the hands of our forefathers.” Dunn, Jacob Piatt, True Indian Stories: With Glossary of Indiana Indian Names (Indianapolis: Sentinel Printing Company, 1909), 252 Google Scholar.

Figure 0

Figure 1. “Unveiling Chief Menominee Monument By His Granddaughter Julia Po-Ka-Gon Sept 4th 1909. Twin Lakes, Plymouth, Ind. Photo By Steele.” Image courtesy of the Marshall County Historical Society.

Figure 1

Figure 2. From left to right, Michael (Mike) Quigno, Joseph Quigno, Julia Pokagon Quigno, Julia’s mother, Lizette Morsaw, and Catherine Quigno. Julia Pokagon Quigno is directly in front of “Chief Simon Pokagon’s last wigwam” holding a bow and arrow. She is dressed in “true native style,” similar to what Lonidaw was wearing in Simon Pokagon’s description of her in Queen of the Woods and in Engle’s production of Indian Drama … “Queen of the Woods.” Cornelia Steketee Hulst, Indian Sketches: Père Marquette and the Last of the Pottawatomie Chiefs (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1912), 88.