Sketch of the Potawatomi ~ Introduction
Introduction to the manuscript “The Last of the Illinois and a Sketch of the Pottawatomie”
Caton, John Dean. The last of the Illinois, and a sketch of the Pottawatomies published Chicago.
Introduction to the manuscript “The Last of the Illinois and a Sketch of the Pottawatomie”
The following incidents in the early history of Shau-be-na are principally taken from his own statements, and the truth of them, no person acquainted with the old chief will doubt. My first acquaintance with Shau-be-na occurred nearly forty years ago, while his whole band, one hundred and forty-two in number, were hunting on Bureau River,
This great event in Indian history secured to the Pottawatomie all the territory then belonging to the Illinois, and the exclusive right to which was undisputed by other tribes. It extended their possessions to the lands of the Peoria on Peoria Lake. They occupied to the Wabash as far south as Danville and even beyond.
Potawatomi’s Secure All Illinois Tribe Territory Read More »
In several cases advanced aboriginal Indian tribes, have by act of Congress been declared citizens and endowed with all the rights and privileges of citizenship. Still they were conscious of their inability to properly exercise and enjoy those rights and privileges. They knew they could not exercise the franchise side by side with the white
Soon after their discovery by LaSalle, the great Iroquois Confederation, whose battlefields were strewn with their victims almost from the Atlantic coast to the Wabash, and from the Great Lakes, and even north of them, to the Alleghenies and the Ohio, finally extended their enterprises to the Illinois Tribe. With a great slaughter they defeated
I shall close this paper with an account of the great war dance which was performed by all the braves which could be mustered among the five thousand Indians here assembled. The number’ who joined in the dance was probably about eight hundred. Although I cannot give the precise day, it must have occurred about
It was very different, however, with the Prairie Indians. They despised the cultivation of the soil as too mean even for their women and children, and deemed the captures of the chase as the only fit food for a valorous people. The corn, which grew like grass from the earth which they trod beneath their
More than thirty-seven years ago, when I first became a citizen of Chicago, I found this whole country occupied as the hunting grounds of the Pottawatomie Indians. I soon formed the acquaintance of many of their chiefs, and this acquaintance ripened into a cordial friendship. I found them really intelligent and possessed of much information