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

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.

Their local newspaper promised it would be “the most important historical event that has ever occurred in the county.” 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. 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. ³ Known locally as the “lover of the Indian,” McDonald delivered the historical address at the event. 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.” 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.” 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.” 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. 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.” 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. 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.” 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.” 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” ¹³ Tribal Nation—the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi 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. 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.” 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. 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. 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. ¹⁹ After witnessing how American Indians were being represented as uncivilized “savages” in the early months of the fair, ²⁰ Pokagon took out his frustrations on the pages of birchbark, ²¹ threatening his audience with nothing short of rapture for the harm, pain, and agony the “pale-faced race” had caused Indigenous peoples. 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.’” ²³

After publishing his Rebuke, Simon Pokagon became a celebrity, prolific writer, and known throughout the country as “the last chief of the Pottawatomie.” 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.’” 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. 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.” ³⁴ In the novel, Pokagon and Loda are persuaded by a priest to send their son away to the “white man’s school.” 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.” 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!’” ³⁷ Soon, “his young life went out and left us in the midnight of despair.” 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. 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. 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.” ⁴¹ In Pokagon’s story, the Queen of the Woods who survived Potawatomi Removal was a martyr in the “war” against “King Alcohol.” 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. 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, 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. 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. 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.” 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.” 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.” 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.” 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. 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.” 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.” 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. 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.” ⁵⁵ Those tourists who attend these performances could, in turn, “find sanctuary, safety, and security in the performance of a remembered past.” 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. 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. 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. 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.” 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.)” 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. 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. 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. 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.” 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.” 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” 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. 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,” ⁷³ “Julia Q. Pokagon,” ⁷⁴ or Julia Qua-ko-na Po-ka-gon,” 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.” 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. 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, Michigan ⁷⁸) for the Quignos to camp in during their stay in Plymouth. 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. 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. 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.” 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.” 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.” 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.” 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. 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.” 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. ⁸⁸ When the only Native woman who spoke at the event actually did, the settlers ventriloquized her response to fit their narrative. 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.” 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. 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. 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. ⁹³ Many reports lauded Indiana for constructing the “first monument ever raised in honor of Indians through legislative enactment.” 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.” 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.” 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.