Wabash River. Main Poc, early admirer of Tenskwata- 

 wa and Tecumseh and war leader of the IlUnois River 

 Potawatomi, played a major role in Indian military ex- 

 ploits during the war era. In 1 8 1 2 , he moved to the Fox 

 River west of Chicago, then spent the next three years 

 distributing war parties among the Potawatomis west of 

 Detroit. In this hinterland within fifty miles of Detroit, 

 but never penetrated by Americans, Indians grew corn 

 to augment food supplies provided by the British. 



Although the American army returned to Detroit 

 in 1813, following victory over the British at the Battle 

 of the Thames and the death of Tecumseh, war on the 

 western margin of the Great Lakes country continued 

 for two more years. In July 1814, British and Indian 

 forces from Mackinac Island captured the American 

 fort at Prairie du Chien at the mouth of the Wisconsin 

 River only a month after it was erected. In response, 

 the military command in St. Louis sent an expedition 

 against the multi-tribal forces collected by Black Hawk 

 around Saukenuk at the mouth of the Rock River. As 

 this war period ended, American commissioners held a 

 series of regional councils in an effort to reach satisfac- 

 tory peace terms with the large number of recent Indi- 

 an opponents. Only part of the Winnebagos agreed to 

 accept American protection, and the Menominees 

 held out until 1817. Yet, Great Lakes Indians still re- 

 tained contacts with the British Indian department. 

 Until 1842, they canoed to posts in Lake Huron or fol- 

 lowed the Sauk trail to Fort Maiden, opposite Detroit, 

 to receive presents from the British acknowledging 

 their services during the War of 1 8 1 2 . 



The final protests from Great Lakes Indians 

 against white intrusion occurred in 1827 and 1832 in 

 response to sudden white invasion of the lead mines 

 district, a triangular area extending north from Gale- 

 na, Illinois to the Wisconsin River. Until the arrival of 

 a horde of white miners, Mesquakie were digging and 

 selling the ore. The Winnebago attack on a Mississippi 

 River steamboat in 1827 brought immediate military 

 reprisal followed by government demands for land ces- 

 sions in northwestern Illinois. A new military post to 

 oversee the Winnebago was built immediately at the 

 Fox-Wisconsin portage. 



When the new land cessions opened up the coun- 

 try around Saukenuk in 1829, the elderly Sauk leader 

 insisted that the early treaties had excluded his village. 

 Nevertheless, in the fall of 1831, militia forced Black 

 Hawk's band of Sauk and Mesquakie to leave the place 

 that had been their home for almost a century and 

 move across the Mississippi River. When the men, 

 14 women, and children came back in May 1832, ostensi- 



bly to plant com in their accustomed fields, the action 

 aroused broad-scale military opposition. As the band 

 fled northward, the army command summoned several 

 thousand troops from as far distant as Baton Rouge, 

 Louisiana and Atlantic coast ports. Troops coming 

 from the east brought the first cases of Asiatic cholera 

 to the western Great Lakes, an epidemic largely con- 

 fined to the military. Unsuccessful in trying to sur- 

 render. Black Hawk was captured and his band deci- 

 mated within two months. 



The end of overt Indian resistance came at a time 

 when the opening of the Erie Canal, providing a water 

 route from the Hudson River across New York to Lake 

 Erie, let loose a new population stream that burst west- 

 ward over the road being built from Detroit to Chicago. 

 In 1830 white settlements in southeastern Michigan 

 existed only as far west as present Jackson, but by 1832 

 families from New York and New England were settling 

 all along the old Indian trail to Lake Michigan. Pota- 

 watomi in southern Michigan gave these newcomers a 

 friendly reception, identifying them as Saganas/i, 

 meaning "Englishman," distinguishing this group from 

 the Chemokoman, or "Big Knives," term for Virginians 

 and Kentuckians who arrived on the Great Lakes fron- 

 tier from south of the Ohio river. 



The new tide of population was encouraged by In- 

 dian treaties in 1832 and 1833, planning removal of 

 Potawatomi in Michigan and Indiana to reservations 

 west of the Mississippi, and opening up land along Lake 

 Michigan north of Chicago to Green Bay and the Door 

 Peninsula. Yet, the little city of Chicago, established in 

 1837, still had only 4,853 people by 1840 in a state 

 with a total population of 476,000. From Chicago, the 

 line of settlement moved northward slowly on both 

 sides of Lake Michigan. The Americanization of the 

 northland began as a lumbering and mining frontier. 

 These new enterprises also provided jobs for Indians in 

 logging camps, railroad construction, survey teams, 

 and Great Lakes shipping. The American Fur company 

 and Ottawa and Ojibwas were already engaged in com- 

 mercial fishing in Lake Superior and the Straits of 

 Mackinac. 



At the same time, the federal Office of Indian 

 Affairs introduced new constraints on the remaining 

 Great Lakes Indians, with plans to make Indian people 

 live and even think like members of western European 

 society. Treaties negotiated in 1854 and 1855 covering 

 land in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula of 

 Michigan, the Upper Peninsula, and northern Wis- 

 consin, assigned special sections on reserved land for 

 each local band, to be divided into individual family 



