ebro meri Ue boNerR CRE TEN 45 
The Pokagon Conservation Club 
Statues of two great Indians guard the entrance to Jackson Park. 
These sculptured masterpieces were erected in honor of Leopold and 
Simon Pokagon, famous Indian chiefs of the Pottawatomie tribe. 
“The Pokagons, father and son, were successive chiefs and 
sachems of the once powerful Pottawatomie tribe, which long occupied 
the region around the southern and eastern shores of Lake Michigan. 
Leopold Pokagon is described as a man of excellent character and 
habits, a good warrior and hunter, and as being possessed of con- 
siderable business capacity. He was well known to the early white 
settlers in the region about Lake Michigan, and his people were noted 
as being the most advanced in civilization of any of the neighboring 
tribes. He ruled over his people for forty-three years. 
“In 1833 he sold to the United States one million acres of land 
at three cents an acre, and on the land so conveyed has since been 
built the city of Chicago. He died in 1840 in Cass County, Michigan. 
“His son, Simon, then ten years of age, became the rightful 
hereditary chief of the tribe. At the age of fourteen he began the 
study of English, which he successfully mastered, as well as Latin 
and Greek. No full-blooded Indian ever acquired a more thorough 
knowledge of the English language. In 1897 he wrote an article for 
a New York magazine on the ‘Future of the Red Man,’ in which he 
said: ‘Often in the stillness of the night, when all nature seems asleep 
about me, there comes a gentle rapping at the door of my heart. I 
open it, and a voice inquires: ‘Pokagon, what of your people? What 
will be their future?’ My answer is: ‘Mortal man has not the power 
to draw aside the veil of unborn time to tell the future of his race. 
That gift belongs to the Divine alone. But it is given to him to 
closely judge the future by the present and the past’.’’* 
Simon Pokagon was also a lecturer, and one of the earliest con- 
servationists to plead for the preservation of wild life. One cannot 
attribute his talent entirely to the persistence in the study of several 
languages, but inspirationally he was also a great philosopher and 
naturalist. 
In his book ‘‘Queen of the Woods” are many beautiful descriptions 
of the red man’s attitude toward primitive nature and the Great Spirit. 
He observed the birds and the accounts of his observations are as 
fine as the writings of Audubon or John Burroughs. 
The Pokagon Conservation Club derives its name from Simon 
Pokagon, whose life was devoted to his race and in recording the 
history of America in the language of the Indian. It is in his honor 
that we carry on, and in the belief that this noble character has 
added greatly to enhance the legend of a race which truly symbolizes 
a natural conservation of nature. 
HucGo ZEITER, Honorary Field Agent, Danville. 
*Krom Lives of Famous Indian Chiefs. American Indian Historical Pub- 
lishing Co., Aurora, Illinois. 
