From WBEZ, Uptown was once a vibrant hub for Chicago’s Native American community
Native people have always been in Chicago, despite continued attempts to remove them that culminated in the 1833 Treaty of Chicago. Still, Chicago remains an important place for Native Americans in the region.
The Chicago metro area has the third-largest urban Native American population in the United States, estimated to be around 65,000, according to the American Indian Center (AIC).
While there isn’t one concentrated neighborhood anymore, Uptown on the city’s North Side used to be that nucleus.
...most Native people ended up in Uptown. The neighborhood had affordable, tenement-style apartments and numerous social service offices. There was also the AIC, established by Native people already living in Chicago. Anticipating the influx of Native Americans to the city following the Termination Act, the center — then on Wilson Avenue — was designed to “help Native families cope with the transition from reservation to urban life.”...While Uptown is no longer the nucleus, there is still a thriving community of Natives living in Chicago. In the North Center neighborhood, the Kateri Center offers space for language circles.
Now in the Albany Park neighborhood, the AIC continues to be a focal point for Native people in the city, regularly hosting powwows.
And numerous other organizations across Chicago provide spaces for community and culture.
From WBEZ's Curious City, How did Indian Boundary Park get its name?
Between 1795 and 1833, several treaties concerning the Chicago area were negotiated between the U.S. government and Native Nations. Most of these treaties were signed under conditions of duress, designed to take the legal title to Native Americans’ most desirable lands.
One of these was the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis, the central goal of which was to pave the way for the European colonization of the lands including what would later become the city of Chicago. In doing so, the U.S. began to push the remaining Anishinaabe people living in the area north.
The line that separated Native Americans from the settlers, established by the treaty, was initially just a line on a map. Eventually a road was built along it known as Indian Boundary Road, which is now North Rogers Avenue. Europeans built settlements south of the road, and Indigenous people continued living north of it.
But the boundary line only existed for about 17 years, until the second Treaty of Chicago. That agreement between the Anishinaabe and the U.S. government ceded five million acres of land. The federal government removed the majority of Indigenous people living along Indian Boundary Road and sent them west of the Mississippi River.
However, some Native people continued to live and trade in the area. The location became an important trading post for settlers and Indigenous people. Around 1835, a settler named Philip Rogers built a log cabin at roughly the intersection of what is now W. Lunt and N. Western Avenues, a block from where Indian Boundary Park is today. Rogers established a trading post with Native people in the area that was situated near the park’s current fieldhouse. Eventually, the nearby neighborhood of Rogers Park was named after him.
From the Newberry Library, Indigenous Chicago is an exhibition through the fall 2024.
Home to the Potawatomi, Odawa, Ojibwe, Peoria, Kaskaskia, Myaamia, Wea, Sauk, Meskwaki, and Ho-Chunk peoples, the place we now call Chicago has long been a historic crossroads for many Indigenous people and remains home to an extensive urban Native community. Yet most Chicagoans are unaware of the city’s history as a home to diverse Indigenous peoples and the vibrant Indigenous communities present today. Part of a multifaceted initiative developed in partnership between the Newberry, advisors from the Chicago Native community, and representatives from tribal nations with historic connections to Chicago, this exhibition reflects the dynamic and complex aspects of Native life in Chicago from the seventeenth century to the present. The exhibition draws largely on the Newberry's collection while also showcasing new work by contemporary Native artists, including Jason Wesaw (Pokagon Band of Potawatomi), Camille Billie (Oneida), and Jim Terry (Ho-Chunk).
