West Cook News

First-term River Forest Trustee Erika Bachner has tried to start a new tradition in the village. 

Rather than recite a Pledge of Allegiance to the United States of America at the start of monthly board meetings, she recites a statement apologizing to “indigenous” Indian tribes Bachner claims lived on River Forest village land before her constituents' predecessors stole it from them.

“As we begin, we are mindful that we hold these meetings on land that was once and still is inhabited by indigenous people including the Ojibwa, Chippewa, Menominee, Potawatomi nations and more,” she says. “We will remember our nation’s history and honor the native people as stewards of this land that was colonized, and that River Forest continues to be a place many people from diverse backgrounds live and gather.”

A monument to the Fort Dearborn Massacre

Bachner's statement notwithstanding, the land that today is River Forest wasn't, in fact, "colonized" but rather acquired by the U.S. as part of a 1795 peace treaty after winning the Battle of Fallen Timbers, defeating a confederacy of Indian tribes and the British, who were not surprisingly trying to undermine a nascent America.

River Forest also was not "inhabited" by three of the four Indian tribes Bachner references in her statement. 

Two of them-- "Ojibwa" and "Chippewa"--  are actually the same tribe. The words are synonymous, referring to a single Indian nation that lived in far northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. That's also where the Menominee Indians lived, on the western coast of Green Bay, on Lake Michigan. Neither tribe lived on River Forest land.

"Indiscriminately bludgeoned them to death with his tomahawk"

There were Potawatomis living near River Forest when, per the 1795 peace treaty, the Americans arrived here to build Fort Dearborn, now Chicago, in 1803. 

Potawatomi leaders had participated in the treaty, but many of its members remained hostile to American settlement and European customs and habits, like the use of written language and establishment of schools, as well as concepts like monogamous marriage and "rule of law."

On Aug. 15, 1812, incited by the British, 500 Potawatomi warriors attacked soldiers and their families evacuating Fort Dearborn in what is known as the Fort Dearborn Massacre. 

"Hundreds of Potawatomi surrounded the wagons, which were defended by the 12-man militia, desperate to protect their wives and children," said Potawatomi Chief Simon Pokagon. "The men discharged their muskets and then wielded them like clubs before they were all slain," 

"A solitary Potawatomi climbed into the wagon with the children and indiscriminately bludgeoned them to death with his tomahawk—“for which he was hated by the tribe ever after,” he said.

One Potawatomi took the scalp of soldier William Wells, the namesake of Chicago's Wells Street, "while another cut out his heart, divided it into small pieces, and distributed them among the other warriors," who ate it.

"That night, the (Potawatomi) Indians tortured and killed all the wounded," a Chicago Tribune account read. "Men, women and children were killed, stripped and many were beheaded. Sixty persons died."

The book, North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence, by anthropologists Richard J. Chacon and Ruben G. Mendoza, argues that "warfare and ritual violence" and cannibalism were commonplace before Europeans arrived in America, and that "bloodshed and killing (were) woven into the fabric of indigenous life in North America for many centuries."

"When Europeans showed up, (America) was simply a collection of stronger tribes competing at the same battles for land, " wrote Jim Hanson, an author and historian who formerly served in the U.S. Army's Special Forces. 

The Potawatomi themselves had been pushed westward from Michigan in the mid-1600s, after a series of battles with the Iroquois Indian tribe. In 1752, they allied with French settlers to drive the Illinois tribe out of what is now River Forest, claiming the land for themselves.

"The idea they displaced pastoral native Americans living in peace and harmony is an invention of Leftist propaganda. We have all progressed since then. Thankfully," said Hanson.