Abstract This article explores the representations of two Native leaders, Billy Caldwell and Shab-eh-nay, in the evolution of Chicago’s early historical narrative. By blood, Caldwell was Mohawk and Shab-eh-nay was Odawa, but they both achieved leadership roles in northern Illinois Potawatomi society through marriage and by distinguishing themselves both as war leaders and intercultural brokers. These two men were frequently mythologized as “friends to the white man” as a way for frontier Illinois’s settler society to claim a sense of legitimacy to the lands taken from Indigenous peoples throughout the first half of the nineteenth century. In the writing of Chicago’s early historical narratives, antiquarian historians frequently contrasted friendly Natives like Caldwell and Shab-eh-nay as an exception to the more typical depictions of Native peoples as “savage” enemies who constantly sought to destroy frontier settlers. These depictions were utilized to justify violence against and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. Commemorations of Caldwell and Shab-eh-nay throughout antiquarian histories from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries illustrate the power wielded by those who write what the public deems official history.
Aaron Luedtke (Wed,) studied this question.