In the later part of the Nineteenth Century
when the spiritual vibrations for human rights were beginning to encircle
the planet, there arose in the Potawatomi Nation a literary genius named
Simon Pokagon. He was the Chief of the Potawatomis of southwestern
Michigan. During his lifetime he became known as the best-educated
full-blooded Indian in North America and was called “the Redskin Bard,” “the Longfellow of his Race.”
He visited President Lincoln on two
occasions and smoked a pipe-of-peace with President Grant. His account of these meetings is
graphic: “I
went to see the greatest and best chief ever known, Abraham Lincoln. I
was the first Red Man to shake hands and visit him after his
inauguration. He talked to me as a father would to his son and was glad
that we had built churches and schoolhouses. He had a sad look in his
face but I knew
that he was a good man. I heard it in his voice, saw it in his eyes and
felt it in his handshaking. I told him how my father long ago sold
Chicago and the surrounding country to the United States for three cents
per acre and how we were poor and needed our pay.
“He said he was sorry for and would
help us what he could to get our just dues. Three years later I again
visited the Great Chief; he excused the delay in our payment on account
of the war. He seemed bowed down with care. At this time Grant was
thundering before Richmond for its final overthrow, while Sherman was
making his grand march to the sea. Some time after this visit we paid
390,000 dollars.
“In 1874 when I again visited the
city to get the balance of our pay, I met the great war chief, General
Grant, I had expected he would put on military importance, but he kindly
shook hands with me and gave me a cigar. We both sat down and smoked the
pipe of peace. He thanked me for the loyalty of my people and for the
soldiers we had furnished during the war. We still had due us from Uncle
Sam between one and two hundred thousand dollars. He said that there as a
question about our claim; but we got judgment against the government
through the court of claims and believe it is worth one hundred cents on
the dollar ad that it will all be paid as soon as congress gets through
scuffling over the tariff.”[i]
In 1893 Simon Pokagon attended the World’s
Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He was outraged with the discovery that
no American Indian had been asked to serve in any official capacity at
this world’s fair when dignitaries had come from all over the world to
attend. Challenged by this insult, Pokagon sat down and wrote what was
perhaps the most eloquent defense of the American Indian ever written. He
called it, “The
Red Man’s Greeting”. It became better known as “The Red Man’s Book
of Lamentations”. The booklet
was published on birch bark and was sold by the Indians at the
Exposition. The booklet caught the attention of the Chicago press, was
reviewed at length by the national press, and was quoted eventually by
journals in England and Europe. Pokagon became a world celebrity. The
Chicago Mayor asked Chief Pokagon to be the keynote speaker for Chicago
Day at the Exposition. Thousands
came to hear him. In his speech he asked the Indian to lay aside all
bitterness of spirit, to adopt the culture of the white man, to get an
education and develop skills and to be loyal citizens of the republic.
Pokagon wrote
one book, “Queen of the Woods,” a
story of his early courtship with Lodinaw, his wife. This book, published
originally on birchbark, is full of native imagery and love of nature in
the forest woodlands of Michigan. Pokagon used nature itself to express
ideas and abstract thought. The underlying theme was a plea to rid
mankind, white and red, of the menace of “firewater.”
In
addition to “The Red Man’s Greeting”, Chief
Simon Pokagon wrote several other birchbark booklets entitled “Algonquin Legends of South
Haven”, “Lord’s Prayer in
Algonquin”, “Potawatomi Book of
Genesis”, and “Algonquin Legends of Paw
Paw Lake”.
In later
years Pokagon wrote a series of ten articles for The Forum, Harper’s,
The
Chautauquan, Review of Reviews and The
Arena. These articles
concerned the future of the Indian, problems of race, Indian legends, the
Fort Dearborn Massacre. The War of 1812, Indian women, naming the
Indians, wild pigeons and the mating of geese.
Chief
Simon Pokagon possessed a vision and a philosophy as pertinent as when he
lived.
He
believed mankind to be one and in the eventual integration of his people
with people of other cultures.
At the
Columbian Exposition he said: “The world’s people, from
what they have so far seen of us on the Midway will regard us as savages;
but they shall yet know that we are human as well as they……The Red
Man is your brother, and God is the Father of all.” [ii]
In an article he wrote: “Pokagon, do you believe that the
white man and the Red Man were originally one blood? My reply has been:
“I do not know. But
from the present outlook, they surely will be.’ “ [iii]
Of the
painful transition for the native American to live in a white man’s
world, Pokagon wrote: “As the hunted deer, when night
comes on, wary and tired, lies down to rest, mourning for companions of
the morning hear, all scattered, dead and gone, so we through weary years
have tried to find some place to safely rest.” [iv]
“Our sad history has been told by
weeping parents to their children from generation to generation; and as
the fear of the fox in the duckling is hatched, so the wrongs we have
suffered are transmitted to our children, and they look upon the white
man with distrust as soon as they are born. [v]
“The
cyclone of civilization rolled westward; the forests of untold centuries
were swept away; streams dried up; lakes fell back from their ancient
bounds; and all our fathers once loved to gaze upon was destroyed,
defaced, or marred, except the sun, moon and starry skies above, which
the Great Spirit is his wisdom hung beyond their reach.
“Still on the storm cloud
rolled, while before its lightning and thunder the beasts of the field
and the fowls of the air withered like grass before the flame – were
shot for love of power to kill alone, and left, the spoil upon the
plains. Their bleaching bones, now scattered far and near, in shame
declare the wanton cruelty of pale-faced man. The storm, unsatisfied on
land, swept our lakes and streams, while before its clouds of hooks, nets
and glistening spears the fish vanished from our shores like the morning
dew before the rising sun. Thus our inheritance was cut off, and we were
driven and scattered as sheep before the wolves.”
[vi]
Pokagon’s advice to his people was as follows: “Let us not
crucify ourselves by going over the bloody trails we have trod on other
days, but rather let us look up and rejoice in thankfulness in the
present.” [vii]
“We must teach our children to
give up the bow and arrow that is born in our hearts; and, in place of
the gun, we must take up the plow, and live as white men do.” [viii]
“By adoption, we are children
of this Great Republic; hence we must teach loyalty to our children, and
solemnly impress upon them that the war-path leads but to the grave.” [ix]
Pokagon
commented in this manner about use of cruelty and violence: “It is
clear that for years after the discovery of this country, we stood before
the coming strangers as a block of marble before the sculptor, ready to
be shaped into a statue of grace and beauty; but in their greed for gold,
the block was hacked to pieces and destroyed.” [x]
“Shall not one line lament
our forest
race,
For you struck
out from
Wilde creation’s
face?
Freedom –
the selfsame
Freedom you
adore,
Bade us defend
our
Violated
shore.” [xi]
“I recall these facts not to censure, but to
show that cruelty and revenge are the offspring of war, not of race, and
that nature has placed no impassable gulf between us and civilization.” [xii]
Simon
Pokagon, a true ecologist, deplored hunting for sport: “There are too many men, and sportsmen as
well, in Michigan and elsewhere, that too much love to show their skill
and feel their power. I hate to think that they love to kill merely for
the sake of taking life.” [xiii]
Pokagon, as his father before him, abstained from
use of liquor and wrote eloquently of its ravages: “Now, as we have been taught to believe that
our first parents ate of the forbidden fruit and fell, so we as fully
believe that this fire-water is the hard cider of the white man’s
devil, made from the fruit of that tree that brought death into the
world, and all our woes. The
arrow, the scalping knife, the tomahawk used on the warpath were merciful
compared with it; they were used in our defense, but the accursed drink
came like a serpent in the form of a dove.
Many of our people partook of it without mistrust, as children
pluck the flowers and clutch a scorpion in their grasp; only when they
feel the sting, they let the flowers fall.
But Nature’s children had no such power; for when the viper’s
fangs they felt, they only hugged the reptile the more closely to their breasts, while
friends before them stood pleading with prayers and tears that they would
let the deadly serpent drop. But all in vain. Although they promised so
to do, yet with a laughing grin and steps like the fool, they still more
frequently guzzled down this hellish drug. Finally, conscience ceased to
give alarm, and led by despair to life’s last brink, and goaded by
demons on every side, they cursed themselves, they cursed their friends,
they cursed their beggar babes and wives, they cursed their God, and
died.” [xiv]
Simon
Pokagon did not approve of Indian reservations and the ration system: “I am worried over the ration system, under
which so many of our people are being fed on reservations. I greatly fear
it may eventually vagabondize many of them beyond redemption.” [xv]
It was good economy, no doubt, for the United
States to free our people on the great Sioux and other reservations,
instead of keeping a standing army to fight them in case they should take
to the warpath. And yet the system is a bad one for our people. It kills
energy and begets idleness, the mother of vice.” [xvi]
Chief
Pokagon believed in education and in the integration of his people into
modern society: “I believe those government schools
were conceived by the Great Spirit….I fully believe when a great
majority of the 28,000 children between six and sixteen who are still
unprovided for shall be gathered into school, and when the reservations
are broken up and the people scattered in homes of their own, that then
and not until then will the great Indian problem be solved.” [xvii]
Pokagon
remained throughout his life a faithful Catholic Christian and looked
upon Jesus as the mediator between God and man: “To
be just, we must acknowledge there were some good men with these
strangers who gave their lives for ours, and in great kindness taught us
the revealed will of the Great Spirit through his Son Jesus, the mediator
between God and man.” [xviii]
“Within the recess of
the native’s
soul,
There is a
secret place,
Which
God doth hold;
And through
the storms of
Life do war around,
Yet still
within, His image
Fixed is
found.” [xix]
Chief Simon Pokagon was born in the
spring of 1830 in Pokagon Village near Niles, Michigan. His father was
Chief Leopold Pokagon, a man of sterling character who had been
converted to Christianity by Jesuit missionaries.
Until twelve years of age Simon knew
only Indian ways and spoke only native Algonquin. However he displayed
such mental curiosity that Catholic priests sent him to the newly founded
Notre Dame school for four or five years. Later he entered Oberlin
College and then Twinsburg Institute in Ohio. He became fluent in
English, Latin and Greek.
He returned
to his tribe which at that time lived at Rush Lake near Hartford,
Michigan and acted as tribal chief. When the Potawatomies
began electing secretaries to preside over the tribe, Simon Pokagon
became Secretary. He was as active as his father in church activities and
served as interpreter of sermons into Algonquin for his tribe. He played
the church organ, composed poetry, music and hymns and raised a family of
four children.
Those
who remember him recall that he had a very kind and cheerful nature, was
not talkative but had opinions which were both direct and persuasive. He
read constantly and loved to sit, to reflect quietly, and to write. He
did not permit rambling at tribal council meetings.
When the United States government paid 150,000 dollars in
1896 for land cessions, Pokagon kept only four hundred dollars for
himself and saw that the remainder was distributed among his people.
Pokagon died penniless in his little
cabin in Michigan in 1899 at the age of 69.
At his death, the Literary Digest published the following
editorial: “He was a man of great moral
strength. His appetites and passions were always under control of an
awakened conscience. There was also something of the woman’s tenderness
and sweetness in a nature that could be stern when wrongs were to be
denounced. He was a poet, orator and philosopher. In his creations there
not infrequently flashed forth much of the fire and impassioned the great
chieftains of the Algonquins, and which not infrequently suggest the old
prophets of Israel when they fearlessly denounced wrong and justice. With
his death there passed from view one of the noblest children of the red
race – a man whose life, thought and deeds proved how closely akin are
the noble natures of all races, ages, and times.”
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