Removal

The Indian Removal Act of 1830 set the stage for mass, forced migrations of Native Americans to reservations. The fictional story of Little Woods takes place across 12 months of the year 1833, and the Potawatomi in the Chicago region were not formally removed until the fall of 1835. However, one highlight of the negotiations on behalf of the Potawatomi at the Treaty of Chicago in September, 1833 was Half Day’s (a.k.a. Aptakisic) insistence that any land designated as a reservation must first be inspected and approved by the Potawatomi leadership.

 

Indeed, the land that was initially designated by the U.S. Government in western Iowa did not meet with the satisfaction of the tribe. Instead, the Potawatomi leaders chose land in the Platt Country in northwest Missouri and southwest Iowa.
 

While the time parameters of Little Woods do not allow the reader to take the westward journey with the Neshnabek, the modern-day characters find themselves in Missouri where they contemplate the common migration of kindred spirits.
 

 

Excerpt: Little Woods (Planting Moon 1833: Oil and Water)

 

A stifling odor of wet wool and fresh-cut, bare maple made the cloistered air palpable as Lieutenant Chester Talbert, of the Fifth Regiment at Fort Dearborn, briefed his soldiers in their cramped barrack. “The Indian Removal Act of 1830 gives us congressional authority to prosecute the obvious. The Indians aren’t Americans like you and me. They lack the capacity for thinking like civilized people. Savages can’t live side-by-side with white people. It’s like oil and water. Put ‘em together in a pot, and they stay separate. The settlement of Chicago will be incorporated as an American town this summer, and as more decent folk move in, we need the citizenry to be real Americans. We can’t afford to have the Indians go on the warpath every time they run out of firewater. We can’t allow a bunch of starving primitives to camp on the doorsteps of our new town every winter. Despite the good faith shown by Shabbona and Waubonsee during the Black Hawk uprising, the local tribes can still be violent and erratic; the chiefs can’t control their warriors. We’ve got to remove these villages to make room for white settlers.”

 

Lieutenant Talbert used his outstretched hand to indicate Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi communities prominently marked on a large, regional map that hung from thick, iron nails against the disjointed slats of the wall. His ink-stained forefinger haphazardly pointed to a red dot near a poorly-drawn representation of the Little Woods.

 

Excerpt: Little Woods (September - 21st Century: Doctor Death)
 

I also found this at the edge of the burnt grass as I walked back to my car.” Grandaur lifted a silver chain from under his shirt. A pure-white arrowhead dangled at its end. “I took it to a local historian, and he said the markings meant it belonged to a Potawatomi warrior named Shickshack who lived on the Missouri reservation in the mid-eighteen hundreds.”

 

“I thought the Potawatomi reservation was in Kansas.”

 

“It is now, just north of Topeka. The tribes near Chicago were first offered land in western Iowa. They sent an advance party to investigate. They didn’t like the Iowa land so they took some land in northwest Missouri instead. Local white settlers had designs on the Missouri land; the whole affair was contentious, and after some years they moved to the reservation in Kansas. The point is that I came away from that meth lab accident with post-traumatic stress. When I can’t sleep at night from thinking of that burned man in the back of the first SUV, I look at this arrowhead. I imagine that the ghost of Shickshack returned to help the ghost of my burn victim find peace.