Simon Pokagon and Paw Paw Lake
Simon Pokagon was a member of the Pokagon band of the Potawatomi and a prolific writer, orator, and advocate. Born in 1830, before Michigan became an official state, Pokagon grew up in the southern region of what would one day become Michigan. His father was the patriarch of the Potawatomi and was the one to sign the 1833 treaty ceding the Potawatomi lands on which Chicago was built to the United States government. Pokagon, as his son, continued a complicated legacy with the occupation of the United States government and the preservation and persistence of his culture.
Educated at the Twinsburg Institute, Pokagon authored a number of important 19th-century writings, including The Red Man's Greeting, Queen of the Woods, and Algonquin Legends of Paw Paw Lake. His writings combined a dedication to preserving Potawatomi stories, legends, and culture with an advocacy on behalf of the Potawatomi as a whole, pushing for their access to education in particular. While some of his writings seemed to support the sending of Indigenous children to U.S. federal schools, other members of the Potawatomi and other Tribal groups criticized his stance and opposed this form of education, which they viewed as a form of indoctrination. Regardless of his sometimes controversial status, Pokagon remained an important figure both within his local community and in the nation as a whole. He met twice with President Lincoln and later Grant in a group of Potawatomi representatives, was elected chair of the Potawatomi business committee in 1869, and spoke at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
Pokagon was passionate about taking control of the narrative surrounding Native Americans and the Potawatomi in particular, a narrative he saw as largely controlled by the U.S. government and white settlers. In an excerpt from The Future of the Red Man, Pokagon wrote, "let us constantly bear in mind that the character of our people has always been published to the world by the dominant race." He pushed back against colonial depictions of Native Americans as uncivilized or savage. Instead, he wanted to share his culture in a positive and accurate light, penning a number of articles and books about Potawatomi legends, language, and culture, some of which were produced on the spiritually significant birchbark.
One such birchbark story is the Algonquin Legends of Paw Paw Lake, which details the Potawatomi creation story of Paw Paw Lake. Pokagon writes that the lake was once a bay at “the extreme western limit of a great inland lake.” There was a large Native American village built on this bay, and it was called Waw-kwin, or Heaven. All of the northern and western tribes passed near the village and the bay to and from Lake Michigan, and all seasonal animal migrations passed through it, too. It was an important intersection for many groups and living creatures. The tribe always had more than enough food, and the bay provided them with plentiful fish. However, they woke one night to “a strange roaring sound, such as they had never heard before”—it was the sound of the shore of the bay giving way and water rushing across the land into Lake Michigan. The bay was changed irrevocably and transformed into a lake, now known as Paw Paw Lake, which the Potawatami called Sa-bi-na go-na, meaning “it swallows the river in storm and spews it out in sunshine.”
Pokagon ends his retelling by calling attention to another wave of change facing the Potawatomi: “Our father’s graves have been destroyed," he wrote, "and where our wigwams once stood and our children played now stands the cottages of the white man. All, all has changed except gi-sis, tib-i-gisis, and an-ang-og (the sun, moon and stars), and they have not because their Goed and Ki-ji Man-i-to (our God) in great wisdom and mercy, hung them beyond the white man’s reach.” This retelling embodies Pokagon's dual dedications in his life's work: to accurately portray the stories and ways of the Potawatomi while also acting as a political advocate on their behalf.
Today, Pokagon's legacy and the Potawatomi stories he recorded live on. He has an Indiana state park named after him, and many of his writings, including Algonquin Legends of Paw Paw Lake, can be found at the Clarke Historical Library. His advocacy and writings, too, remain powerful, as seen in a statement he made in his 1893 Columbian Exposition address: “While you who are strangers and you who live here bring the handiwork of your own lands, and your hearts in admiration rejoice over the beauty and grandeur of this young republic,” he told onlookers, “do not forget that this success has been at the sacrifice of our homes.”
To learn more about Pokagon and the Paw Paw Lake creation story, visit the Clarke Historical Library search engine or the online access to Algoniun Legends of Paw Paw Lake.
