Rising Up from Indian Country
The Battle of Fort Dearborn and the Birth of Chicago
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- €13.99
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- €13.99
Publisher Description
“Sets the record straight about the War of 1812’s Battle of Fort Dearborn and its significance to early Chicago’s evolution . . . informative, ambitious” (Publishers Weekly).
In August 1812, Capt. Nathan Heald began the evacuation of ninety-four people from the isolated outpost of Fort Dearborn. After traveling only a mile and a half, they were attacked by five hundred Potawatomi warriors, who killed fifty-two members of Heald’s party and burned Fort Dearborn before returning to their villages.
In the first book devoted entirely to this crucial period, noted historian Ann Durkin Keating richly recounts the Battle of Fort Dearborn while situating it within the nearly four decades between the 1795 Treaty of Greenville and the 1833 Treaty of Chicago. She tells a story not only of military conquest but of the lives of people on all sides of the conflict, highlighting such figures as Jean Baptiste Point de Sable and John Kinzie and demonstrating that early Chicago was a place of cross-cultural reliance among the French, the Americans, and the Native Americans. This gripping account of the birth of Chicago “opens up a fascinating vista of lost American history” and will become required reading for anyone seeking to understand the city and its complex origins (The Wall Street Journal).
“Laid out with great insight and detail . . . Keating . . . doesn’t see the attack 200 years ago as a massacre. And neither do many historians and Native American leaders.” —Chicago Tribune
“Adds depth and breadth to an understanding of the geographic, social, and political transitions that occurred on the shores of Lake Michigan in the early 1800s.” —Journal of American History
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Keating (co-editor, The Encyclopedia of Chicago), a history professor at North Central College in Illinois, sets the record straight about the War of 1812's Battle of Fort Dearborn and its significance to early Chicago's evolution. The author explores the overlooked evacuation of 94 people from Fort Dearborn to Fort Wayne under pressure from the Potawatomi tribe, a valiant action costing half of Capt. Nathan Heald's soldiers with the rest of the civilians taken captive. Famous names from Great Lakes lore play an important part in her informative, ambitious account, such as British trader John Kinzie, U.S. Capt. William Wells, the Potawatomi chief Main Poc, trader Jean Baptiste Point de Sable, and the Indian chief Tecumseh. A welcome aspect of Keating's work is the fair play she exhibits in shifting her focus between the Americans, the French, the British, and the Native Americans, making sure she touches on every notable event, regardless of the faction. On bookshelves in time to honor the bicentennial of the Fort Dearborn battle, Keating's well-researched book rights some misconceptions about the old conflicts, the strategies of the whites and Indians to keep their land, and how early Chicago came to exist. 35 illus., 4 maps.
