Leopold Pokagon

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Leopold Pokagon, Potawatomi Wkama (chief). Taking over for Tobinabee, who died due to a fall from a horse when drunk in 1827, Pokagon became the head of the Potawatomi of the Saint Joseph River Valley, a band that would come to take his name.

His early life is surrounded by legend and very few concrete details are known. Stories suggest that he was born an Ottawa, but captured at a young age by the Potawatomi. His name, Pokagon, means "Mr. Rib" in the Potawatomi language, an appellation he earned, some say, because he was wearing a necklace of human ribs upon his capture. Another story suggests he once killed a pregnant white woman, removed the fetus, and tore out its ribs.

Regardless of his past, Leopold, a teetotaller his whole life, was a very successful tribal leader. By the time Pokagon became the leader, the Potawatomi, having a long history of Roman Catholicism dating back to the 1670s when Father Marquette visited the Saint Joseph River Valley, had gone without a Roman Catholic Priest since the 1780s when they were abandoned by the Jesuits.

In 1830, Pokagon hand delivered a letter to the Diocese of Detroit, speaking to Vicar General Frederoc Reze, asking for a Roman Catholic Priest, a "Black Robe" as the Potawatomi called them, to his village near the Indiana/Michigan state line. After making this request, Pokagon dropped to his knees and recited the Our Father, the Ave Maria, and the Credo in his native tongue. Reze, so impressed with the chief's piety and knowledge after fifty years without a priest, agreed to send a "Black Robe" to his village.

In September of 1830, Father Stephen Theodore Badin arrived at Pokagon's village. Badin established a Roman Catholic Mission on a beautiful stretch of land that he called Sainte-Marie-des-Lacs. Badin's mission occupied the land on which the University of Notre Dame du Lac is currently located, and some argue that this was the true beginning of the University.

In 1833, due to Badin's influence and the "religious creed" of the Pokagon Band, there was an amendment made to the Treaty of Chicago (1833) that allowed Pokagon's Band to remain on the land of their fathers while almost all the rest of the Potawatomi were removed west of the Mississippi.