Leopold Pokagon
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Leopold Pokagon ( - 1841) was a Potawatomi Wkema (chief). Taking over for Topinabee, who died in 1826, Pokagon became the head of the Potawatomi of the Saint Joseph River Valley in Michigan, a band that would come to take his name.
His early life is surrounded by legend and many details are known only in the oral histories of the tribe. Stories suggest that he was born an Odawa or Ojibwe, but raised from a young age by the Potawatomi. His name, Pokagon, means "The Rib" in the Potawatomi language, an appellation he earned, some say, because he was wearing a human rib in his scalp lock when first taken into the tribe.
Leopold emerged as a very successful tribal leader after 1825. In 1833, Leopold Pokagon was able to negotiate an amendment to the Treaty of Chicago (1833) that allowed Pokagon's Band to remain on the land of their ancestors while almost all the rest of the Potawatomi were slated for removal west of the Mississippi River by the federal government - as a part of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. By abstaining from alcohol at the treaty negotiations held in Chicago in 1833, and emphasizing the conversion of himself and his followers to Catholicism, Leopold Pokagon secured a special provision in the 1833 Treaty of Chicago that allowed the Pokagon Band to remain in Michigan. Pokagon ultimately used the monies paid pursuant to the Treaty to purchase lands for his people in Silver Creek Township, near Dowagiac, Michigan.
In the last decade of his life, Leopold Pokagon sought to protect and promote the unique position of the Potawatomi communities living in the St. Joseph River Valley. He traveled to Detroit in July, 1830 where he visited Father Gabriel Richard to request the services of a priest. Affiliation with the Catholic Church was not only for religious reasons but also represented an important political alliance in the struggle to avoid removal. That same year, Pokagon was baptized by the Vicar general of the Detroit Diocese, Father Frederick Rese. In August of 1830, Father Stephen Badin arrived to establish a mission to serve the Pokagon Potawatomi. By establishing this affiliation with the Catholic Church, the Potawatomi of the St. Joseph River Valley affirmed a new identity as Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians.
Catholic Potawatomi throughout southwest Michigan and northwest Indiana acknowledged Leopold Pokagon as the leader of the Catholic Potawatomi. Ever since, Indian villages from Hartford, Rush Lake, Dowagiac, Niles, Buchanan in Michigan and South Bend in Indiana have been united under a common identity, the Pokegnek Bodewadmik.
In 1841, Leopold Pokagon had to obtain the assistance of Associate Michigan Supreme Court Justice Epaphroditus Ransom to halt military attempts to remove the Catholic Potawatomi, in violation of the 1833 Treaty. After Pokagon’s death on July 8, 1841, disputes between his heirs, the community and the Catholic Church over ownership of the Silver Creek lands resulted in legal battles that painfully disrupted the community. A majority of the residents living at Silver Creek moved to Brush Creek, Rush Lake and elsewhere in southwest Michigan and northwest Indiana. The community turned its focus to securing the annuities and other promises owed them under the terms of the many treaties they had signed with the United States.
Today the tribe that bears Leopold Pokagon's name continues as the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, a federally recognized Indian Nation, with almost 3400 citizens and a ten county service area in northwest Indiana and southwest Michigan. Tribal headquarters are located in Dowagiac, Michigan with a satellite office in South Bend, Indiana.
[edit] References
- Tribal Elders and Clifton, James A., The Pokagons, 1683-1983, Catholic Potawatomi Indians of the St. Joseph River Valley, Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984.
