The Chicago Treaty of 1833, with the negotiating of which the
following documents deal, was an event of considerable importance,
particularly in the history of Illinois and Wisconsin. From the first
advent of the white man in this region the Potawatomi tribe of Indians
had made its home in some portion of the territory adjacent to Lake
Michigan. By the Chicago Treaty of 1833 the Potawatomi and allied
tribes, the Chippewa and Ottawa, at length agreed definitely to leave
this region and find a new home beyond the Mississippi. To the whites
was surrendered their title to some 5,000,000 acres of fertile land in
northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, embracing the tract between
Lake Michigan and Rock River and extending northward from an east and
west line drawn through the southernmost point of Lake Michigan.
The circumstances attending the negotiation of the treaty were
typical, probably, of those of Indian treaties generally in the first
half of the nineteenth century. Yet two or three facts give to this
treaty a somewhat special degree of interest. One is that we have left
to us fuller and better descriptions of the negotiation of the treaty
than is commonly the case. Another and more important one is that a
larger sum of money was distributed in the form of gratuities more or
less disguised, to facilitate the conduct of the negotiations. It is
with this phase of the subject that the documents here presented deal.
So far as known, no student of American history has ever seriously set
himself the task of illuminating the subject of the process whereby
the American government secured from the red man, in successive
treaties, title to the greater portion of the land of continental
United States.[112] A comprehensive study of this subject would reveal
much of interest and value; it would be certain, too, to disclose much
of a nature far from flattering to the American government and nation.
That the Chicago Treaty of 1833 would afford some material of this
sort for the construction of the narrative, it requires no hardihood
to affirm. Charges of improper influences and conduct in connection
with the framing of the treaty began to be made as soon as it was
negotiated. Some of them, doubtless, were irresponsible and unfounded,
but there is reason for supposing that this was far from being true
with respect to all of them. The letter of Governor Porter is
preserved in the Burton Library at Detroit, and acknowledgment is due
to Mr. Burton for the copy we present. The charges against Porter are
copied from a contemporary broadside preserved among the Martin
manuscripts in the Wisconsin Historical Library. The two documents go
hand in hand, for it is evident that the charges which Porter sought
in his letter to Jackson to refute are identical with those stated in
the broadside, although the latter seems not to contain all the
material which had been submitted to Jackson and which was referred by
him to Porter to answer. Readers who may be interested in pursuing the
subject further may find a discussion of the Chicago Treaty of 1833 in
the present editor’s _Chicago and the Old Northwest 1673-1835_, 353-66.