Simon Pokagon was a member of the Pokagon Band

Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians

Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians are Algonquian-speaking Potawatomi-people located in southwestern Michigan and northeastern Indiana. Tribal government functions are located in Dowagiac, Michigan. The tribal membership has grown to approximately 4,563 members as of 2009. Pokagons originated as a...

 of Potawatomi

Potawatomi

The Potawatomi are a Native American people of the upper Mississippi River region. They traditionally speak the Potawatomi language, a member of the Algonquian family. In the Potawatomi language, they generally call themselves Bodéwadmi, a name that means "keepers of the fire" and that was applied...

 Indians, an author, and a Native American

Indigenous peoples of the Americas

The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...

 advocate. He was born near Bertrand in southwest Michigan

Michigan

Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....

 and died on January 28, 1899 in Hartford, Michigan

Hartford, Michigan

Hartford is a city in Van Buren County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 2,476 at the 2000 census. The city is located within Hartford Township, but is politically independent.-Geography:...

. Dubbed the “Red Man’s Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...

” by literary fans, Pokagon was often called the “Hereditary and Last Chief” of the tribe by the press. He was a son of his tribe’s patriarch, Leopold Pokagon

Leopold Pokagon

Leopold Pokagon was a Potawatomi Wkema . Taking over from Topinbee, who died in 1826, Pokagon became the head of the Potawatomi of the Saint Joseph River Valley in Michigan, a band that later took his name....

.

Biography

Simon Pokagon was born to Leopold Pokagon and his wife, who were Potowatomi.

He claimed attendance at Notre Dame University and Oberlin College

Oberlin College

Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...

, but that has been challenged, as they have no record of his matriculation. Some scholars have challenged his claims of fluency in four of the "classic" European languages.

Career

Pokagon wrote several books and multiple shorter works. He is identified as one of the recognized Native American authors of the nineteenth century. Some have argued that his writings may have been substantially edited by the wife of his personal attorney, although that remains speculation and a matter of controversy among scholars.

Pokagon was a featured speaker at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition

World's Columbian Exposition

The World's Columbian Exposition was a World's Fair held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. Chicago bested New York City; Washington, D.C.; and St...

 in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

. While his popularity with some fellow tribal members waned, he was always welcomed among the Gold Coast “High Society” of Chicago and the Chautauqua

Chautauqua

Chautauqua was an adult education movement in the United States, highly popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chautauqua assemblies expanded and spread throughout rural America until the mid-1920s. The Chautauqua brought entertainment and culture for the whole community, with...

 literary groups of the East Coast.

He was an early activist trying to force the United States to pay monies owed pursuant to treaties and to provide fair treatment of Indian peoples. In the 1890s, Pokagon began pressing land claims to the Chicago lakefront. A complicated individual with what often seemed to be contradictory motivations, he sold “interests” in that Chicago land claim to real estate speculators, angering some in the Pokagon community.

In much of his writings, Pokagon wrote about the past and traditional ways of life; he lamented the passing of a “vanishing” race of Indians. But the Pokagon Potawatomi were not vanishing. They had organized a Business Committee, a traditional, democratically elected tribal council that governed by consensus and advocated for the rights of tribal members. Meanwhile, most tribal members worked as laborers at local factories and farms and retained close ties to the Catholic Church. According to the historian Susan Sleeper-Smith, unlike the neighboring Miami in Indiana, who "hid in plain sight”, the Pokagon Potawatomi tightly held onto their traditions and sense of community.

In a publication originally titled Red Man's Rebuke and subsequently Red Man's Greeting, Simon wrote:

On behalf of my people, the American Indians, I hereby declare to you, the pale-faced race that has usurped our lands and homes, that we have no spirit to celebrate with you the great Columbian Fair now being held in this Chicago city, the wonder of the world. No; sooner would we hold the high joy day over the graves of our departed than to celebrate our own funeral, the discovery of America. And while...your hearts in admiration rejoice over the beauty and grandeur of this young republic and you say, 'behold the wonders wrought by our children in this foreign land,' do not forget that this success has been at the sacrifice of our homes and a once happy race.

While these words characterize him as a great early spokesperson of resistance for American Indian peoples, his speech at the World's Columbian Exposition on "Chicago Day" was reported in the October 10, 1893 edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune and had a conciliatory tone:

I shall cherish as long as I live the cheering words that have been spoken to me here by the ladies, friends of my race; it has strengthened and encouraged me; I have greater faith in the success of the remaining few of my people than ever before. I now realize the hand of the Great Spirit

Great Spirit

The Great Spirit, also called Wakan Tanka among the Sioux, the Creator or the Great Maker in English, and Gitchi Manitou in Algonquian, is a conception of a supreme being prevalent among some Native American and First Nations cultures...

 is open in our behalf; already he has thrown his great search light upon the vault of heaven, and Christian men and women are reading there in characters of fire well understood; ‘The red man is your brother, and God is the father of all.'

Pokagon was not the last chief of the Potawatomi

Potawatomi

The Potawatomi are a Native American people of the upper Mississippi River region. They traditionally speak the Potawatomi language, a member of the Algonquian family. In the Potawatomi language, they generally call themselves Bodéwadmi, a name that means "keepers of the fire" and that was applied...

 nor a hereditary chief of the tribe. The Pokagon have had chiefs since his death, and leadership in Potawatomi communities is not hereditary. For a while, he was the head of the Business Committee of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians, until his political fortunes soured and he was replaced. He became an ambiguous icon of an early Indian who obtained "celebrity" status.

Legacy and honors

• A monument to both Simon and his father Leopold Pokagon was proposed for Chicago's Jackson Park
  Jackson Park (Chicago)
  Jackson Park is a 500 acre park on Chicago's South Side, located at 6401 South Stony Island Avenue in the Woodlawn community area. It extends into the South Shore and Hyde Park community areas, bordering Lake Michigan and several South Side neighborhoods...
  
   but never built. (Jackson Park Office, Chicago Park District).
• Pokagon State Park
  Pokagon State Park
  Pokagon State Park is located in northeastern Indiana close to the village of Fremont and north of Angola. It was named for the 19th-century Potawatomi chief, Leopold Pokagon, and his widely known son, Simon Pokagon, at Richard Lieber's suggestion...
  
  in northern Indiana is named for both of them.