“Help! The Potawatomi are seizing our fort!”*
“Oh, shit!”*
*Not an actual transcription from the Battle of Fort Dearborn, a foundational moment in the history of Chicago. For actual groundbreaking analysis, including the interwoven histories that span the nearly four decades between the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, in which Native Americans gave up a square mile at the mouth of the Chicago River, and the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, please see Ann Durkin Keating’s Rising Up From Indian Country: The Battle of Fort Dearborn and the Birth of Chicago
