Whitewashing History: Ft Dearborn Massacre is now the Ft. Dearborn “Collision of Visions”
From Patrick T. Reardon in the Chicago Tribune
The story of Fort Dearborn is a creation narrative of our city. The real story isn’t about good guys and bad guys. It isn’t about a massacre.
It’s about three groups of people with three drastically different visions of the future. It’s about how each of those visions had validity. None of the three was, by nature, “righter” than the others.
The real story of Fort Dearborn is a collision of those visions.
This is important to Chicagoans today because we live in an increasingly multicultural, multiethnic city — and an increasingly multicultural, multiethnic nation.
If we recognize the competing visions that were present at our city’s inception, we will have an easier time recognizing, understanding and dealing with the competing visions of our own time.
Because murdering women and children who have already surrendered is an issue of recognizing competing visions.
This from Pat Hickey
Potawatomis of the casino ancestry? Okay, we can safely assume by your scholarly delineations that the 500 Potawatomis were all gents, males, patriarchal war-mongering, testosterone fueled danglers against “the soldiers and the ladies and the kids. The score was 68 -15; a sport might call that a massacre and not a real estate initiative, much less a collision of visions. Imagine if they had diversity, anti-bullying, racial sensitivity and CeaseFire back then!
Patrick T. thanks for sharing your historical visions, fully filtered through a Marxist lens. Old Karl had an interesting spin of the Civil War back when he was covering it for old Horace Greeley’s New York Daily Tribune*. Looking forward to your views on the Pullman Agreement to Disagree of 1894, The St. Valentine’s Day Spat, The Republic Steel Collision of Vission, and the 1968 Chicago Democratic Contention.
Bill Kurtis also had a piece on this in the Sun Times. He was clearly in on the meeting too. History is filled with white on red massacres, but will revisionists erase one true red on white massacre?
Bill Kurtis’ $1000 payment will be donated to the Chicago History Museum, maybe as an apology to history.
Which begs the question – Did “Dances With Wolves” completely erase the entire canon of John Ford Westerns?
To some, I suppose.
Time to rename Wells Street and to sandblast the bas relief sculpture on the Michigan Avenue Bridge. I am sure that the Chicago History Museum has already put the statues depicting the massacre into a warehouse.
PC is so cool!
My great-great-great-great uncle, Private John Simmons was killed in the Fort Dearborn Massacre. So was his 2-year-old son, head bashed in. His wife, Susan Simmons, with an infant nursing at her breast, survived more than a year of captivity.
I went down to the site yesterday and watched those who now live in the highrises and town houses on what used to be the lakeshore enjoy their dogs’ frolics on the lawn of the park. I read the plaque, which completely reverses the history of this particular event. It was a nice late summer afternoon. I thought about John Simmmons’ body left to rot, with that of his two-year-old son, on the lakeshore, until 1816. Two hundred years ago.
They were evacuating. As best I can read the historical data, Black Partridge could no longer control the young warriors eager to win glory in battle. This was not about resisting the Eeeeeeevvvvvvviiiiiiilllllllll White Man. It was about hotheads eager to win glory in battle. By bashing in the heads of 18 children. By massacre-ing those who were leaving the outpost in the Territory of the Noble Orginal Inhabitants who were Totally Innocent Victims.
Sorta kinda like the BATTLE of Wounded Knee, I guess. Ooops. I think they call that a massacre.
Addendum.
I despise Andrew Jackson’s Indian policy. I despise a lot more about Andrew Jackson. I think he was a Democrat. Panderer-in-chief. Runs in the family, oops, party.
I’m glad to call a spade a spade. The White Man did great evil.
So did the Indians. On August 15, 1812. On the sandy dunes of Lake Michigan.
Spades are spades, not stir fry spatulas.
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