Try putting your feet in these shoes. It’s 1832 and DeKalb County hadn’t even been formed yet. You are among the legal residents of the land north of the Indian Boundary line but you have lived among encroaching settlers much of your life.
In fact your sister, Man-na-ben-a-quah, married General Jean Baptiste “John” Beaubien in 1806. He was a Justice and election judge in Chicago and a member of the first board of school trustees.
They had two sons before Man-na-ben-quah died in 1812. Charles Henry was the school teacher for the children of relatives in a room near the Chicago garrison in 1829. “Madore” Benjamin built and ran a successful trading store at the southwest corner of South Water and Dearborn streets before fleeing the confinements of a growing city to live, hunt wolves and dance ceremoniously with his mother’s people.
You are a Grand River Ottawa but your first wife Wiomex is Potawatomi and your second Nebebaquah is Kickapoo. The branches of your family tree grow in many directions. From the prairie island of Shabbona Grove to Lot 1, Chicago your immediate family is scattered.
Three of your life’s most terrible lessons occurred when you walked the warpath of Tecumseh. 1) The British are liars and 2) the Americans are coming in waves and 3) that kind of war was too costly for the indigenous tribes who lived in the way.
So as you listened to Black Hawk and The Winnebago Prophet explain that the British had promised them support and allies to wage war on the encroaching Americans you already knew the end result. You also knew retribution would not be limited to Black Hawk’s tribe. You could only hope Black Hawk could successfully escape west of the Mississippi river. Perhaps negotiate a new more favorable treaty for his people along the way.
But a ragtag inexperienced militia led by Maj. Isaac Stillman inspired by several barrels of whiskey murdered Black Hawk’s messengers sent to surrender and then ran like frightened deer at the sound of retaliatory war cries.
Armed violence was now inevitable. Revenge killings for certain.
Those were the shoes Shabbona put on as he and his son Pypegee mounted their ponies and rode them to death warning settlers and getting family members out of harms way. He convinced many bands of tribes not to enter the fray.
For this he was given the title, “Friend of the White Man.” Among the settlers it was a title of celebrity even earning him a seat of honor at the August 21, 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debate in Ottawa. Among Indians, forced from their homes, massacred in revenge, it was a title given to traitors. He was both Paul Revere and Benedict Arnold.
Shabbona would later find himself and his immediate family abandoned and unwanted by both sides. Members of the Sac nation hunted Shabbona to their dying day. An ambush took the life of a son and nephew and almost claimed his. The commitment to the vow to kill him was so strong he thought his family would be safer at his land in Illinois. But when he arrived the U.S. government had allowed his reservation to be sold at auction.
He and his family wandered about surviving brutal conditions for several years before a handful of old settlers pitched in to build them a log cabin in Morris where he is buried.
So for this Thanksgiving remember Shabbona and be thankful you didn’t have to put on his shoes.
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