Fort Dearborn, The War of 1812 on the Prairie

On August fifteenth, eighteen twelve, approximately one hundred soldiers, their dependents, and Miami Indian allies left Fort Dearborn under orders to evacuate to Detroit. They had traveled roughly two miles south along the lakeshore, to what is now the intersection of Eighteenth Street and Prairie Avenue, when a combined force of Potawatomi and allied warriors attacked.

Between fifty-two and sixty-seven people died in the engagement, depending on the source. The variation reflects the difficulty of counting in the immediate aftermath of a battle and the fact that different sources defined the victim population differently. American military tradition and the subsequent Chicago historical record have consistently described the event as a massacre.

That word deserves examination. The attack was a military operation conducted by nations allied with the British during the War of eighteen twelve, a war in which Great Britain and its Indigenous allies were attempting to prevent American westward expansion into the Northwest Territory. The Potawatomi had treaty relationships with the British and strategic reasons to prevent the United States from consolidating its hold on the southern shore of Lake Michigan. From the perspective of the American military tradition, dozens of soldiers and civilians dying in an ambush constitutes a massacre. From the perspective of Indigenous military strategy in a war the British were fighting alongside Native nations, it was a tactical success against an enemy withdrawal.

Both perspectives appear in the historical record. The Encyclopedia of Chicago and the National Park Service interpretive materials at Indiana Dunes both acknowledge the tension between the American framing of massacre and the strategic logic of Indigenous resistance. History does not always offer a single correct interpretation, and the events of August fifteenth, eighteen twelve are among the cases where the word you use determines whose perspective you are standing in.

A historical marker on Prairie Avenue notes the site. Most people who drive past it do not stop.