Why is May Day a holiday celebrated all over the world, but not in the United States? The answer is piece of Chicago history pointing to the events culminating at Haymarket Square on May 4th, 1886.
In this episode of our “Laying the Foundation” series of the Windy City Historians we explore an often ignored and long forgotten era and complete our interview with Dr. Ann Durkin Keating. We tap into the history of Juliette Kinzie and the city’s early wheelers and dealers as it rises up out of the swampy prairie landscape along the Y-shaped Chicago River on far southwestern shore of Lake Michigan.
The contagion began suddenly in the northern suburbs of Chicago and floated south toward the city like an invisible cloud. Soon restaurants, saloons, and theaters were closed and the police had the power to break up crowds and arrest individuals for spitting, coughing or sneezing in public. Public funerals were forbidden and elective surgeries canceled. Everyone wore face masks. Was this Spring, 2020? No, it was Chicago in the Autumn of 1918.
Join the Windy City Historians for this special episode as we step away from the chronological telling of Chicago history of our ongoing “Laying the Foundation” series, and instead chart the course of epidemics and outbreaks in Chicago history. In particular, we dig into the, so called, Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918. This pandemic reveals many parallels between the events of 1918 and today’s struggle with the novel coronavirus (SARS Cov-2, its new official name) in 2020.
In this episode we interview historian Joseph Gustaitis, author of Chicago’s Greatest Year, 1893 and Chicago Transformed: World War I and the Windy City to learn about Chicago’s the first health crisis in 1835 and subsequent outbreaks and diseases plaguing the young city leading up to the Spanish Influenza outbreak of 1918.
A cataclysmic event in 1918 and 1919 this epidemic infected one-third of the world’s population, over 500 million people and killing approximately 1% of the human population on earth, an estimated 20-to-50-million people. In the United States alone approximately 675,000 citizens died — more Americans than were killed in WWI and WWII combined. The pandemic affected the way Americans and Chicagoan’s live and work today and was particularly lethal to people in the prime of their life. Learn more about this incredible story 100+ years ago and the parallels and differences with today’s pandemic.
Links to Research and History Documents
We mention in this episode one known documented account of whites giving smallpox infected blankets to Native Americans. This is attributed to the letters of Jeffery Amherst a British officer stationed at Fort Pitt in later day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who under siege in 1763 during the French and Indian War (1754 – 1763) writes to Colonel Henry Bouquet. Much has been written of this legend this so a variety of sources are cited on the topic below:
Influenza Encyclopedia: the American Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1919: A Digital Encyclopedia produced by the University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine and Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library.
Blog post from a professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth on how infectious diseases spread, “The Risks – Know Them – Avoid Them,” by Erin Bromage
Please note Ward Churchill mentioned above sadly perpetuated the myth of the U.S. Army spreading smallpox to First Nations in at least six publications between 1994 and 2003. Churchill entirely fabricated incidents which never occurred, about individuals who never existed. His sources were completely falsified, and talk about fake news, he repeatedly concealed evidence in his possession discrediting his falsified version of events.
Below are additional links and research we touch upon in this episode:
Piping fresh water from Waukesha, Wisconsin to the World’s Fair from a Jan. 6, 2012 blog post “Armed Standoff Over Wisconsin Water” by B & M Technical Services Inc.
Fort Dearborn at the beginning of the War of 1812 . . . is it a Battle or a Massacre? How should we, in the twenty-first century, talk about the events that occurred on Chicago’s lakefront on August 15, 1812 — a month-and-a-half after the declaration of war? How do we describe what happened to the column of approximately 100 soldiers, farmers, women and children in Indian Country that abandoned Fort Dearborn, mostly on foot, for Fort Wayne when they are attacked by approximately 500 Native Americans?
Join us in this episode of the Windy City Historians Podcast for the second half of our interview with history professor Ann Durkin Keating, Ph.D. and The First Star — a reference to the first star on the Flag of Chicago. Does William Wells actually get his heart carved out to be eaten by the victors? Find out about this and much more as we discuss the final events, implications, art and language surrounding Chicago and aftermath of this infamous attack in Chicago in 1812. We hope you will enjoy it as much as we have putting it together!
Engraving of the Battle of Fort Dearborn by S.C. Hooper
Sculptural relief of the battle on the SW bridge house of the Michigan Avenue Bridge
Statue of the Fort Deaborn Attack
Commemorative plaque in the sidewalk by Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive
Dr. Ann Durkin Keating being interviewed by the Windy City Historians
Dr. Keating also recommends: Constance R. Buckley, “Searching for Fort Dearborn: Perception, Commemoration, and Celebration of an Urban Creation Memory,” (Ph.D. diss., Loyola University, 2005), 6.
Topinabee (1758-1826) – a Pottawatomie leader from the St. Joseph River area
Simon Pokagon (1830-1899) – author and Native American advocate and Pottawatomie born in southwest Michigan. Son of Leopold Pokagon who was present at the Battle of Fort Dearborn.
Our examination of René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle continues in this episode, as we follow the progress of the 1976-77 La Salle II Expedition, which ran into rough weather in Door County, Wisconsin and plot their progress as winter forces the crew out of their canoes to walk or portage the frozen rivers and roads, as they try to make it to the Mississippi. Author Lorraine Boissoneault shares her insights from her book The Last Voyageurs and we interview Reid & Ken Lewis who organized this epic reenactment and and Rich Gross who was part of the crew on this trek seeking the Gulf of Mexico.
We also gained fascinating insights from our interview with veteran broadcaster Paul Meincke recounting his 2017 trip canoeing the Mississippi from its headwaters to the Gulf and the ever present dangers of paddling this river of commerce of America’s heartland.
Reid Lewis in 2018 at the Elgin Natural History Museum
Paul Meinike and his commerative paddle from the trip
Artist’s rendering of La Salle claiming Louisiana for France
Tabor Hill Winery in Buchanan, Michigan co-founded by Len Olsen, who created the sparkling wine Décidons Demain meaning “Let’s decide tomorrow” in support of the reenactment.
The name La Salle is ubiquitous throughout the United States, with streets, parks, towns, universities, parishes, schools and even counties named for this French explorer. In this episode, “La Salle and the Voyageurs”, we examine the influence of La Salle, as well as interview Reid Lewis, the founder of a 1976-77 reenactment of La Salle’s second expedition journeying from Montreal to the Gulf of Mexico. Rich Gross, a member of the crew tells us what it was like to canoe for 3,300 miles as an 18 year-old student, and we talk with Lorraine Boissoneault, the author of “The Last Voyageurs” about La Salle and this re-enactment of his voyage.
René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle is a larger then life figure, and so one cannot devote just one episode to him; this is the first of a two-part podcast on this giant of French and American history, who along with Jacque Marquette and Louis Jolliet, is in the Pantheon of French explorers who opened up the frontier of North America and traveled extensively on in the Great Lakes region
Interviewing Rich Gross displaying a hatchet that he made and was used on the La Salle II Expedition.
Lorraine’s book about the La Salle II Expedition
Reid Lewis at the Elgin Public Museum of Natural History & Anthropology in Elgin, Illinois
Released Friday, May 31, 2019 – What’s in a name? “Urbs in Horto” or as translated from Latin “City in the Garden” is the motto on the seal of the City of Chicago, which nicely ties together the third interview with historian and retired attorney John Swenson. Swenson presents the final and most amazing piece of early Chicago history revealing the details of this ancient place called Chicagoua and the platform mound two-leagues from the Chicagoua Portage, the area’s earliest known civic and cultural center some 40 miles from today’s downtown Chicago!
We visit the mound, twice, and interview Adler Planetarium Astronomer Mark Hammergren regarding the astronomical significance of the mound, and learn some fascinating insights into Chicago’s ancient culture and peoples. This brand-new history and discovery grew out of Swenson’s passion for horticulture, history, and etymology. His initial dig into Chicago’s origin story and the wild allium the city was named for has grown into an entirely new landscape for Chicago history, the City in the Garden and hence the name of our third Episode: “Urbs in Horto?”
PREVIEW OF EPISODE 3: Urbs in Horto?
Historian John Swenson
Mound at Spirit Trail Park
Astronomer Mark Hammergren
Ramps at the Daley Center farmers market in Downtown Chicago