The Long History of the Chicago Portage

Unsung History

When Europeans arrived in the Great Lakes region, they learned from the Indigenous people living there of a route from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, made possible by a portage connecting the Chicago River and the Des Plaines River. That portage, sometimes called Mud Lake, provided both opportunity and challenge to European powers who struggled to use European naval technology in a region better suited to Indigenous birchbark canoes. In the early 19th century, however, the Americans remade the region with major infrastructure projects, finally controlling the portage not with military power but with engineering, and setting the stage for Chicago’s rapid growth as a major metropolis.

Joining me in this episode is Dr. John William Nelson, Assistant Professor of History at Texas Tech University and author of Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago's Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is "Water Droplets on the River," composed and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons.

The episode image is a photograph of a statue that depicts members of the Kaskaskia, a tribe of the Illinois Confederation, leading French explorers Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette, to the western end of the Chicago Portage in the summer of 1673. The statue was designed by Chicago area artist Ferdinand Rebechini and erected on April 25-26, 1990. The photograph is under the creative commons license CC BY-SA 2.0 and is available via Wikimedia Commons.

Additional sources:

• “Chicago Portage National Historic Site,” National Park Service.
• “STORY 1: Chicago Portage National Historic Site/Sitio Histórico Nacional de Chicago Portage,” Friends of the Chicago River.
• “Portage,” Encyclopedia of Chicago.
• “The Chicago Portage,” Carnegie Mellon University Libraries Digital Collection.
• “Marquette and Jolliet 1673 Expedition,” by Roberta Estes, Native Heritage Project, December 30, 2012.
• “Louis Jolliet & Jacques Marquette [video],” PBS World Explorers.
• “Cadillac, Antoine De La Mothe,” Encyclopedia of Detroit.
• “Chicago’s Mythical French Fort,” by Winstanley Briggs, Encyclopedia of Chicago.
• “Seven Years’ War,” History.com, Originally posted on November 12, 2009 and updated on June 13, 2023.
• “Treaty of Paris (1783),” U.S. National Archives.
• “The Northwest and the Ordinances, 1783-1858,” Library of Congress.
• “The Battle Of The Wabash: The Forgotten Disaster Of The Indian Wars,” by Patrick Feng, The Army Historical Foundation.
• “The Battle Of Fallen Timbers, 20 August 1794,” by Matthew Seelinger, The Army Historical Foundation.
• “History of Fort Dearborn,” Chicagology.
• “How Chicago Transformed From a Midwestern Outpost Town to a Towering City,” by Joshua Salzmann, Smithsonian Magazine, October 12, 2018.
• “Chicago: 150 Years of Flooding and Excrement,” by Whet Moser, Chicago Magazine, April 18, 2013.

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