Monuments to a Lost Nation

<Reprinted from Chicago History, Spring 2004>

The statue enjoyed great public recognition and acclaim. Former President Benjamin Harrison (grandson of former president and War of 1812 hero William Henry Harrison), Robert Todd Lincoln, and many of the city's meatpackers and merchandisers attended the dedication ceremony. The art critics of the time looked favorably upon the bronze, declaring: "It is one of the greatest pieces of realistic sculpture . . . in this or any other part of the world."

At first, the egotistical Pullman was gratified that the public liked the monument, which for years after was referred to as "the Pullman statue." Many residents included a stroll to the monument during their afternoon promenade. No one objected when the traffic of elegant carriages increased on the street, but just two months after the dedication of the monument, Pullman regretted his philanthropic action as it became clear that the monument's crowds included "workmen with their wives and children and occasionally an Italian or a Russian Jew from Canal Street." Citing the clutter of paper left by picnickers and his trampled lawn, Pullman petitioned unsuccessfully to have the monument moved. The statue remained where history happened, across the street from Pullman's house.

In 1873, George Pullman purchased the site of the massacre and built his home there. He then commissioned the "Fort Dearborn Massacre" and had it placed in front of his house, but he soon tired of the constant foot traffic by curious passersby. This 1911 photograph shows the statue and a portion of the Pullman mansion.

Before the installation of the bronze statue group discussed here, the Fort Dearborn Massacre was memorialized only by a tree, which stood at the spot where the fighting occurred. The tree was cut down in 1894.

The dedication of the Fort Dearborn Massacre lacked any expressions of guilt over the eventual fate of Black Partridge and his people. Instead there was a triumphalist tone to the proceedings, as the tragic moments depicted in the statue contrasted with the progress and power of Chicago in the 1890s. The splendor of the World's Columbian Exposition's White City, just a few miles south of the battlefield, underscored the triumph of white America in the four hundred years since Christopher Columbus's voyage. In keeping with the "vanishing Indian" stereotype, the Chicago Herald intoned, "The race of American aborigines is rapidly melting away, and the time will come when groups of statuary carved after typical specimens will be permanent objects of great value and interest."

But the monument also contains a subversive quality. The hero of the group is not one of the representatives of white America but a member of the doomed race. The dominant image of the bronze is the ferocity of the Indians, shown to be overwhelming the civilized order, not an image in which a "robber baron" such as Pullman might take comfort as he looked out his library window.

In this sculpture, the myths and realities of the American frontier collided with the anxieties of an urban nation in social and economic conflict. The cultural diversity, economic stratification, and general instability of life in late nineteenth century cities such as Chicago made many residents yearn for an established order. Even while industrialists such as Pullman used monuments to demonstrate how far the city had come in less than a hundred years, Chicagoans had their own memories that underscored how fragile and transitory such material progress could be. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 had quickly swept away a large portion of the city. The sudden panics and depressions of 1873 and 1890 wiped out the fortunes of many men seemingly of substance. The Haymarket Affair of 1886 revealed the depth of class resentment and the potential for violence that simmered beneath the surface of Chicago. Pullman and other members of the city's elite could look at the Fort Dearborn Massacre as an "enduring monument" (according to the Chicago Tribune) in a sea of troubled change, a social anchor. That Pullman so quickly became disenchanted with the monument when the working class appropriated its public space for its own purposes reveals the degree to which he valued social control. This predilection was best demonstrated, of course, in his model industrial town: Pullman, where the industrialist's desire to control almost all aspects of his workers' lives contributed to the violent 1894 strike that rocked the entire nation.

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