Make Me a City

by Jonathan Carr

  * * *

  But they did not go to the show. The last performance for the day had already taken place. He spent the evening with the four Indians. Their teepee was pitched outside the main fairground, not far from Buffalo Bill’s arena. They gave him a blanket that smelled of smoke and horse sweat, and cooked a stew in a black pot that they suspended over an open fire. After they had eaten, a pipe was passed around filled with a bitter mix of kinnikinnick tobacco that made him choke until he had got used to it. The light began to fade. Other small fires lit the landscape beneath a starry sky. He felt as though he were floating above the worries of the world, so cheered were his spirits by this encounter. He smiled to himself. This had, after all, turned into a lucky day.

  The Indians had traveled from a reservation in Michigan, they said, but their fathers used to live here for much of the year, around the shores of the Lake.

  “It is important to come back,” said their leader, “to honor the spirits of our ancestors.” He had a striking face. There was an elliptical perfection to his features, as though they had been sculpted out of a dark, luminous stone. His voice was soft, his eyes were wise. He sat in perfect stillness, cross-legged on the ground.

  “You believe their spirits are still here?” asked Stephen.

  The Indian smiled. “Of course.” The others nodded. “They pass their spirits on to us when they leave to join their fathers in the shades.”

  “That is the way of the Great Spirit,” said another.

  “You have children, sir?” asked their leader.

  He said he had two boys.

  “One day, they too will honor your spirit.”

  That was unlikely, he said. He showed them the picture Jack had drawn that morning.

  “He is afraid of losing you,” said their leader, after studying it. “That is what he is saying.” He paused. “And you, sir, whose son are you?”

  “My father passed on when I was young,” he said. “I don’t remember him well.”

  The Indians nodded gravely. In the firelight, their leader’s eyes seemed to grow opaque. “That is why you look lost,” he said. “You must find a way to connect with your ancestral spirits. That will help you put your life back on its path.”

  “The spirits of our ancestors always make themselves known,” said another.

  “If they did not, we would never know who we are.”

  “Do you have anything with you, sir, that belongs to your father?”

  As it happened, he always carried with him an antique watch given to him by his mother. “But,” he explained, “it belonged originally to my father.”

  The Indians nodded their approval. That would do well.

  He removed it from his pocket, unhooked the chain and handed it to their leader. The silver sheen of its cover caught the light. The Indian turned it over, peered at the faded inscription on the back, and then closed his hands around it. There was great value, he said, to be found in precious objects that had been passed down from our ancestors. As these heirlooms aged, they acquired more power. And they were reminders to us of who we are.

  “We are not the same as our ancestors, but a measure of their spirit always survives in us. That is what we must seek. You say you did not know your father well. But look into your heart. That is where your father’s spirit moves within you. Look into your heart and you will find the dreams he never fulfilled. This is why we pass our spirit on to our children, that they should realize the dreams we have not realized ourselves. Look into your heart and you will find it. The dream is always there, even if you cannot recognize it for what it is.”

  It was hard to imagine his father having harbored any grand unrealized dreams. He loved his wife and son, he enjoyed solving customers’ problems in his hardware store, he liked making things with his hands. Stephen could imagine no more than that.

  “We cannot forget our ancestors,” said the Indian. “That is why we are here. That is why we are who we are.”

  The Indians passed the old watch between them. Then they stood and raised their hands to the night sky. Stephen joined them. They chanted, their voices low and harmonious, and although he could not understand what they were saying, he felt a peace come over him.

  He burned Jack’s drawing in the fire.

  * * *

  The next morning he accompanied the Indians into the stands for a performance of what was described as “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and the Congress of Rough Riders of the World.” They were going to witness what happened “in every exactitude” on this land a long time ago.

  The four elders watched impassively as a band of Indians, attacking a stagecoach, were driven off by Buffalo Bill in his big white hat. They watched the show that followed in silence too, right up to the last act that featured an attack by Potawatomies on a log cabin full of early settlers. Once more, Buffalo Bill came to the rescue.

  It did not really happen like that, the Indians told him.

  “Of course not,” he said. “Nothing here is real.”

  Before he said good-bye to his Indian friends, they asked for his help. One of them had found a copy of the Chicago Daily Tribune. To their delight, there was a sketch of the four of them printed on the front page. Would he please tell them what it said?

  He skimmed the article. The ancestors of these Potawatomie Indians, it said, had been driven out of Chicago just sixty years ago. What a thoughtful gesture it was, on the part of the organizers of the World’s Fair, to invite them back to their old hunting grounds to view the extraordinary achievements of their successors. How out of place these Indians looked in the new world created by Americans.

  “It says,” he told them, to smiles, “that we should never forget who was here first. It is like remembering our ancestors.”

  They pointed to the title. INDIANS RETURN AS FREAKS. “And this, sir?”

  * * *

  On Sunday afternoons, there was free entrance at the Art Institute. Some months after that encounter with the Indians at the White City, Stephen took Jack and Billy with him. By now, he knew his way around well. They held hands, one boy on each side of him, as they climbed the wide, low steps to the first floor. He wanted Jack to copy some of the portraits on display by Rembrandt and Van Dyck, but Billy tugged at his arm. Couldn’t they go over there instead?

  He looked across to where he was pointing. A sign directed visitors into a newly opened display room.

  “What does it say, Pa?” asked Billy.

  “It says that this exhibition contains works that once hung in the homes of the first settlers.”

  “Was there a first first settler?” asked Jack. “I mean, a founder?”

  Stephen shrugged. “I don’t think anyone knows, not anymore.”

  “But there must have been,” he insisted.

  “What’s a founder?” asked Billy.

  “The person who starts something,” said Jack.

  “You mean somebody started Chicago?” Billy giggled. “That’s silly. How could someone start a city?”

  They stepped inside.

  “Now remember, Billy,” he said, “no running around or we’ll all be in trouble.”

  It was a spacious room with a honey-colored oak floor. Sunlight poured in through high oval windows. About two dozen paintings were on display. There were a few other people walking around, taking their turn and conversing quietly. In the center of the room, cordoned off by rope, stood a copper kettle.

  “That’s the hugest keckle I ever seen,” said Billy.

  Jack read out for them what it said on the sign. “THIS COPPER KETTLE (SLIGHTLY DAMAGED) IS CAPABLE OF HOLDING 10 GALLONS. DATE/PLACE OF MANUFACTURE UNKNOWN.”

  Billy was on his knees. “Pa, Pa?” he cried. “There’s a hole.”

  There wasn’t a hole. It was a dent in the surface of the kettle, which was otherwise in immaculate condition.

  “I’m copying that one, Pa,” said Jack, opening up his drawing pad at a fresh sheet and sitting cross-legged on the floor. He had chosen a pa
inting of a lady on a horse, posing in front of a large country house. It was an English scene. The notice explained that this painting had once belonged to Mr. William Ogden, the first mayor of Chicago, but went missing after the Great Fire. Only recently had it been rediscovered. Jack, he thought, had chosen a melancholy but exquisitely executed painting. It seemed to him that the painter had captured the essence of both the lady and her horse. She had dignity and presence. Her posture and expression implied that she was a worried lady.

  “You come with me, Billy,” he said, “and help me draw this one, will you?”

  The boy made a face. “That one’s boring.”

  “You don’t like it? It’s a picture of an early settler’s house.”

  Stephen did not make copies of paintings anymore when he came to the Art Institute, as he insisted Jack did. He used paintings like this one for inspiration. Before beginning to make a sketch, he inspected it in more detail. There had once been a title, but the letters were too faded to make out what it had been. Though not as accomplished a work as the one Jack had chosen, the portrayal of a large, lonesome cabin with a single figure on the porch was one that moved him. The owner sat in a rocking chair. He was smoking a pipe, and on the table beside him stood a glass. This was a man, decided Stephen, who had made his own destiny.

  As he drew, the words of the Indians he’d met at the World’s Fair sounded in his head. He wondered if, by painting, he might be achieving the unrealized dreams of his own father. Perhaps his father, instead of owning a hardware store, had always yearned to be an artist. A painter, perhaps, like him, or a musician or a poet. Perhaps his father had dreamed of venturing beyond the daily routines of his working life, as Stephen was doing now, but never dared to try.

  The encounter with the Indians had been a turning point for him. He ceased trying to be the salesman he had never really wanted to be. He stopped drinking and, with a loan from old Jearum, he opened a small hardware store serving the local neighborhood. Times were hard once the Fair closed, but he was surviving. He had already built up a core of loyal customers. Betty was helping him. She was beginning to look up to him again.

  None of that would have been possible, he knew, without what he was doing now. It was painting that nourished him, that gave him confidence in himself, that made his heart thrum. Every Sunday he would bring Jack here and task him with copying Old Masters. Jack had talent. Maybe, one day, the boy would be able to make a living from his painting, just as Stephen had once yearned to do himself. Maybe Jack would fulfill his own unrealized dreams.

  “Pa?”

  He turned to find Billy hurtling toward him. Putting down his sketchbook, he rose to his feet. The paintings blazed like stained glass in a cathedral as the boy came skidding across the sheen of polished timbers. He stood firm and when Billy jumped, illuminated in a blinding arc of sunlight, he received him with open arms.

  1894

  AN INTERVIEW

  The transcript of this interview, conducted by correspondent Mrs. Antje Hunter, was used as the basis for an article exploring the work of Mr. Milton Winship, professor of American History at the University of Chicago, published in the Chicago Daily Tribune on February 15, 1894.

  MRS. HUNTER Let me begin by asking you, Professor, about your approach to the study of history. Other historians have claimed that you “varnish” the facts, rather than let them speak for themselves.

  MR. WINSHIP I confess there have been times when I’ve chosen to use my own experience of human nature to supposition how people might have behaved or what they might have said. I have done so knowing full well that this approach would not be to everyone’s taste. But if what survives of our legacy is a patchwork of threads, I believe the historian has a duty to try to stitch them together. If the facts always did speak for themselves, history would be indisputable. But consider a situation where the facts are painful to digest, or where they weaken the thrust of a writer’s argument. What could be easier for a historian than to make adjustments and deletions to suit his purpose? This is what happened in the case of your great-grandfather Jean Baptiste Pointe de Sable. [pauses] I should explain, for the benefit of your readers, that I am in the process of writing an Alternative History of Chicago, a work that spans the nineteenth century, and I open with the story of our first settler. While conducting my research, it was my good fortune, of course, to be able to identify you as Pointe de Sable’s great-granddaughter.

  MRS. HUNTER A fact of which I was myself unaware, until you told me.

  MR. WINSHIP Pointe de Sable’s story is a perfect example of what happens when facts are not allowed to speak for themselves. He has either been ignored by my fellow historians or buried somewhere in a footnote. As I explain in my book, the fact that Pointe de Sable was born a mulatto made him a source of irritation and embarrassment to that stratum of Chicagoans who wanted to tell the story of a city not only built by white men, but also founded by them.

  MRS. HUNTER But does it really matter, some may ask, whether Chicago was founded by Pointe de Sable or John Kinzie or, as many now like to say, William Ogden? Was it not the people who came later—men like John S. Wright, “Long John” Wentworth, Potter Palmer, George Pullman, Marshall Field and Charles Hutchinson—to name a few, who have made the city what it is today?

  MR. WINSHIP I grant their achievements may appear to dwarf those of Pointe de Sable, but don’t forget they did not come—as he did—to a wilderness. Too often beginnings are lost in the mists of time and replacements fabricated to suit posterity. It is therefore a cause for celebration that ours can be reclaimed. I firmly believe that a beginning sets the tone for what follows.

  MRS. HUNTER In that case, can we go back to an aspect of our beginning that puzzles me? I know you have investigated Mr. Kinzie’s visit to my great-grandfather in 1800. And I believe you have gathered information from both Pointe de Sable’s journal and from interviews you were able to conduct with my grandmother Mrs. Eulalie Van Voorhis before she died. You have told me that Pointe de Sable’s journal breaks off at a critical moment, never to be resumed. Did my grandmother, in conversation with you, ever talk about what happened that evening?

  MR. WINSHIP She did. And I would be happy to tell you what I believe took place. First, let me put things in context. It wasn’t easy to track down your grandmother, but I eventually found her living as a recluse in St. Charles, Missouri. By that time, she was an elderly lady who got things confused in her day-to-day life. But she could remember those early days at Echicagou with remarkable clarity.

  To recap. An extraordinary chess contest is in progress when Pointe de Sable’s journal breaks off. Imagine the scene. It is a still, warm evening in early May. The two combatants are seated opposite each other at the dining table in the spacious, elegant keeping room of Pointe de Sable’s timbered mansion, with its polished puncheon floor, the array of easy chairs set around the fireplace, and the walls hung with fine, colorful paintings. A glowering Mr. Kinzie sits on one side of the table, his breath soured by whiskey fumes as he chews on a wad of tobacco, while on the other side your great-grandfather is seated, a large, gentle, brown-skinned gentleman in his mid-fifties with a shock of gray hair, his appearance disfigured by a black stocking with which he has been blindfolded. On the table between them lies his walrus ivory chessboard, a gift from Governor Sinclair at Michilimackinac, the pieces arranged in their starting positions. Jean Lalime, the game’s referee, is positioned at the head of the table. Beside him stand a lantern and a sandglass. The sandglass lasts for ten minutes on each turn.

  The rich furnishings and tasteful decorations inside the keeping room would normally project an atmosphere of conviviality and relaxation. Tonight, though, the tension is immense. Earlier, Mr. Kinzie has whipped Pointe de Sable’s grandson Wabaunsee, cruelly and inhumanely, scarring the boy for life, and despite being ordered to leave the house, Kinzie has refused to do so. Lalime, to present that shadowy figure in the best possible light, has advised Pointe de Sable that expelling Mr. Ki
nzie from the house would, in any case, achieve nothing in the long term. Kinzie would only come back with reinforcements. Pointe de Sable himself, one must assume, has seen the futility of trying to fight a legal battle against opponents such as these.

  That is why he has been driven to propose this contest on the chessboard. Mr. Kinzie, regardless of whether he wins or loses the game, has undertaken to leave Echicagou and persuade the “powerful men” in St. Joseph’s, in whose behalf he is acting, that Pointe de Sable’s property and possessions are worthless. If Kinzie loses the game, that will mark the end of the matter. But if Kinzie wins the game—and he is supremely confident, of course, that he will—Pointe de Sable has agreed to sell his estate, including all his livestock and household possessions, to his friend Jean Lalime for the advantageous price of 6,000 livres. Pointe de Sable is certain this will never happen. But, unknown to him, Lalime has simultaneously pledged to Kinzie that, should this occur, he would be acting only as a caretaker owner. Kinzie could assume the legal title of the Pointe de Sable estate and property whenever he chose. Was Lalime also promised a reward by Kinzie for his trouble? Presumably, yes. Did Lalime have no other option, given Pointe de Sable’s refusal to sell to Kinzie? We don’t know. One matter, though, is clear. Mr. Kinzie had no qualms about lying to his employers in St. Joseph’s for his own gain.