People

Chief Nickaway

Chief Nickaway led a Potawatomi band recorded as occupying roughly five acres east of what later became Dundee, Illinois — the only source found so far that places a Native American leader and village at a specific, named site within present-day Dundee/East Dundee, rather than the surrounding region. His band is described as related to the much larger band of Chief Waubonsie, located in the Big Woods south of Batavia on the Fox River. (Source: RootsWeb: Chief Nickaway (Kane County, Illinois))

Known Activities

The account comes secondhand through Jesse Oatman, who arrived in the Dundee Township area around 1835 and described the village as located "80 rods below the brickyard" — roughly a quarter mile — with six wigwams housing approximately 25 people. This description was recorded in the 1908 History of Kane County (Joslyn & Joslyn) and later transcribed by the Kane County ILGenWeb project. (Source: RootsWeb: Chief Nickaway (Kane County, Illinois))

Like other Potawatomi bands in the region, Nickaway's people are described as part of a broader pattern of villages situated around Lake Michigan and along the Fox and Illinois Rivers, occupying territory that extended into what became Michigan and northern Illinois. No further biographical detail — birth, death, or individual activities distinct from the band's collective presence — has been located for Nickaway himself. (Source: RootsWeb: Chief Nickaway (Kane County, Illinois))

Nickaway's band was almost certainly subject to the same forces that displaced other Fox Valley Potawatomi bands: the 1833 Treaty of Chicago (1833) and the removal to Council Bluffs, Iowa that followed in 1835–36, though no source located so far documents Nickaway's band specifically through that process. This is flagged as an open research gap on Native American Era (pre-1830s).

Sources

  • "Native American History - Chief Nickaway." Kane County ILGenWeb, citing History of Kane County, IL (Joslyn & Joslyn, 1908). https://sites.rootsweb.com/~ilkane/Nickaway.htm
  • History of Kane County, Ill. (Joslyn), Vol. 1, 1908. Internet Archive: `historyofkanecou01josl`.