author
Simon Pokagon
1830–1899
A Potawatomi writer and speaker who used essays, stories, and public speeches to defend Native rights, he became one of the best-known Indigenous voices in the Midwest in the late 1800s. His work blends grief, wit, and political clarity, especially in his response to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.
1 Audiobook
The Red Man's Rebuke
by Simon Pokagon
About the author
Born around 1830 near Bertrand in what was then Michigan Territory, he was a member of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi and the son of leader Leopold Pokagon. He became known as an author, lecturer, and advocate who spoke for his community during a period of intense pressure on Native nations.
He is especially remembered for The Red Man’s Greeting, a birchbark-printed text sold at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where he challenged the fair’s celebration of progress by reminding readers whose homelands had been taken. He also wrote Queen of the Woods, mixing autobiography, history, and reflection in a voice that tried to speak both to Native readers and to a wider American public.
Late in life, he was sometimes promoted as the "Hereditary and Last Chief" of the Pokagon, though that title reflected the language of the era more than a simple political reality. He died on January 28, 1899, in Hartford, Michigan, and remains an important early Native American literary figure whose writing joined protest with remembrance.