author
Simon Pokagon
1830–1899
A Potawatomi writer and public speaker, he used essays, speeches, and fiction to defend Native rights and preserve his people’s history in the late nineteenth century. His work brought Indigenous perspectives directly to audiences who rarely heard them in his own time.
1 Audiobook
The Red Man's Rebuke
by Simon Pokagon
About the author
Born around 1830 near Bertrand in what was then Michigan Territory, Simon Pokagon was a citizen of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians and the son of Leopold Pokagon, a prominent leader. He became known as an author, lecturer, and advocate who spoke to non-Native audiences about Potawatomi history, land loss, and the treatment of Native peoples in the United States.
Pokagon is especially remembered for The Red Man’s Greeting, an essay distributed at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where he challenged celebratory national stories by reminding readers of the costs of expansion for Indigenous nations. He also wrote O-gi-maw-kwe Mit-i-gwa-ki (Queen of the Woods), published in 1899, which is often noted as an important early Native American novel.
His writing is valued not only for its historical importance but also for the way it moves between protest, memory, and storytelling. He died on January 28, 1899, in Hartford, Michigan, leaving behind a body of work that still speaks to questions of justice, identity, and cultural survival.