Chicago History Museum

Thanks Ben and Christine for taking me to the Chicago History Museum! I had a blast 🙂

This is Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable, the first permanent settler in Chicago. Of African descent, he married a Native American called Catherine. (1745 – 1818). He looks white in this picture but there is another pic of him that looks darker.

This is Me-Te-A, a Potawatimi chief who, together with Ottawa chief Blackbird, fought on the side of the British against the Americans in the War of 1812 for control over the fur trade. The fur trade ended around about 1690 due to overtrapping.The print I copied was printed by LT Prowon’s Lithographic Establishment, Estb. in No. 94, Walnut Street.

This is a nameless Anarchist who rioted in Chicago in 1886. A bunch of anarchists were hanged for sedition and terrorism. Print by Thure de Thulstrup, for Harper’s Weekly, May 15 1886. I think his hand gesture is like Lenin’s.

This is Abraham Lincoln, one of my two favourite American presidents. This bronze head was in the Lincoln Park part of the museum.

I cross Lincoln Park on a winter night when the snow is falling.

Lincoln in bronze stands among the white lines of snow,

his bronze forehead meeting soft echoes of the

newsies crying forty thousand men are dead along the Yser,

his bronze ears listening to the mumbled roar of the city at his bronze feet.

“Bronze”by Carl Sanburg (1878 – 1967) during WWI, Chicago Poems.

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I have a couple more sketches. But here’s this for now.