It's Curious City, where we take your questions about Chicago and the region.

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From WBEZ.

What's up, Chicago?

I'm Erin Allen.

November is Native American Heritage Month, and we're looking back at a question we got in 2017.

Listener, Mark Liktie, is a cultural anthropologist by trade, but he's also into history.

He knew that before Chicago became a city, thousands of Native Americans were living in the area.

And he knew that most of them were pressured to leave in 1833.

He feels like our history books have all but ignored these folks.

So Mark wanted to know more about how Native Americans fit into the history of Chicago

and their impacts on today's world.

Jesse Dukes picks up the story.

There's a familiar way to answer Mark's question.

We could focus on remnants from Native Americans, the diagonal streets like Milwaukee Avenue or

Vincennes Avenue that were Indian trails before they were Chicago streets, or the Indian

names we see all over, Wabash, Wastjana, Skokie, or Chicago. But after researching this,

I think there's something else worth thinking about. That the most important remnant of Native Americans

in Chicago is actually the city itself. That Chicago, one of the country's most important

economic centers, a great transportation hub,

...