Campus Life

Father Sorin receives a gift from the Potawatomi Indians

The Pokagan tribe of the Potawatomi Indians nation has a long history with Notre Dame. When Father Sorin, Notre Dame’s founder, arrived at the site of the present University in the winter of 1842, fourteen Indians who requested to be baptized met him and his small band. Sorin invited them to stay overnight in the lakeside log cabin of the local missionary, Fr. Badin. The next morning, Sorin performed the baptisms and an Indian woman, as a token of gratitude, gave the priest seven rings. [engraving above]

John Warren, cultural coordinator of the tribe, has researched the traditional relationship between the Indians and Notre Dame, and found the following account of the custom in James Clifton’s book , The Pokagons, 1683-1938.

In one section of his book Clifton describes the life of the tribe in the early 20’s. At this point in their history the Potawatomi were still essentially rural folk working small farms, orchards and vineyards. They would also make maple sugar, hunt for small game and engage in berry collecting. The author then tells the story of the tribe’s affiliation with Notre Dame:

A few traditional crafts were also actively pursued, especially the production of large quantities of various kinds and sizes of utilitarian baskets. These were sold or traded at the household where made or at nearby rural market centers. One interesting, almost ritualized annual encounter developed out of this work and the Pokagon’s old relationship to the center of Catholic activities at Notre Dame University.

Annually, through the mid-1930’s, numbers of Catholic Potawatomi would arrive at Notre Dame bearing wagon-loads and Model T loads of varied basketwork. The retired Notre Dame official long responsible for managing the exchange remembers this event vividly as a significant encounter, beginning with the first meeting with the Potawatomi in 1921. "They would exchange the baskets for food," he recalls, "never setting any trading value – they did this to show they were not beggars." In these decades the Pokagons arrived at Notre Dame several times a year – Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Notre Dame, for its part in the relationship, would feed the visitors at their central kitchens and provide each family a basket of staples – some years serving up to 130. Often many of the Potawatomi would arrive festively dressed in traditional garb.

Recalls the official, "In the 1920s it was strictly a trade deal. No one questioned the value of the baskets or the food. But of course, we gave more." Modern readers may have to remember that this was the era before mass manufacturing and wide use of disposable plastic and paper containers. On the remembered account sheets of the Notre Dame officials is the fact that for years the Pokagons supplied the large university community with all the containers it needed – laundry baskets, waste baskets, grocery baskets, and so on. Certainly, the Potawatomi were also important contributors of containers to other institutions and industries in the region.

However, the most significant feature of these annual encounters was the traditional nature of the economic relationship. In terms used by anthropologists, this was an ancient variety of reciprocal exchange, with the Potawatomi producing and delivering valuable goods, receiving other commodities in return, with no haggling – not even a question raised about the relative value or unit-cost on either side. This is precisely the sort of relationship that had ddominated Potawatomi economic exchanges for hundreds of years earlier.

But it was a pattern that did not endure past the 1930s. As the elders who had the skills and disposition for the craft died out, and as more and more Potawatomi started participating in the wage-work economy, the exchange part of the event disappeared. Today numerous Potawatomi still arrive yearly at Notre Dame – now only at Christmas, each family receiving a box of food. But they deliver nothing tangible in return. Instead, the event is explained as a privileged act-of-receiving from the university, a right belonging to the Potawatomi consequent upon their many years ago having donated the land on which the university sets (which they in fact did not do: it was purchased from the public land office.) This relationship was invented only in the late 1960s. Thus the receipt of food at Notre Dame continues even today, but in an era reflecting a different set of attitudes and values from those that patterned the event in the 1920s.

When interviewing members of the modern Pokagan tribe I’ve leaned that there has been a revival of many of the long neglected or lost craft traditions. Judy Augusta, is the leader of the basket co-op, and she has members in her group, many in their 70s who are starting to weave baskets using the age old methods. These techniques were handed down from their parents and are being taught to younger tribe members. They are familiar with the design of the "Notre Dame baskets" and I have requested that they re-create some of the styles that were used by the University in the 20s and 30s. We will update this story in a future edition of Campus Life.

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