Wheaton College Alumni Magazine Winter 2013 | Page 17

The intertwined histories of Wheaton College and Native
Americans provide the context in which students and faculty are
forging fresh and healing relationships with Native people.
by Dr. Gene L. Green ’76, M.A. ’77, professor of New Testament

The Wheaton College land where we stood that hot summer
afternoon in early June 2012 was once inhabited and
tended, hunted and traveled, by many indigenous tribes, most
recently the Potawatomi. But these tribes had been swept
from their lands almost 200 years before by rifle and pen as new
arrivals from New England traveled west on the Erie Canal
to plow their own claims in this good land.
That June day, however, Wheaton welcomed an
intertribal gathering to celebrate both Christ and culture. A large
assembly of Native North Americans had come to Wheaton College
for the annual symposium of NAIITS, the North American Institute
for Indigenous Theological Studies. These Native American and
Canadian First Nations brothers and sisters meet yearly as evangelical
believers to reflect on our common faith in Christ and to share
stories of the deep pain and great joy they have experienced as Native
followers of the Jesus Way. As we stood in a circle on the Quad with
burning sage as incense, and listened to the drum and singing, the
thought ran through my mind: Welcome home.

The Early 1800s: The History You May Not Know
The 1830s marked the beginning of non-Native immigration to
this area due to the easy access afforded by the opening of the Erie
Canal in 1825. In 1831 Erastus Gary was the first New Englander
to arrive in what became DuPage County. Leaving their Connecticut

home, Warren Wheaton and his brother Jesse followed in the late
1830s. Gary and the Wheatons acquired land that had fallen to U.S.
Government hands with the signing of the treaty of Prairie du Chien
on July 29, 1829. The Potawatomi whose villages surrounded this
area, along with the Chippewa and Ottawa, ceded a large tract of land
from Lake Michigan to the Rock River in Illinois.1
On May 28th the following year, President Andrew Jackson signed
into law the Indian Removal Act that forcibly relocated Native
Americans from the lands east of the Mississippi, an action which is
today defin ed as “ethnic cleansing.” 2 Black Hawk (Sauk) became
well known at the time for his resistance to the removal. Until Black
Hawk’s defeat in 1832, immigrants of European descent were reluctant
to move here since he had solicited the help of the Potawatomi who
lived in the area. The Potawatomi did not join Black Hawk, but they
too were removed from their villages located on land currently known
as Churchill Woods in Glen Ellyn, Morton Arboretum in Lisle, and
the intersection of I-88 and Naperville Road south of Wheaton. The
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