Wheaton College Alumni Magazine Winter 2013 | Page 18

new settlers on these lands traveled west from Chicago along
Native American trails, now paved and signposted as Roosevelt Road,
St. Charles Road, Army Trail Road, Butterfield Road, and
Ogden Avenue.

The Mid to Late 1800s: Blanchard’s Views
Although the College stood on former Potawatomi land, Wheaton’s
first president, Jonathan Blanchard, deplored the ill treatment of
Native Americans during the era of American westward expansion.
In the magazine he edited, Blanchard decried the actions of a colonel
who “butchered eighty Indians, mostly old men, women, and
children.” Commenting on his eight-month journey west he said,
“I saw nothing but utter extermination for that wild and wonderful
people. My heart was continually heavy for their fate” (Christian
Cynosure, Feb. 6, 1879). His letters from that trip display compassion
toward Native Americans as he laments their suffering and loss of land.
After describing an idyllic landscape, he wrote: “And if Indians should
peer on us from the distant bluffs, how must they feel to see fifty
wagons & 150 men with horses & mules to match occupying their
paradise, driving far off their game, devouring every green thing…?”
(CC, Jan. 8, 1864).
Blanchard committed himself and the College to freedom for slaves
but also denounced the violence and abuse Native Americans endured.
The Christian Cynosure stood against “the theory that the only good

Waubonsie (c. 1760-c. 1848) was the chief of the Potawatomi whose village stood
north of Aurora. Refusing to take part in Black Hawk’s (Sauk) war against the
U.S. Government, he placed his “X” mark on a treaty, ceding the land where
Wheaton College stands and joining “chiefs and warriors of . . . Chippewa, Ottawa,
and Potawatami nations, [who] set their hands and seals, at Prairie du Chien, . . .
[the] twenty-ninth day of July, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred
and twenty-nine.”

16     W I N T E R   2 0 1 3

More than Mere Ripples
Meet a Wheaton professor, a student, and an alumna
engaged in Native issues—here on Wheaton’s campus
and serving reservations across the Americas.
by Katherine Halberstadt Anderson ’90
Wheaton: Dr. Melissa Franklin-Harkrider, associate
professor of history
Inspect the well-worn brown leather change purse and the
yellowed, carefully folded documents inside—what do these
items tell you about their owner?
With these instructions, Dr. Franklin-Harkrider invites the
students in her History 105 class each year to attempt to identify
and understand someone—in this case, her great-grandfather, of
Cherokee descent—through only the things he carried with him.
Through this small exercise, she says, students gain a small
picture of some of the challenges and hardships her greatgrandfather faced. By incorporating primary sources from Native
American perspectives in her classes, she hopes to increase
students’ understanding of more sweeping Native American issues.
“I think we have a responsibility,” she says, “to let Native voices
speak for themselves and to challenge stereotypes.” Awareness
begins as people begin to “recognize the damage, scars, and
wounds that many Native Americans feel in their hearts because of
how they were treated.”
In addition to teaching history at Wheaton, Dr. Franklin-Harkrider
is pursuing a certificate in American Indian Studies through the
University of Wisconsin, and learning the Cherokee language
through online classes. Through this further education, she hopes
to “speak in more knowledgeable ways about the Native American
community to Wheaton students.”

Chicago: Isaac Weaver PSY.D. ’15
An eye-opening college ministry trip to the Pine Ridge Indian
Reservation, the third poorest county in the United States, sparked
an interest in serving Native Americans for Isaac Weaver.
At Wheaton, Isaac jumped at the opportunity to complete his
psychology practicum at the American Indian Health Services of
Chicago last year. He spent a year doing individual therapy, while
also learning about the strengths of the community in Chicago and