George Ronan-- Part 4: Setting the Stage for the Fort Dearborn Massacre

One of the most threatened American forts on the Frontier  was a small stockaded fort associated with a fur-trading post near the southern tip of Lake Michigan.  Although the Chicago River and the area is flowed through was officially a part of the United States, the Fort Dearborn soldiers and fur traders were tremendously outnumbered by adjacent bands of Indians.

The predominant Indian group in the area was the Potawatomi nation, who remained allied with the British though their land had been ceded to the United States at the end of the American Revolution at the 1783 Treaty of Paris.

On the Great Lakes, the years before the War of 1812 saw increasingly embittered competition between British-Canadian fur traders and American merchants and fur traders, many of whom were in alliance with the interests of the powerful John Jacob Astor and his American Fur Company.

--Brock-Perry