Traveling monument seeks to teach hidden story of Kitihawa DuSable
CHICAGO (CBS) -- This Women's History Month, we're highlighting a hidden figure in Chicago's story; a woman you might have never heard of, because she's not often talked about.
Her name was Kitihawa DuSable. She was the wife of explorer Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, and in some's eyes, a co-founder of Chicago.
Her story is not often told. There are no exhibits, no statues, or books about Kitihawa DuSable, but now there's a mobile monument.
The inflatable sculpture called Founders was created by The Floating Museum. It moves around the city, from Garfield Park to DuSable Harbor; outside of schools and museums. They are artist interpretations of Chicago historical figures, including Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, and his wife, Kitihawa.
"As they always say, the colloquial anecdotal saying, who was the woman behind the man," said Dr. Courntey Joseph, a Lake Forest College assistant professor writing a book about Mr. and Mrs. DuSable. "An indigenous woman, who he marries; a woman of Potawatomi descent named Kitihawa. And for as little as we know about DuSable, we know even less about her."
So let's go back to circa 1780, in what we now know as the city of Chicago.
"Kitihawa and her people were established in the Great Lakes. He came into that. So it's really with her foundation, their foundation that he's able to succeed, thrive, and establish," said Starla Thompson, an indigenous educator whose work is centered around Kitihawa's story. "At the confluence of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan is where they decided to settle."
They ran a fur trading post on their homestead, had two children, and did business here and beyond.
"How is he managing to keep a home and a business and two children going, while traveling around the Midwest for business? And you have to look at Kitihawa for that," Joseph said.
"All of their businesses, and trade, agriculture, relationships, international relationships continued on with her at the helm," Thompson said.
Like Kitihawa, Starla Thompson is Potawatomi.
"I feel the presence of my relatives," she said.
Over the years, she's performed a healing jingle dress dance in front of the Founders monument bearing Kitihawa's likeness, helping The Floating Museum bring her story – that's not told – to life.
What is that about? Why can't we Google and find anything on Kitihawa?
"This is again so much tied to the ways, and who gets to write history," Joseph said. "They end up calling Chicago the White City; a nation that focuses white men, white men with money, white men who can read, white men with power as the makers of history."
"To then say this is a city that was really started and thrived and flourished under an indigenous woman and a Black man of Haitian decent. That doesn't fit the story," Joseph added. "So it's not surprising to me that they get virtually ignored, and in some ways written out of the history."
The two-story inflatable Founders sculpture is just one of The Floating Museum's mobile monuments highlighting historical figures of color whose roles are often overlooked.
The goal is to move these monuments all over the city, making them accessible to all who want to see them.
