Aptakisic - Half Day

The historic town of Half Day claims many firsts in the annals of Lake County history—the first post office (1836), the first school (1836) taught by Laura Sprague in her family's log cabin, and the county's first non-native settler, Daniel Wright.

Perhaps most intriguing about Half Day is its name, which provokes more interest and debate than any other place name in the county.

You may wonder why there's debate. Ask anyone and they'll tell you it got its name because, "It took half a day to get there from Chicago." That may have been true back in the day of horsedrawn transportation, but Half Day was named for Aptakisic, a Native American leader of great standing.

Aptakisic's name (also spelled Aptegizhek), was translated as "center of the sky," "sun at meridian" or "half day." He was known to the settlers as Half Day. Both Daniel Wright (1778-1873) and Henry Blodgett (1821-1905), who knew Aptakisic, documented that he was "known as Half Day." Wright went on to say that the village took its name from Aptakisic.

A depiction of Aptakisic (Half Day) waving goodbye to the settlers he had led to Fort Dearborn in 1832. Painting by Les Schrader, courtesy of Naper Settlement. For more on Les Schrader: https://www.napersettlement.org/138/Les-Schrader-Painting-Collection.

Blodgett had met Aptakisic in 1832, during the Black Hawk War, when Aptakisic protected the settlers in Downer's Grove from an impending attack.

Wright became acquainted with Aptakisic and his tribe of Potawatomi in 1833 when he settled along the Des Plaines River.

Wright remembered: "When I stuck my stake in the banks of the Aux Plain [Des Plaines] River I was surrounded by the native tribes of Pottawatamies [sic]. They helped me raise my first rude cabin, being the first house built in the county." These native people also assisted Wright in planting crops, and tending to his family when they became ill.

According to James A. Clifton in The Prairie People: Continuity and Change in Potawatomi Indian Culture 1665-1965, Aptakisic was present at the negotiations for the Treaty of Chicago, which took place in September 1833. "Apparently wearing Meteya's [Mettawa's] moccasins, Aptegizhek stood and informed Commissioners Porter and Owen that the Potawatomi had no wish to consider moving west of the Mississippi until they had been given the opportunity to inspect the country there... He insisted the Potawatomi had assembled merely to enjoy their Great Father's beneficence and liberality. Could the annuities due the Potawatomi be distributed quickly so that they might go back to their villages to tend their gardens?"

Ultimately, the treaty was signed by Aptakisic (twice!) and other leaders of the United Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomi Indians on September 26, 1833.

In 1918, the students of Half Day School wrote a history of their school and community. In it, they recounted that "Half Day was named so in honor of an Indian chief, Hefda, who some people say is buried in this locality." They went on to say that Half Day was a "half way station" between Chicago and the northern part of Lake County.

Excerpt from the Half Day School history, 1918. Dunn Museum Collections. 

When and how did the origin of the name change?

Postcard of "Hotel Halfday," circa 1910. Dunn Museum 97.18.3

It is my assertion that the confusion was started by visitors to Half Day, possibly as early as the 1840s. In 1843, the Half Day Inn (shown above) was established on the Chicago and Milwaukee Road (today's Route 21) as a stagecoach stop. The rutted and muddy road would have most certainly made for slow travel, leading travelers to surmise the town's name came from its distance from Chicago.

The Wisconsin Central Railroad arrived in Prairie View in 1886. It later became the Soo Line. Postcard view circa 1900. 

Dunn Museum 94.47.5

In 1886, train service was available on the Wisconsin Central Railroad to Prairie View, several miles west of Half Day. That trip would have taken at least two hours, and then a buggy ride over to Half Day, again leaving visitors to believe the name was a matter of travel time. Even with the advent of the automobile, travel was slow until roads were paved in the 1930s and beyond.

Travelers not knowing the true origin of the name, adopted a new meaning. As the people who knew Aptakisic died, and generations passed, the connection to Aptakisic faded, and the new tradition took root with no one around to contradict it.

In a letter written late in his life, Henry Blodgett once again recalled his friend, Aptakisic:

"In the fall of 1837, Aptakisic's band was removed to a reservation on the west side of the Missouri River near the mouth of the Platte and later were moved into what is now a portion of the state of Kansas, south of the Kansas River. I well remember the sad face of the old chief as he came to bid our family goodbye. ... We all shed tears of genuine sorrow ... his generous kindness to my parents has given me a higher idea of the red man's genuine worth." 

Photograph of Henry W. Blodgett from the Autobiography of Henry W. Blodgett, Waukegan, Illinois, 1906.

Dunn Museum Collections. 

Aptakisic's legacy continued in the names Aptakisic Road, Aptakisic Creek, and the former community of Aptakisic located in today's Buffalo Grove. Aptakisic was a railroad stop on the Wisconsin Central line at Aptakisic Road (west of Route 21), and had its own post office from 1889 to 1904.

The town of Half Day never incorporated, and in recent years was absorbed into the Villages of Lincolnshire and Vernon Hills.

You may also be interested in my post on the Treaty of Chicago 1833.

The Treaty of Chicago, September 26, 1833

The private ownership of land was a European convention unfamiliar to Native Americans. Land came down to tribes from their ancestors, and in turn they passed over the stewardship to their children and their children's children for countless generations.

American Historian, Clarence Walworth Alvord (1868-1928), wrote: "To allow the whites to use the land was one thing; to cede to them the permanent possession of the land was quite different."

Westward migration by Euro-American settlers after the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 (which connected the Great Lakes with New York City via the Hudson River), put pressure on the U.S. Government to expropriate lands from Native peoples. The Erie Canal increased efforts to open northeastern Illinois to non-native settlement and brought hundreds of settlers into Michigan and Illinois.

Often, mistakenly, the Treaty of Prairie du Chien (there were four between 1825-1830) is cited as the reason Native Americans left northeastern Illinois. In fact, it was not until the Treaty of Chicago in 1833 when their Natives lands were expropriated. 

The Treaty of Chicago brought an estimated three thousand Native Americans, traders, government officials, army troops, land speculators, and adventurers to Chicago, then a small village. Aptakisic (Ah-be-te-ke-zhic) of the Half Day area Potawatomi was one of the leaders present.

American author, Washington Irving (1783-1859), and Englishman, Charles J. Latrobe (1801-1875) (shown at right) happened to be in Chicago at the time of the treaty. (LaTrobe later became the first lieutenant-governor of the colony of Victoria in Australia).

LaTrobe wrote about the event extensively in his book, "The Rambler in North America," published in London in 1835, and excerpted here from John J. Halsey's "History of Lake County, Illinois" (1912). Latrobe noted that the tribal chiefs did not wish to sell their land, but the U.S. commissoner said, "That nevertheless, as they had come together for a council, they must take the matter into consideration."

Latrobe wrote of the scene on September 21, 1833: "The council fire was lighted under a spacious open shed on the green meadow, on the opposite side of the river from that on which the fort stood, [near the north end of the present Rush Street Bridge in Chicago]... Even though convinced of the necessity of their removal, my heart bled for them in their desolation and decline... and their speedy disappearance from the earth appears as certain as though it were already sealed and accomplished." 

Cover page from "Treaty of Chicago" 1833. National Archives at Chicago. 

Indeed, by September 26, 1833, the treaty was signed between the U.S. Government and the United Nation of Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomi Indians. Five million acres were sold to the United States including the last tracts of Native occupied Great Lakes’ land.

The treaty stipulated that these tribes resettle west of the Mississippi River by the time the treaty was ratified by the U.S. Congress, which did not occur until 1835. However, fewer than half of the Potawatomi moved onto reservations in western Missouri and Kansas. Some went north into Canada, while others resettled in northern Michigan and Wisconsin.

Settlement of the newly ceded land was not to occur until the treaty was ratified in 1835. Notably, the county's first Euro-American settler, Daniel Wright, arrived in 1833. Wright fondly recalled that Native people assisted him with building his first cabin and in planting crops along the Des Plaines River near today's Lincolnshire. 

Native Americans returned to Lake County for decades after the Treaty of Chicago to hunt and to honor their ancestors. Today, people from many tribal nations call the Chicago region home, and continue to sustain their cultures, languages and traditions. 

Black Hawk the Sauk Leader

As a kid in the 1970s, I loved watching Chicago Blackhawks' hockey. Those were the glory days of Bobby Hull, Stan Makita, and Tony Esposito. I was one of those crazy people jumping for joy this week when they won the Stanley Cup for the first time in 49 years.

The Chicago Blackhawks were founded in 1926 by coffee tycoon Major Frederic McLaughlin. He bought the Portland Rosebuds to build the core of his new team, but didn't like the name "Rose Buds."  McLaughlin turned to Illinois history and his own past for inspiration. In World War I, he served with the 333rd Machine Gun Battalion of the 86th Division of the U.S. Army. Members of this division called themselves Black Hawks in honor of the Sauk Native American chief. McLaughlin felt this name was more fitting for the National Hockey League.

Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak (Black Sparrow Hawk) (1767 - 1838) was a recognized leader of a faction of the Sauk and Fox Indian tribes. 

In 1804, United States agents tricked Sauk and Mesquakie representatives into a treaty that signed away tribal lands east of the Mississippi River. The Native tribes continued to live on their traditional lands, but an influx of thousands of lead miners in the late 1820s crowded them out of their lands along the Rock River. 

A government order moved the Native tribes off their land into Wisconsin with the promise of government food supplies, which never materialized. Black Hawk defied the orders to vacate and led 1,2000 Sauk into Illinois to re-occupy their homeland and harvest their crops. This resulted in the Black Hawk War of 1831-1832.

Lithograph portrait of Black Hawk from A History of Indian Tribes of North America by Thomas L. McKenny and James Hall (1836-1844). 

Henry Blodgett (1821-1905) wrote of the Black Hawk War in his autobiography, published in 1906:

"Early in the spring [1832], and when the whole settlement was busy ploughing and preparing the ground for their crops, rumors began to come to us that Black Hawk and his band of Sacs and Foxes, who had been moved west of the Mississippi River… was coming back into Illinois, for the purpose of making war upon the settlements."

In 1831, the Blodgett Family left New York for a new settlement near today's Downer's Grove in Will County, Illinois. (right Henry Blodget in 1850)

With the threat of war looming, Blodgett recalled that one man came to the settlers' aid:

"On the night of the tenth of May, old Aptakisic, otherwise known as Half Day, chief of one of the bands of the Pottowotamies [sic], and whom we had seen a great deal of during the winter, as he had been often at our house, came about twelve o'clock at night and gave a whoop. Father sprang out and opened the door, and he at once began to tell father that he was to take his family and get away from there as soon as possible, that Black Hawk and the head men of his band had been at Waubansie's Village, which is the present site of the City of Aurora, in consultation with the Pottowotamie head men during the whole of the day before, endeavoring to influence the Pottowotamies to join him in the war, which he was determined on making against the white people."

The alarm went out to notify the "neighborhood" and by daylight all the settlers in the vicinity were "gathered and on the road to Chicago."

Blodgett continued:

"As we moved on, he [Half Day] moved on with us, not saying a word, simply following in our trail during the whole of the day. Our march, necessarily with ox teams, was a slow one... the old chief following us... until we were in sight of Ft. Dearborn, when he waved us good-bye with his hand, turned his horse, and disappeared."

Black Hawk was defeated by the U.S. Army and the Illinois militia, and many of his followers were killed. Though he did not achieve his goal, many Americans admired Black Hawk's courage in defending his people's ancestral lands, and he became a folk hero.

Aptakisic was one of the signers of the Treaty of Chicago (1833). The treaty was signed between the U.S. Government and the United Nation of Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomi Indians on September 26, 1833. Five million acres were sold to the United States including the last tracts of Native occupied Great Lakes’ land. 

(Image: Cover page of the 1833 Treaty of Chicago from the National Archives and Records Administration)

Several years later, the Village of Half Day (now Lincolnshire) was named in honor of Aptakisic, whose name can be translated as "sun at meridian" or half day.

Henry Blodgett eventually moved to Waukegan where he was an attorney and a judge, and in 1846 co-founded the Lake County Anti-Slavery Society.



Source: Autobiography of Henry W. Blodgett. Waukegan, Illinois, 1906.

Native Trail Trees

Trail tree photographed by historian Bess Bower Dunn 

on Waukegan Road west of North Chicago, circa 1910. Dunn Museum Collection. 

Indigenous people have populated this region for thousands of years. As recently as the early 1800s, Potawatomi, Chippewa and Ottawa peoples navigated a vast network of trails by marking those trails with road signs known as trail trees. Also, waterways such as Lake Michigan and the Des Plaines River were used as thoroughfares. 

Trail trees were used along Native American foot trails to direct travelers to neighboring villages, hunting grounds, and ceremonial grounds. The unusually shaped trees essentially “pointed” the direction the traveler needed to go. Typically, trail trees were oak or elm since they lived much longer than other types of trees.

Bess Bower Dunn (1877-1959) researched trail trees at the turn of the 20th century, writing: “[They] marked routes or trails… by taking a small sapling, bending it to the ground, fastening it, taking off the lower branches or twisting them around the trunk… so the forests of Lake County… became penetrated with a network of trails… marked by trees."

Trail tree in Warren Township west of U.S. Hwy 41 and south of Washington Street 

near Park City, circa 1935. Dunn Museum Collection

Dunn also noted that "Some of the early settlers recognized these bent trees as landmarks of importance and made an effort to preserve them; others considered them deformed and cut them down.” 

Though locals continue to report finding these trees in backyards and woodlands, only two trees in Deerfield and Zion are accepted as the last remaining markers of this early navigation system in.  

Historian James Getz took this photo on Hazel Avenue in Highland Park, 1957. Dunn Museum Collection.

The United Nation of Potawatomi, Chippewa and Ottawa reluctantly sold their last remaining Great Lakes land to the U.S. Government in the Treaty of Chicago on September 26, 1833. Lake County's current road system is based largely on historic trails now paved over and in some cases straightened. Milwaukee Avenue, Fairfield Road, Greenbay Road, and Belvidere Road are a few of the former trails still in use today.