Sauk Trail mural - Joliet, IL
Posted by: 
adgorn
N 41° 31.440 W 088° 04.780
16T E 409921 N 4597491
A mural along the New Street pedestrian path on the south side of the former Rock Island RR embankment depicting the Joliet area's Native American heritage.
Waymark Code: WM110BD
Location: Illinois, United States
Date Posted: 07/22/2019
Views: 6
From the adjacent informational sign:" This mural depicts various aspects of the Joliet area's Native American heritage. Prominently featuring a map of the Great Sauk (or Sak) Trail, which many tribes used to traverse Will County, it also shows a Potawatomi child, examples of how Indians drew sustenance from the land for food and shelter, and a mother and infant in forced flight from Illinois. The painting is rendered largely in earth tones---browns, greens, and ochres---to underscore Native American's crucial relationship with the land.
Since the 1600's, many different Indian nations had made the Upper Illinois River region their home; first and foremost were the Illinois. After the Illinois departed from the area because of intertribal warfare and the general westward spread of European settlers, several other Algonquin-speaking peoples extensively utilized what is now Will County; most prominent were the Potawatomi and the associated Ottawa and Ojibwa. The Potawatomi, formerly of the Upper Great Lakes, was the last and largest tribe to inhabit the region. Many of these semi-sedentary Indians lived in villages on lands adjacent to Hickory Creek near the Sauk Trail, primarily in what are now the Joliet and New Lenox Townships. Here they hunted, fished, farmed, gathered berries, and fashioned flints from the nearby hills.
The Sauk Trail was a major Midwestern Indian route, traversing the Illinois Basin. Perhaps originally made by wild game like buffalo, the trail was blazed by the Sauk on journeys from the village of Saukenuk (near Rock Island on the Mississippi River ) to Fort Malden at Amherstburg, Ontario (near Detroit), where they received annual payments from the British Government. Today U.S. 30 follows much of the original trail."
The city of Joliet sponsored a number of historic murals back in the 90's.
City: Joliet
Location Name: District CC, Mural 21, along pedestrian path of railroad embankment
Artist: Javier Chavira; Ilario Silva
Date: 1996
Media: painted on limestone wall
Relevant Web Site: [Web Link]
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