Uploaded March 2022 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Join us for a fun Women's History Month Trivia Contest (US History Edition), with PRIZES! Make sure you catch the stream right at 8PM Eastern / 7PM Central to join the Kahoot game!
Join us for a fun Women's History Month Trivia Contest (US History Edition), with PRIZES! Make sure you catch the stream right at 8PM Eastern / 7PM Central to join the Kahoot game!







![Unsung History - Southwest Borderlands in the 19th Century
Through the 19th Century, the US-Mexico border moved repeatedly, and the shifting borderlands were a space of cultural and economic transition that often gave rise to racialized gendered violence.
In this episode I speak with Dr. Bernadine Hernández, Associate Professor of American Literary Studies at the University of New Mexico, an activist with fronteristxs, and author of Border Bodies: Racialized Sexuality, Sexual Capital, and Violence in the Nineteenth-Century Borderlands.
Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The episode image is: “Mexican church at the smelter, El Paso, Texas, United States, ca. 1907,” Detroit Publishing Co. No known restrictions on publication, Accessed via the Library of Congress.
Additional Sources:
“A moving border, and the history of a difficult boundary,” by Ron Dungan, USA Today, The Wall, 2018.
“The Violent History of the U.S.-Mexico Border,” by Becky Little, History.com, March 14, 2019.
“Mexicos Independence Day marks the beginning of a decade-long revolution,” by Heather Brady, National Geographic, September 14, 2018.
“The Republic of Texas - The Texas Revolution” The Treaties of Velasco,” Texas State Libraries and Archives Commission.
“Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848),” National Archives.
“Refusing to Forget: The History of Racial Violence on the Mexico-Texas Border.”
“Rodriguez, Josefa [Chipita] (unknown–1863),” by Marylyn Underwood, Texas State Historical Association.
“Woman by the River: Chipita’s ghost lingers on in San Patricio on 156th anniversary of hanging,” by Paul Gonzales, News of San Patricio, November 15, 2019. Unsung History - Southwest Borderlands in the 19th Century](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/S93lxh8Jh4k/mqdefault.jpg)

![The Long History of the Chicago Portage | Unsung History
When Europeans arrived in the Great Lakes region, they learned from the Indigenous people living there of a route from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, made possible by a portage connecting the Chicago River and the Des Plaines River. That portage, sometimes called Mud Lake, provided both opportunity and challenge to European powers who struggled to use European naval technology in a region better suited to Indigenous birchbark canoes. In the early 19th century, however, the Americans remade the region with major infrastructure projects, finally controlling the portage not with military power but with engineering, and setting the stage for Chicago’s rapid growth as a major metropolis.
Joining me in this episode is Dr. John William Nelson, Assistant Professor of History at Texas Tech University and author of Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicagos Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent.
Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode music is Water Droplets on the River, composed and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons.
The episode image is a photograph of a statue that depicts members of the Kaskaskia, a tribe of the Illinois Confederation, leading French explorers Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette, to the western end of the Chicago Portage in the summer of 1673. The statue was designed by Chicago area artist Ferdinand Rebechini and erected on April 25-26, 1990. The photograph is under the creative commons license CC BY-SA 2.0 and is available via Wikimedia Commons.
Additional sources:
“Chicago Portage National Historic Site,” National Park Service.
“STORY 1: Chicago Portage National Historic Site/Sitio Histórico Nacional de Chicago Portage,” Friends of the Chicago River.
“Portage,” Encyclopedia of Chicago.
“The Chicago Portage,” Carnegie Mellon University Libraries Digital Collection.
“Marquette and Jolliet 1673 Expedition,” by Roberta Estes, Native Heritage Project, December 30, 2012.
“Louis Jolliet & Jacques Marquette [video],” PBS World Explorers.
“Cadillac, Antoine De La Mothe,” Encyclopedia of Detroit.
“Chicago’s Mythical French Fort,” by Winstanley Briggs, Encyclopedia of Chicago.
“Seven Years’ War,” History.com, Originally posted on November 12, 2009 and updated on June 13, 2023.
“Treaty of Paris (1783),” U.S. National Archives.
“The Northwest and the Ordinances, 1783-1858,” Library of Congress.
“The Battle Of The Wabash: The Forgotten Disaster Of The Indian Wars,” by Patrick Feng, The Army Historical Foundation.
“The Battle Of Fallen Timbers, 20 August 1794,” by Matthew Seelinger, The Army Historical Foundation.
“History of Fort Dearborn,” Chicagology.
“How Chicago Transformed From a Midwestern Outpost Town to a Towering City,” by Joshua Salzmann, Smithsonian Magazine, October 12, 2018.
“Chicago: 150 Years of Flooding and Excrement,” by Whet Moser, Chicago Magazine, April 18, 2013.
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Episode link: https://play.headliner.app/episode/17825955?utm_source=youtube
(video made with https://www.headliner.app) The Long History of the Chicago Portage | Unsung History](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Su5y9Ok2thk/mqdefault.jpg)
