He was an early activist trying to force the United States to pay monies owed pursuant to treaties and to provide fair treatment of Indian peoples. Pokagon met with President Abraham Lincoln twice to petition for payment from the government for land taken in the 1833 Treaty of Chicago. He also met with President Ulysses S. Grant to accept an expression of gratitude for the efforts of Potawatomi volunteers in the Civil War. In the 1890s, Pokagon began pressing land claims to the Chicago lakefront. A complicated individual with what often seemed to be contradictory motivations, he sold "interests" in that Chicago land claim to real estate speculators, angering some in the Pokagon community.