Jean Baptiste Du Sable

Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable (1750 - 1818)

Chicago’s history is brimful of characters; heroes and gangsters, artists and actors, arch-criminals and architects, poets, actors and saints that it is often overlooked that the acknowledged founder of the Second and Windy City was a man of color, courage and vision.

Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable is a larger-than-life person in the history and mythology of Chicago and little is known of his origins and slightly more of his life. He was reputed to be born of parents of either African and French descent or from Haiti. What is known is that the handsome and educated Du Sable took part in the American Revolution as a colonial and was briefly imprisoned by the British in Michilimackinac in modern-day Michigan.

Around 1790, Du Sable is said to have moved south around the Lake Michigan shore and settled at the mouth of a large river spilling out into the great lake. The area was called by the indigenous Potawatomi people Che-ca-gou, after a wild and pungent onion known to grow along the shoreline. He previously married a Potawatomi woman named Kitihawa in a Catholic ceremony at Cahokia on the Mississippi and they had several children.

Du Sable saw vast potential in the area surrounding the mouth of the river and began a trading post and general store for the flourishing trade on the lake and then as a supply source for those pushing on deeper into Illinois country from Detroit and the east. Reports from the time mention the vastness of Du Sable’s holdings in terms of land and property, including a large barn, smokehouse and elegant home with fine furniture, paintings and appointments.

The little village that grew up around his estate and trading post on the mouth of the river became the city of Chicago and reached worldwide notoriety that even Du Sable probably did not envision.

Aside from being tall, handsome and business savvy, Du Sable also had a reputation for honesty and integrity, trading fairly with clients of varying national origin and the indigenous people with who he felt a close kinship due to his marriage. Unlike the rough and tumble rowdies who would come to dominate the city in its golden years, Du Sable sought to live according to the Golden Rule and treated people squarely and fairly as he himself wanted to be treated by others.  By the early 1800s, the tiny village had become too large for Du Sable’s wandering frontier blood and with his family, he moved to modern St. Charles on the Mississippi where he died in 1818. He was buried in the St. Charles Borromeo Cemetery.