Last week, Chicago hosted the Democratic National Convention, and what a fantabulous four days it was. Many commentators found it irresistible not to mention the 1968 convention, remembered mainly for the resulting tumult in the streets. For us this morning we journey back to the beginning of the Windy City and the adventures of the intrepid trader and explorer, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. From his settlement at the mouth of the Chicago River, he is regarded as the first permanent non-Native to establish a home and business in the region in the 1780s.
Born circa 1745 in Saint Domingue, now Haiti, Point du Sable was of African descent, though little else is known about his early years. He roamed and worked as a trader in the area during a time when there was much turmoil in the region between European rivals and the U.S. Several accounts note that he possessed some education and in 1788 married a Potawatomi Native American woman named Kitihawa, later anglicized to Catherine. They had two children before he was apprehended by the British during the Revolutionary War, suspected of being an American patriot and sympathizer. He had worked earlier for the British government on the estate of the lieutenant governor.
Upon being arrested by the British, a number of his friends spoke up for him, according to an officer’s report, insisting he was a man of good character. Around 1780, he was transported to the Pinery on the Saint Clair River north of Detroit. There is much speculation about his release and whether it was conditional based on his assignment to manage the Pinery. He and his family lived in a cabin at the mouth of the Pine River in what is now the city of St. Clair.
A decade or so later, Point du Sable was living in Chicago, having relocated from the Detroit area. According to Perrish Grignon, who visited Chicago in about 1794, du Sable was described as a large man of considerable wealth acquired from his trading. His granddaughter, Eulalie Pelletier, was born at his Chicago River settlement in 1796. In 1800, Point du Sable sold his farm to John Kinzie’s frontman, Jean La Lime, for 6,000 livres, nearly $8,000 today. The bill of sale was discovered in 1918 in a Detroit archive, detailing all of the property Point du Sable owned, as well as many personal effects, including his house, two barns, a horse-drawn mill, a poultry house, a bakehouse, a dairy, and a smokehouse. His log cabin contained a collection of fine furniture and paintings.
After selling his Chicago property, he moved to St. Charles, west of St. Louis, which was still part of Spanish Louisiana. He was commissioned by the colonial governor to operate a ferry across the Missouri River. It is reported that he lived for a time with his son in St. Charles and later with his granddaughter’s family, possibly subsisting on charitable assistance. He died on August 28, 1818, and was buried in an unmarked grave in the St. Charles Borromeo Cemetery, which was moved twice in the 19th century. It has been asserted that his remains were moved during these relocations, though on October 12, 1968, the Illinois Sesquicentennial Commission erected a granite marker at the site believed to be Point du Sable’s grave in the third St. Charles Borromeo Cemetery. In 2002, an archeological investigation of the grave site was launched by the African Scientific Research Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago. After extensive research at the site, using highly sophisticated equipment, there was no indication of Point du Sable’s remains. They concluded that he may not have been reinterred from one of the two previous cemeteries.
Meanwhile, there is an ongoing debate and discussion about who Point du Sable was, what he did, and where exactly his remains reside. Many of the claims about him suffer from the lack of credible documentation. What is undisputed is the extent to which his legacy is secured in the names of several historic sites, such as the DuSable Bridge. There is also the DuSable High School and the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, founded by Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, as well as the DuSable Harbor directly across the Chicago River from DuSable Park.