Editing John Kinzie (section)

==Early life and first family==
Kinzie was born in [[Quebec City]], Canada (then in the [[Province of Quebec (1763–1791)|Colonial Province of Quebec]]) to John and Anne McKenzie, [[Scotch-Irish American|Scots-Irish]] immigrants. His father died before Kinzie was a year old, and his mother remarried. In 1773, the boy was apprenticed to George Farnham, a silversmith. Some of the jewelry created by Kinzie has been found in archaeological digs in [[Ohio]].

By 1777, Kinzie had become a trader in [[Detroit, Michigan|Detroit]], where he worked for William Burnett. As a trader, he became familiar with local Native American peoples and likely learned the dominant language. He developed trading at the [[Kekionga]], a center of the [[Miami people]].

In 1785, Kinzie helped rescue two American citizens, sisters, who had been kidnapped in 1775 from [[Virginia]] by the [[Shawnee]] and adopted into the tribe. One of the girls, Margaret McKinzie, married him;<ref>{{cite book | last = Eckert | first = Allan W. | author-link = Allan W. Eckert | date = March 1993 | orig-year = First published 1992 | title = A Sorrow In Our Heart: The Life of Tecumseh | publisher = Bantam Books | location = United States | isbn = 0-553-56174-X | pages = [https://archive.org/details/sorrowinourheart00ecke_1/page/886 886] | chapter = Amplification Notes | chapter-url-access = registration | chapter-url = https://archive.org/details/sorrowinourheart00ecke_1/page/886 }}</ref> her sister Elizabeth married his companion Clark. Margaret lived with Kinzie in Detroit and had three children with him. After several years, she left Kinzie and Detroit and returned to Virginia with their children. All three of the Kinzie children eventually moved as adults to [[Chicago]].

In 1789, Kinzie lost his business in the Kekionga (modern [[Fort Wayne, Indiana]]) and had to move further from the western U.S. frontier. The US was excluding Canadians from trade with the Native Americans in their territory. As the United States settlers continued to populate its western territory, Kinzie moved further west.