Jean Baptiste Point du Sable

Jean Baptiste Point du Sable (Template:IPA; also spelled Point de Sable, Point au Sable, Point Sable, Pointe DuSable, or Pointe du Sable;<ref group="n">Pointe de Sable is French for 'sand point'.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Point du Sable biographer John F. Swenson notes that during Point du Sable's lifetime, his surname was recorded as Point de Sable (or a variant spelling thereof).<ref name="Swenson" /> The 1936 renaming of New Wendell Phillips High School to DuSable High School established the common rendering of the surname as DuSable.<ref name="Ganz2012">Template:Cite book</ref></ref> before 1750<ref group="n">Milo Milton Quaife suggests, "It may reasonably be assumed that Susanne Point Sable [Point du Sable's daughter] was not less than sixteen years old when she became a bride [in 1790]. With this starting-point, we may conclude that Point Sable himself was born not later than the year 1750."<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref></ref> – August 28, 1818) is regarded as the first permanent non-Native settler of what would later become Chicago, Illinois, and is recognized as the city's founder.<ref name="Baumann59"/> The site where he settled near the mouth of the Chicago River around the 1780s is memorialized as a National Historic Landmark, now located in Pioneer Court.

Point du Sable was of African descent, but little else is known of his early life prior to the 1770s. During his career, the areas where he settled and traded around the Great Lakes and in the Illinois Country changed hands several times between France, Britain, Spain and the United States. Described as handsome and well educated, Point duTemplate:NbspSable married a Potawatomi Native American woman, Kitihawa, and they had two children. In 1779, during the American Revolutionary War, he was arrested by the British on suspicion of being an American Patriot sympathizer. In the early 1780s he worked for the British lieutenant-governor of Michilimackinac on an estate at what is now St. Clair, Michigan.

Point du Sable is first recorded as living at the mouth of the Chicago River in a trader's journal of early 1790. By then he had established an extensive and prosperous trading settlement in what later became the City of Chicago. He sold his Chicago River property in 1800 and moved to the river port of St. Charles, where he was licensed to run a ferry across the Missouri River. Point duTemplate:NbspSable's successful role in developing the Chicago River settlement was little recognized until the mid-20th century.

In Chicago, a school, museum, harbor, park, bridge, and road have been named in du Sable's honor.

Biography

This map shows the British Province of Quebec in the north around the Great Lakes. To the west, across the Mississippi River, is Spanish Louisiana. The former French Illinois Country spans the Mississippi in the center-west. The thirteen American colonies are to the east.

Map of eastern North America in the late 18thTemplate:Nbspcentury, just prior to the American Revolutionary War. Point duTemplate:NbspSable lived near Lake Michigan and the Illinois Country (center left).

Early life

There are no records of Point du Sable's life prior to the 1770s. Though it is known from sources during his life that he was of African descent,<ref name="Baumann59">Template:Harvnb</ref> his birth date, place of birth, and parents are unknown.<ref name="Meehan447">Template:Harvnb</ref> Juliette Kinzie, another early pioneer of Chicago, never met Point duTemplate:NbspSable but said in her 1856 memoir that he was "a native of St.Template:NbspDomingo" (the island of Hispaniola).<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> This became generally accepted as his place of birth.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Historian Milo Milton Quaife regarded Kinzie's account of Point duTemplate:NbspSable as "largely fictitious and wholly unauthenticated",<ref name="Quaife1913p139">Template:Harvnb</ref> later putting forward a theory that he was of African and French-Canadian origin.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> A historical novel published in 1953 helped to popularize the claim that Point du Sable was born in 1745 in Saint-Marc in Saint-Domingue (later known as Haiti).<ref name="Cohn2009">Template:Cite book</ref> If he was born outside continental North America, there are competing accounts as to whether he entered as a trader or from the north through French Canada, or from the south through French Louisiana.<ref name=Oxford/>

Illinois Country

Point du Sable married a Potawatomi woman named Kitihawa (Christianized to Catherine) on 27Template:NbspOctober 1788, in a Catholic ceremony in Cahokia in the Illinois Country, a longtime French colonial settlement on the east side of the Mississippi River.<ref name=Intellegencer>Template:Cite newsTemplate:Subscription required</ref> It is likely that this couple was married earlier in the 1770s in a Native American tradition. They had a son named Jean and a daughter named Susanne.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Point duTemplate:NbspSable supported his family as a frontier trader (voyageur or coureur des bois) and settler during a period of great upheaval for the former southern dependencies of French Canada and in the Illinois Country, where the regions changed hands several times over the course of half a century.<ref name=Oxford>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref>

In a footnote to a poem titled Speech to the Western Indians, Arent DePeyster, British commandant from 1774 to 1779 at Fort Michilimackinac (a former French fort in what was then the British province of Quebec), noted that "Baptist Point deTemplate:NbspSaible" was "a handsome negro", "well educated", and "settled in Eschecagou".<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> When he published this poem in 1813, DePeyster presented it as a speech that he had made at the village of Arbrecroche (now Harbor Springs, Michigan) on 4Template:NbspJuly 1779.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> This footnote has led many scholars to assume that Point duTemplate:NbspSable had settled in Chicago by 1779.<ref>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> But letters written by other traders in the late 1770s suggest that Point duTemplate:NbspSable was at this time settled at the mouth of Trail Creek (Rivière duTemplate:NbspChemin) at what is now Michigan City, Indiana.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In August 1779, during the American Revolutionary War, Point duTemplate:NbspSable was arrested as a suspected American Patriot at Trail Creek by British troops and imprisoned briefly at Fort Michilimackinac. An officer's report following his arrest noted that Point du Sable had many friends who vouched for his good character.<ref>Letter of Lieut. Bennett to Major De Peyster, 9th Augt. 1779; published in Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Report of Lieut. Bennett to Major De Peyster, 1 September 1779; published in Template:Harvnb</ref> The following year, Point du Sable was ordered transported to the Pinery on the St. Clair River north of Detroit. From the summer of 1780<ref>Letter of Sinclair to Guthrie, 31 July 1780; published in Template:Harvnb</ref> until May 1784, Point duTemplate:NbspSable managed the Pinery, a tract of woodlands owned by British officer Lt.Template:NbspPatrick Sinclair, on the St. Clair River in eastern Michigan. This may have been a choice given by him from the British, offering him release from his imprisonment to manage the Pinery.<ref name="Pacyga12" /> Point duTemplate:NbspSable with his family lived in a cabin at the mouth of the Pine River in what is now the city of St. Clair.<ref name="Mitts">Template:Cite book (Mitts cites her source as "the old Day Book and Ledger" of the Pinery.)</ref>

Black and white sketch of a well-kept log house, with multiple windows, a front porch, fence and landscape. Two people are on the porch.

Drawing of the former home of Jean Baptiste Point du Sable in Chicago as it appeared in the early 1800s

At some time in the 1780s, after the U.S. achieved independence, Point du Sable settled on the north bank of the Chicago River close to its mouth.<ref name="Pacyga12">Template:Harvnb</ref><ref group="n">According to an 1892 description of the location of the house, it "stood as nearly as may be at the foot of Pine Street [now Michigan Avenue], partly upon the ground now occupied by Kirk's factory, and partly in what is now known as North Water Street, properly an extension of Kinzie Street." This location was confirmed by the recollections of John Noble, the last occupant of the house, who died in 1888.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref></ref> The earliest known record of Point duTemplate:NbspSable living in Chicago is an entry that Hugh Heward made in his journal on 10Template:NbspMay 1790, during a journey from Detroit across Michigan and through Illinois.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Heward's party stopped at Point duTemplate:NbspSable's house enTemplate:Nbsproute to the Chicago portage; they swapped their canoe for a pirogue that belonged to Point duTemplate:NbspSable, and they bought bread, flour, and pork from him.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Perrish Grignon, who visited Chicago in about 1794, described Point duTemplate:NbspSable as a large man and wealthy trader.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Point du Sable's granddaughter, Eulalie Pelletier, was born at his Chicago River settlement in 1796.<ref name="NRHPI">Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1800 Point duTemplate:NbspSable sold his farm to John Kinzie's frontman, Jean La Lime, for 6,000 livres. The bill of sale, which was rediscovered in 1913 in an archive in Detroit, detailed all of the property Point duTemplate:NbspSable owned, as well as many of his personal effects.<ref name="Quaife1928">Template:Cite journal</ref> This included a house, two barns, a horse-drawn mill, a bakehouse, a poultry house, a dairy, and a smokehouse. The house was a Template:Convert log cabin filled with fine furniture and paintings.<ref name="Quaife1928" />

Missouri River and burial

After Point du Sable sold his property in Chicago, he moved to St. Charles, west of St. Louis, which at that time was still part of Spanish Louisiana.<ref name="Cohn2009" /><ref name="Pacyga13">Template:Harvnb</ref> He was commissioned by the colonial governor to operate a ferry across the Missouri River.<ref name=Intellegencer/> In St.Template:NbspCharles, he may have lived for a time with his son, and later with his granddaughter's family. Late in life, he may have sought public or charitable assistance.<ref name=Oxford/> He died on 28 August 1818<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> and was buried in an unmarked grave in St.Template:NbspCharles Borromeo Cemetery. His entry in the parish burial register does not mention his origins, parents, or relatives; it simply describes him as nègre (French for negro).<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

The St.Template:NbspCharles Borromeo Cemetery was moved twice in the 19thTemplate:Nbspcentury. Oral tradition and records of the Archdiocese of St. Louis suggested that Point duTemplate:NbspSable's remains were also moved. On 12Template:NbspOctober 1968, the Illinois Sesquicentennial Commission erected a granite marker at the site believed to be Point duTemplate:NbspSable's grave in the third St.Template:NbspCharles Borromeo Cemetery.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

In 2002 an archaeological investigation of the grave site was initiated by the African Scientific Research Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago.<ref name="Baumann59" /> Researchers using a combination of ground-penetrating radar, surveys, and excavation of a Template:Convert area did not find any evidence of any burials at the supposed grave site, leading the archaeologists to conclude that Point duTemplate:NbspSable's remains may not have been reinterred from one of the two previous cemeteries.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

Theories and legends

Origins

Though there is little historical evidence regarding Point duTemplate:NbspSable's life before the 1770s, there are several theories and legends that give accounts of his early life. Writing in 1933, Quaife identified a French immigrant to Canada, Pierre Dandonneau,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> who acquired the title "Sieur deTemplate:NbspSable" and whose descendants were known by both the names Dandonneau and DuTemplate:NbspSable.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Quaife was unable to find a direct link to Point duTemplate:NbspSable, but he identified descendants of Pierre Dandonneau as living around the Great Lakes region in Detroit, Mackinac, and St.Template:NbspJoseph. He speculated that Point duTemplate:NbspSable's father may have been a member of this family, while his mother was likely an enslaved woman.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

In 1951, Joseph Jeremie, a native of Haiti, published a pamphlet in which he said he was the great-grandson of Point duTemplate:NbspSable.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Based on family recollections and tombstone inscriptions, he claimed that Point duTemplate:NbspSable was born in Saint-Marc in what was then Saint Domingue, studied in France, and returned to the island to deal in coffee before traveling to French Louisiana. Historian and Point duTemplate:NbspSable biographer<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> John F. Swenson has called these claims "elaborate, undocumented assertionsTemplate:Nbsp... in a fanciful biography".<ref name="Swenson">Template:Cite web</ref>

Fiction

In 1953, Shirley Graham drew from the work of Quaife and Jeremie in a historical novel about Point duTemplate:NbspSable. She described it as "not accurate history nor pure fiction", but rather "an imaginative interpretation of all the known facts".<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> This book presented Point duTemplate:NbspSable as the son of the mate on a pirate ship, the Black Sea Gull, and a freedwoman called Suzanne.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> Despite lack of evidence and the continued debate about Point duTemplate:NbspSable's early life, parentage, and birthplace, this popular story has been repeated and widely presented as being definitive.<ref name="Alejandra">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="WLS-TV">Template:Cite news</ref>

Peoria

In 1815, a land claim that had been submitted by Nicholas Jarrot to the land commissioners at Kaskaskia, Illinois Territory, was approved. In the claim Jarrot asserted that a "Jean Baptiste Poinstable" had been "head of a family at Peoria in the year 1783, and before and after that year", and that he "had a house built and cultivated land between the Old Fort and the new settlement in the year 1780".<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> This document has been taken by Quaife and other historians as evidence that Point duTemplate:NbspSable lived at Peoria on the Illinois River prior to going north to settle in Chicago.<ref name="Quaife1933p43">Template:Harvnb</ref> However, other records demonstrate that Point duTemplate:NbspSable was living and working under the British at the Pinery in Michigan in the early 1780s.<ref name="Mitts" /> The Kaskaskia land commissioners identified many fraudulent land claims,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> including two previously submitted in the name of Point duTemplate:NbspSable.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Nicholas Jarrot, the claimant, was involved in many false claims,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and Swenson suggests that this one was also fraudulent, made without Point duTemplate:NbspSable's knowledge.<ref name="Swenson" /> Although perhaps in conflict with some of the above information, other historical records suggest that Point duTemplate:NbspSable bought land in Peoria from J.Template:NbspB. Maillet on 13Template:NbspMarch 1773 and sold it to Isaac Darneille in 1783, before he became the first "permanent" resident of Chicago.<ref>Franke, Judith A., French Peoria and the Illinois Country 1673–1846, Illinois State Museum Society, Springfield, IL 1995 p.Template:Nbsp37 and The Inhabitants of Three French Villages at Peoria, Illinois, compiled by Ernest East, 1933, and included in Judith Franke's book p.Template:Nbsp99, Template:Isbn</ref>

Departure from Chicago

Point du Sable left Chicago in 1800. He sold his property to Jean La Lime, a trader from Quebec, and moved to the Missouri River valley, at that time part of Spanish Louisiana. The reason for his departure is unknown.<ref name="Quaife1933p43" /> By 1804, John Kinzie, another early Chicago settler, had bought the former du Sable house. Kinzie's daughter-in-law, Juliette Magill Kinzie, suggested in her 1852 memoir that "perhaps he [du Sable] was disgusted at not being elected to a similar dignity [great chief] by the Pottowattamies".<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

In 1874, Nehemiah Matson elaborated on this story, claiming that Point duTemplate:NbspSable was a slave from Virginia who had moved with his master to Lexington, Kentucky, in 1790. According to Matson, Point duTemplate:NbspSable became a zealous Catholic in order to convince a Jesuit missionary to declare him chief of the local Native Americans, but after they refused to accept him as their chief, he left Chicago.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Quaife dismisses both of these stories as being fictional.<ref name="Quaife1913p139" />

In her 1953 novel, Graham suggests that Point du Sable left Chicago because he was angered that the US government wanted him to buy the land on which he had lived and called his own for the previous two decades.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> The 1795 Treaty of Greenville, which ended the Northwest Indian War, and the subsequent westward migration of Native Americans away from the Chicago area might also have influenced his decision.<ref name="Pacyga13" /><ref group="n">The Treaty of Greenville ceded Native-American rights to a substantial amount of territory in what is now the Midwest, including "[o]ne piece of land six miles square, at the mouth of Chikago river".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref></ref>

Legacy and honors

Founder of Chicago

The French came to the North American mid-continent region in the 17thTemplate:Nbspcentury. Though probably not the first Europeans to visit the area, Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette were the first noted in the written record to have crossed the Chicago Portage and traveled along the Chicago River, as part of their 1673 Mississippi Valley expedition.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref group="n">Jolliet and Marquette did not report any Native Americans living near the Chicago River area at this time,<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> though archaeologists have since discovered numerous village sites elsewhere in the Chicago area.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref></ref> Over the following years, visits by the French continued and occasional intermittent posts were established, including those by René LaSalle, Henri de Tonti, Pierre Liette<ref name="earlychicago.com">Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and the four-year Mission of the Guardian Angel.<ref name="Briggs">Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> Point duTemplate:NbspSable's residence in the 1780s is recognized as the establishment of the first continuous settlement, which ultimately grew to become the city of Chicago.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> He is therefore widely regarded as the first permanent resident of Chicago<ref name="Pacyga12" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and has been given the appellation "Founder of Chicago".<ref name="Baumann59" /><ref>Template:Harvnb</ref>

Memorials

Template:Quote box By the 1850s, historians of Chicago recognized Point duTemplate:NbspSable as the city's earliest non-Native permanent resident,<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> but for a long time the city did not honor him in the same manner as other pioneers.<ref name="Ebony1963" /> Point du Sable was generally forgotten during the 19thTemplate:Nbspcentury; instead, the Scots-Irish trader John Kinzie from Quebec, who had bought his property, was often credited for the settlement.<ref name=Oxford/> A plaque was erected by the city in 1913 at the corner of Kinzie and Pine Streets to commemorate the Kinzie homestead.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In the planning stages of the 1933–1934 Century of Progress International Exposition, several African-American groups campaigned for Point duTemplate:NbspSable to be honored at the fair.<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> At the time, few Chicagoans had even heard of Point duTemplate:NbspSable,<ref>Template:Harvnb</ref> and the World's Fair organizers presented the 1803 construction of Fort Dearborn as the city's historical beginning.<ref name="Reed406">Template:Harvnb</ref> The campaign was partially successful, however, with a replica of Point duTemplate:NbspSable's cabin being presented as part of the "background of the history of Chicago".<ref name="Reed406" />

In 1965, a plaza called Pioneer Court was built on the site of Point duTemplate:NbspSable's homestead as part of the construction of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of America building.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable Homesite was designated as a National Historic Landmark on 11 May 1976<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> as a site deemed to have "exceptional value to the nation".<ref>Template:Citation</ref> Pioneer Court is located at what is now 401Template:NbspN.Template:NbspMichigan Avenue in the Michigan–Wacker Historic District. At this site in 2009, the City of Chicago and a private donor, Haitian-born Lesly Benodin, erected a large bronze bust of Point duTemplate:NbspSable by Chicago-born sculptor Erik Blome.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In October 2010, the Michigan Avenue Bridge was renamed DuSable Bridge.<ref name="Alejandra" /> Previously, a small street with the alternative spelling DeTemplate:NbspSaible Street had been named after him.<ref name="WLS-TV" /> In 2021, Lake Shore Drive in Chicago was renamed in honor of Point du Sable.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Photograph of the front of a classical-style, gray one-story building, with large front landing and steps

The DuSable Museum in Washington Park

Several institutions have been named in his honor.<ref name="Cohn2009" /> DuSable High School opened in Bronzeville, Chicago, in 1934. The DuSable campus today houses the Daniel Hale Williams Prep School of Medicine and the Bronzeville Scholastic Institute. Margaret Taylor-Burroughs, a prominent African-American artist and writer, taught at the school for twenty-three years. She and her husband co-founded the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, located on Chicago's South Side.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> DuSable Hall, built in 1968, on the campus of Northern Illinois University is also named for him.<ref>NIU Campus Building Timeline created by NIU Geography/GIS department 2020 https://niugeog.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=2953100fe6944a44af36058faf92c999</ref>

DuSable Harbor is located in the heart of downtown Chicago at the foot of Randolph Street. Directly across the Chicago River from the harbor, DuSable Park is a Template:Convert urban park in Chicago currently awaiting redevelopment. The project was originally announced in 1987 by Mayor Harold Washington; following years of remediation of the site<ref name=CBSReport>Report: DuSable Park Site Near Navy Pier Nearly Clear of Radioactive Soil CBS, 8 August 2012.</ref> initial development began in early 2024.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> A park is also named after Point du Sable in St. Charles, his other notable place of residence.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The US Postal Service honored Point duTemplate:NbspSable with the issue of a Black Heritage Series 22-cent postage stamp on 20 February 1987.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

See also

• History of Chicago
• List of African-American firsts
• Antoine Ouilmette

Notes and references

References cited

• Template:Cite journal
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite journal
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite book
• Template:Cite journal

External links

• DuSable Heritage Association
• Template:Find a Grave
• The story of his life is retold in the 1949 radio drama "The Man Who Owned Chicago", a presentation from Destination Freedom, written by Richard Durham