Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | before 1750 |
| Died | (1818-08-28)August 28, 1818 St. Charles, Missouri Territory, U.S. |
| Occupation | Trader |
| Known for | Founder ofChicago |
| Spouse | Kitihawa (also known as Catherine) |
| Children | 2 |
Jean Baptiste Point du Sable (French pronunciation:[ʒɑ̃batistpwɛ̃dysɑbl]; also spelledPoint de Sable,Point au Sable,Point Sable,Pointe DuSable, orPointe du Sable;[n 1] before 1750[n 2] – August 28, 1818) is regarded as the first permanent non-Native settler of what would later becomeChicago,Illinois, and is recognized as the city's founder.[7] The site where he settled near the mouth of theChicago River around the 1780sis memorialized as aNational Historic Landmark, now located inPioneer Court.
Point du Sable was of African descent, but little else is known of his life before the 1770s. During his career, the areas where he settled and traded around theGreat Lakes and in theIllinois Country changed hands several times between France, Britain, Spain and the United States. Described as handsome and well-educated, Point du Sable married aPotawatomiNative American woman,Kitihawa, and they had two children. In 1779, during theAmerican Revolutionary War, he was arrested by the British on suspicion of being an AmericanPatriot sympathizer. In the early 1780s, he worked for the British lieutenant-governor ofMichilimackinac on an estate at what is nowSt. 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 ofSt. Charles, where he was licensed to run a ferry across theMissouri River. Point du Sable's role in developing the Chicago River settlement was little recognized until the mid-20th century.
In Chicago, aschool,museum,harbor,park,bridge, androad have been named in du Sable's honor.
There are no records of Point du Sable's life before the 1770s. Though it is known from sources during his life that he was of African descent,[7] his birth date, place of birth, and parents are unknown.[8]Juliette Kinzie, another early pioneer ofChicago, never met Point du Sable but said in her 1856 memoir that he was "a native of St. Domingo" (the island ofHispaniola).[9] This became generally accepted as his place of birth.[10] HistorianMilo Milton Quaife regarded Kinzie's account of Point du Sable as "largely fictitious and wholly unauthenticated",[11] later putting forward a theory that he was of African and French-Canadian origin.[12] Ahistorical novel published in 1953 helped to popularize the claim that Point du Sable was born in 1745 inSaint-Marc in FrenchSaint-Domingue (which later becameHaiti).[13] If he was born outside continental North America, there are competing accounts as to whether he entered as a trader from the north throughFrench Canada, or from the south throughFrench Louisiana.[14]
Point du Sable married aPotawatomi woman namedKitihawa (Christianized to Catherine) on 27 October 1788, in aCatholic ceremony inCahokia in theIllinois Country, a longtime French colonial settlement on the east side of theMississippi River.[15] It is likely that this couple was married earlier in the 1770s in aNative American tradition. They had a son named Jean and a daughter named Susanne.[16] Point du Sable supported his family as a frontier trader (voyageur orcoureur 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.[14]
In a footnote to a poem titledSpeech to the Western Indians,Arent DePeyster, British commandant from 1774 to 1779 atFort Michilimackinac (a former French fort in what was then theBritish province of Quebec), noted that "Baptist Point de Saible" was "a handsome negro", "well educated", and "settled in Eschecagou".[17] When he published this poem in 1813, DePeyster presented it as a speech that he had made at the village of Arbrecroche (nowHarbor Springs, Michigan) on 4 July 1779.[18] This footnote has led many scholars to assume that Point du Sable had settled in Chicago by 1779.[19] But letters written by other traders in the late 1770s suggest that Point du Sable was at this time settled at the mouth ofTrail Creek (Rivière du Chemin) at what is nowMichigan City, Indiana.[20]
In August 1779, during theAmerican Revolutionary War, Point du Sable was arrested as a suspected AmericanPatriot 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.[21][22] The following year, Point du Sable was ordered transported to the Pinery on the St. Clair River north ofDetroit. From the summer of 1780[23] until May 1784, Point du Sable managed the Pinery, a tract of woodlands owned by British officer Lt. Patrick Sinclair, on theSt. 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.[24] Point du Sable lived with his family in a cabin at the mouth of the Pine River in what is now the city ofSt. Clair.[25]
At some time in the 1780s, after the U.S. achieved independence, Point du Sable settled on the north bank of theChicago River close to its mouth.[24][n 3] The earliest known record of Point du Sable living in Chicago is an entry that Hugh Heward made in his journal on 10 May 1790, during a journey from Detroit across Michigan and through Illinois.[27] Heward's party stopped at Point du Sable's house en route to theChicago portage; they swapped their canoe for apirogue that belonged to Point du Sable, and they bought bread, flour, and pork from him.[28] Perrish Grignon, who visited Chicago in about 1794, described Point du Sable as a large man and wealthy trader.[29] Point du Sable's granddaughter, Eulalie Pelletier, was born at his Chicago River settlement in 1796.[30]
In 1800 Point du Sable sold his farm toJohn 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 du Sable owned, as well as many of his personal effects.[31] This included a house, two barns, a horse-drawn mill, a bakehouse, a poultry house, a dairy, and asmokehouse. The house was a 22-by-40-foot (6.7 m × 12.2 m) log cabin filled with fine furniture and paintings.[31]
After Point du Sable sold his property in Chicago, he moved toSt. Charles, west of St. Louis, which at that time was still part ofSpanish Louisiana.[13][32] He was commissioned by thecolonial governor to operate aferry across theMissouri River.[15] In St. Charles, 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.[14] He died on 28 August 1818[33] and was buried in an unmarked grave in St. Charles Borromeo Cemetery. His entry in the parish burial register does not mention his origins, parents, or relatives; it simply describes him asnègre (French fornegro).[34]
The St. Charles Borromeo Cemetery was moved twice in the 19th century. Oral tradition and records of theArchdiocese of St. Louis suggested that Point du Sable's remains were also moved. On 12 October 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.[35][36]
In 2002 an archaeological investigation of the grave site was initiated by the African Scientific Research Institute at theUniversity of Illinois at Chicago.[7] Researchers using a combination of ground-penetrating radar, surveys, and excavation of a 9-by-9-foot (2.7 m × 2.7 m) area did not find any evidence of any burials at the supposed grave site, leading the archaeologists to conclude that Point du Sable's remains may not have been reinterred from one of the two previous cemeteries.[37]
Though there is little historical evidence regarding Point du Sable'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,[38] who acquired the title "Sieur de Sable" and whose descendants were known by both the namesDandonneau andDu Sable.[39] Quaife was unable to find a direct link to Point du Sable, but he identified descendants of Pierre Dandonneau as living around theGreat Lakes region in Detroit, Mackinac, and St. Joseph. He speculated that Point du Sable's father may have been a member of this family, while his mother was likely an enslaved woman.[40]
In 1951, Joseph Jeremie, a native of Haiti, published a pamphlet in which he said he was the great-grandson of Point du Sable.[41] Based on family recollections and tombstone inscriptions, he claimed that Point du Sable was born in Saint-Marc in what was thenSaint Domingue, studied in France, and returned to the island to deal in coffee before traveling to French Louisiana. Historian and Point du Sable biographer[42][43] John F. Swenson has called these claims "elaborate, undocumented assertions ... in a fanciful biography".[4]
In 1953, Shirley Graham drew from the work of Quaife and Jeremie in a historical novel about Point du Sable. She described it as "not accurate history nor pure fiction", but rather "an imaginative interpretation of all the known facts".[44] This book presented Point du Sable as the son of themate on a pirate ship, theBlack Sea Gull, and a freedwoman called Suzanne.[45] Despite lack of evidence and the continued debate about Point du Sable's early life, parentage, and birthplace, this popular story has been repeated and widely presented as being definitive.[46][47]
In 1815, a land claim that had been submitted by Nicholas Jarrot to the land commissioners atKaskaskia,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".[48] This document has been taken by Quaife and other historians as evidence that Point du Sable lived atPeoria on theIllinois River prior to going north to settle in Chicago.[49] However, other records demonstrate that Point du Sable was living and working under the British at the Pinery in Michigan in the early 1780s.[25] The Kaskaskia land commissioners identified many fraudulent land claims,[50] including two previously submitted in the name of Point du Sable.[51][52] Nicholas Jarrot, the claimant, was involved in many false claims,[53] and Swenson suggests that this one was also fraudulent, made without Point du Sable's knowledge.[4] Although perhaps in conflict with some of the above information, other historical records suggest that Point du Sable bought land in Peoria from J. B. Maillet on 13 March 1773 and sold it to Isaac Darneille in 1783, before he became the first "permanent" resident of Chicago.[54]
Point du Sable left Chicago in 1800. He sold his property toJean La Lime, a trader fromQuebec, and moved to the Missouri River valley, at that time part of Spanish Louisiana. The reason for his departure is unknown.[49] 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".[55]
In 1874, Nehemiah Matson elaborated on this story, claiming that Point du Sable was a slave from Virginia who had moved with his master toLexington, Kentucky, in 1790. According to Matson, Point du Sable 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.[56] Quaife dismisses both of these stories as being fictional.[11]
In her 1953 novel, Graham suggests that Point du Sable left Chicago because he was angered that theUS government wanted him to buy the land on which he had lived and called his own for the previous two decades.[57] The 1795Treaty of Greenville, which ended theNorthwest Indian War, and the subsequent westward migration of Native Americans away from the Chicago area might also have influenced his decision.[32][n 4]
The French came to the North American mid-continent region in the 17th century. Though probably not the first Europeans to visit the area,Louis Jolliet andJacques Marquette were the first noted in the written record to have crossed theChicago Portage and traveled along the Chicago River, as part of their 1673 Mississippi Valley expedition.[59][n 5] Over the following years, visits by the French continued and occasional intermittent posts were established, including those byRené LaSalle,Henri de Tonti, Pierre Liette[62][63] and the four-yearMission of the Guardian Angel.[64] Point du Sable's residence in the 1780s is recognized as the establishment of the first continuous settlement, which ultimately grew to become the city of Chicago.[65] He is therefore widely regarded as the first permanent resident of Chicago[24][66] and has been given the appellation "Founder of Chicago".[7][67]
[Point du Sable] is not yet honored in his own house (which Chicagoans call the "Kinzie House") or on his own land. No street bears his name and, save for the high school, he has no monument. Cadillac is honored in Detroit, Pitt in Pittsburgh, Cleveland in Cleveland – but the father of Chicago has no street or statue of stone to call his own.
By the 1850s, historians of Chicago recognized Point du Sable as the city's earliest non-Native permanent resident,[69] but for a long time the city did not honor him in the same manner as other pioneers.[68] Point du Sable was generally forgotten during the 19th century; instead, the Scots-Irish traderJohn Kinzie from Quebec, who had bought his property, was often credited for the settlement.[14] A plaque was erected by the city in 1913 at the corner of Kinzie and Pine Streets to commemorate the Kinzie homestead.[70] In the planning stages of the 1933–1934Century of Progress International Exposition, several African-American groups campaigned for Point du Sable to be honored at the fair.[71] At the time, few Chicagoans had even heard of Point du Sable,[72] and the World's Fair organizers presented the 1803 construction ofFort Dearborn as the city's historical beginning.[73] The campaign was partially successful, however, with a replica of Point du Sable's cabin being presented as part of the "background of the history of Chicago".[73]
In 1965, a plaza calledPioneer Court was built on the site of Point du Sable's homestead as part of the construction of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of America building.[74] TheJean Baptiste Point Du Sable Homesite was designated as aNational Historic Landmark on 11 May 1976[75] as a site deemed to have "exceptional value to the nation".[76] Pioneer Court is located at what is now 401 N. Michigan Avenue in theMichigan–Wacker Historic District. At this site in 2009, the City of Chicago and a private donor, Haitian-born Lesly Benodin, erected a largebronze bust of Point du Sable by Chicago-born sculptor Erik Blome.[77]
In October 2010, theMichigan Avenue Bridge was renamed DuSable Bridge.[46] Previously, a small street with the alternative spelling De Saible Street had been named after him.[47] In 2021,Lake Shore Drive in Chicago was renamed in honor of Point du Sable.[78]
Several institutions have been named in his honor.[13]DuSable High School opened inBronzeville, 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 theDuSable Black History Museum and Education Center, located onChicago's South Side.[79] DuSable Hall, built in 1968, on the campus ofNorthern Illinois University is also named for him.[80]
DuSable Harbor is located in the heart of downtown Chicago at the foot ofRandolph Street. Directly across theChicago River from the harbor,DuSable Park is a 3.24-acre (1.31 ha) urban park in Chicago currently awaiting redevelopment. The project was originally announced in 1987 by MayorHarold Washington; following years of remediation of the site[81] initial development began in early 2024.[82] A park is also named after Point du Sable inSt. Charles, his other notable place of residence.[83] TheUS Postal Service honored Point du Sable with the issue of a Black Heritage Series 22-cent postage stamp on 20 February 1987.[84][85]
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