JEAN BAPTISTE POINT DU SABLE
Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable (1745(?) - August 28, 1818), popularly known as "The
Father of Chicago", [1] was the first known settler in the area which is now
Chicago, Illinois. Du Sable was recognized by the State of Illinois and the City
of Chicago as the Founder of Chicago on October 26, 1968. [2]
Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable first arrived on the western shores of Lake
Michigan around 1779. Born in Saint-Marc, Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), he
built the first permanent settlement at the mouth of the river just east of the
present Michigan Avenue Bridge on the north bank. [3]
Of African and French descent, he may have been born as early as the 1730s and
no later than 1745, to a slave named Suzanna and a French pirate mate named
Pointe du Sable who served on the Black Sea Gull. [1] Suzanna may have been
killed in a Spanish raid on Haiti. Perhaps Jean Baptiste escaped by swimming out
to his father's ship. After his father sent him to study at a Catholic school in
France, du Sable and a friend, Jacques Clamorgan, traveled to Louisiana and then
to Michigan, where he married a Potawatomi woman name Kittahawa (fleet-of-foot).
To marry her, the twenty-five-year-old Jean Baptiste had to become a member of
her tribe. He took an eagle as his tribal symbol. [4] The Potawatomi called him
"Black Chief," and he became a high-ranking member of the tribe. They had a son
and daughter, Jean and Susanne. Du Sable's granddaughter, Eulalia, was the first
non-Indian born in Chicago.
Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable (1745(?) - August 28, 1818), popularly known as "The
Father of Chicago", [1] was the first known settler in the area which is now
Chicago, Illinois. Du Sable was recognized by the State of Illinois and the City
of Chicago as the Founder of Chicago on October 26, 1968. [2]
Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable first arrived on the western shores of Lake
Michigan around 1779. Born in Saint-Marc, Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti), he
built the first permanent settlement at the mouth of the river just east of the
present Michigan Avenue Bridge on the north bank. [3]
Of African and French descent, he may have been born as early as the 1730s and
no later than 1745, to a slave named Suzanna and a French pirate mate named
Pointe du Sable who served on the Black Sea Gull. [1] Suzanna may have been
killed in a Spanish raid on Haiti. Perhaps Jean Baptiste escaped by swimming out
to his father's ship. After his father sent him to study at a Catholic school in
France, du Sable and a friend, Jacques Clamorgan, traveled to Louisiana and then
to Michigan, where he married a Potawatomi woman name Kittahawa (fleet-of-foot).
To marry her, the twenty-five-year-old Jean Baptiste had to become a member of
her tribe. He took an eagle as his tribal symbol. [4] The Potawatomi called him
"Black Chief," and he became a high-ranking member of the tribe. They had a son
and daughter, Jean and Susanne. Du Sable's granddaughter, Eulalia, was the first
non-Indian born in Chicago.