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City
of Chicago
(founded in 1779)
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The story
of a fur traper named Du Sable leaves no doubt that this handsome
frenchman/ creole marrried into and remained a good friend
of the Illinois Indians.
He also maneuvered with the skill of an experienced diplomat
as Illinois slipped from French to British to U.S. control.
His personal charm and diplomacy kept him from being jailed
as and enemy agent and won him powerful white and Indian allies.
There
are gaps in his early life. Du Sable was
born somewhere in the Caribbean in 1745 to a French sailor father
and an African slave women. Sent to Paris for an education,
he ended up in the Illinois Territory in 1779. With him came
twenty-three French art treasures and a desire to become a fur
trapper.
As a Frenchman in a land recently taken by the British, Du Sable
fell under suspicion. On July 4, 1779, a British officer complained
he "was much in the interest of the French" and Du
Sable was arrested for "treasonable intercourse with the
enemy." He managed to escape only to be arrested again.
This time he so impressed British Governer Patrick Sinclair
that Du Sable was released and for five years placed in charge
of a settlement on the St. Charles River.
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Du Sable
had no difficulty in persuading local Indians he was a friend.
It took much longer for white Chicagoans to recognize that Du
Sable was their city's founder.
Du Sable
entered the fur trading business and married a Potawatomi women
named Catherine . Their friends included a host of people, among
them Chief Pontiac and Daniel Boone.
One can only wonder what rough frontiersmen
and Indians thought when they first entered the Du Sable home
and saw its dislay of French works of art. the couple
also purchased and developed some eight hundred acresof land
in Peoria, but Chicagowas their great love and they lived there
for sixteen years.
Their trading post became prosperous and the Du Sables soon
had son and a daughter. Centrally located, their store and home
attracted many trappers and swelled to include a forty by twenty-foot
log cabin, a bakehouse, a diary, a smoke house, a poultry housel;
a workshop, a barn, and a mill. Du Sable made a living as a
trader, but was also a miller, a cooper, and a farmer.
The Du Sables became devout Catholics
and in 1798 were formally married in a church ceremony.
They were delighted when, two years later, their daughter married
another Frenchman in a Catholic ceremony.
Jean and Catherine , although doing well, sold off twenty one
of his French paintings, perhaps to finance his next career
move. He announced his candidacy for chief of a local Indian
Nation at Mackinac, but he lost the election.
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As
the couple grew older they decided to sell their Chicago home
and move in with their daughter's new family in St. Charles,
Missouri. For the property and houses alone, they received $1200,
and they also sold thirty head of cattle, thirty-eight pigs,
two mules, and many chickens.
When Catherine died in 1800, the founder of Chicago began to
worry about his future. He did not want to die penniless or
to be buried in any but a Catholic cemetary.
Though, in 1814 he did have to file bankruptcy
papers, he was laid to rest four years later in St. Charles
Borromero Roman Catholic Cemetary.
| Picture
and text taken from:
Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage
by William Loren Katz |
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