Things I Like - Chicago

Last week Saturday was a big day for Chicago – city officials dedicated a bronze bust honoring Jean Baptiste DuSable, the first non-native permanent settler of the area we now call Chicago. The bust is at the north side of the Chicago River and Michigan Avenue, a location already designated a national landmark representing DuSable’s settlement and the beginning of our city.

You may have noticed that I didn’t call DuSable the city’s founder. Or even the first non-native Chicagoan. That’s because no one can agree on much about DuSable other than he built and lived at the first permanent non-indigenous settlement in the area.

Here’s some of what the various sources* I read agree on:

1. DuSable was Haitian having arrived here via migration through New Orleans
2. He married a Potawatomie woman and had two children
3. He built and lived in the city’s first permanent settlement located at the mouth of the Chicago river
4. He was briefly incarcerated by the British during the revolutionary war because of his French connections and on suspicion of being a US spy
5. He was a prosperous trader and lived at the settlement for at least "two decades"
6. He sold his settlement to an associate of John Kinzie in 1800
7. He had a farm and lived in Peoria
8. He lived in St. Charles Missouri where he died in 1818

Here’s what they don’t know or don’t agree on:

1. His date of birth – somewhere between 1730 and 1745. That’s a 15 year range.
2. When he lived in Peoria – some indicate he was there in the mid 1770’s, others say he went in 1800 after selling the settlement. So when did he spend 20 years in Chicago??
3. When he spent 3 ½ years managing a woodlands area in southern Michigan for a British officers – it’s either before, during or after the War. I guess it's hard to keep track of things during a war.
4. And the big one, the year that he established the settlement – one source says 1779, another says 1781 and the DuSable Heritage Association doesn’t actually say although admits that there is evidence suggesting that DuSable was living in Chicago prior to 1779.

I’m sure that record keeping wasn’t as important in the late 1700’s as say, surviving, in what was basically the wilderness. But isn’t the year that DuSable built his settlement kind of an important date? Maybe if he had known that 230 years (give or take) after building the settlement, there would be a bust erected in his honor, Mr. DuSable would have kept a diary.

Btw, one of the other things no one is sure about is what DuSable actually looked like, there’s no known portrait of the guy. So that bust they just dedicated? It might or might not look like Jean Baptiste DuSable.

*Sources
Wikipedia
Chicago Historical Society – Encyclopedia of Chicago
DuSable Heritage Association
A View on Cities