Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, the first non-native permanent settler of what is now Chicago, is a man shrouded in mystery. For every fact we know about him, there are dozens of details lost to history. Instead of aggregating his stories into one narrative, I think that dealing with the gaps in history teach us something valuable. So I've shared several different DuSable origin stories in the series: "Who was DuSable?"
Checagou by Milo M. Quaife. This text fist published in 1933 is the first comprehensive text to take up the land that we now know as Chicago in the time between Maquette and Joliet's expedition and the founding of For dearborn. This text mostly thinks with and about the three native populations who warred over the area in the 17th and 18th centuries but tucked neatly into the third chapter is the first published record of our hero. This section is a little longer, but in my opinion totally worth the read!
-Gabby
THE FIRST CITIZEN OF CHICAGO Illinois to the southward, whom La Salle had made the firm allies of the French. For many years after La Salle's death Tonty had maintained his fortress at Starved Rock, which served as a center of protection to the Illinois. Now, however, he abandoned it, to share in the newer colonizing activities at the mouth of the Mississippi, to which his last years were devoted. The Illinois, pressed by the Foxes and the Iroquois, now abandoned their villages along the Illi nois River, to establish new ones on the Mississippi at and below St. Louis. "May God grant that the road from Chi- cagwa to the Strait [Lake Peoria] be not closed," wrote Father Gravier in 1701. The concern of the fathers was for the safety of their missions on the Illinois, which could not continue if the communication with Quebec, upon which they depended for their support, were suspended. For al most half a century the Foxes laughed to scorn the efforts of the French to rule the western country. They closed the "Chicagwa Road" to the Mississippi, as they had formerly closed the Fox-Wisconsin route, and for seventy-five years, save for certain infrequent exceptions, the history of Chi cago became a blank. Then a century after the French explorers had first put it on the map civilization returned to the banks of the Chicago, this time for a permanent stay. The question as to who was the first permanent settler of Chicago cannot be answered with entire precision. We have already seen that Marquette was here for several weeks in 1674-75, and Andre Eno and Jean Filatreau for several months in 1683. Another Frenchman who lived at Chicago for several years in this early period was the Sieur de Liette, a relative of Henry Tonty, who, a mere youth, joined that leader at Fort St. Louis in 1687, an d remained in Illinois for fifteen years thereafter. He subsequently wrote a vivid memoir of the Illinois country, and of his sojourn there, in which he states that for four consecutive years he was stationed at the more important of the two Miami villages at Chicago. The precise years of his resi dence here are not identified, but they would seem to have fallen within the decade 1692-1702. Quite possibly De Li- ette was one of the Frenchmen whose presence here in 1698 is so casually mentioned by Father St. Cosme. That vari ous traders and squawmen came and went, and tarried at Chicago for longer or shorter periods, during the next seventy-five years, is a reasonable presumption. Certain reports, indeed, of such residence here, have been handed down from the eighteenth century. One was recorded by Governor Reynolds, who knew at Cahokia a century or so ago an aged Frenchwoman who was said to have resided, with her husband, for several years at Chicago about the year 1765. Another early resident, the print of whose remembrance has all but vanished, was the trader Guary or Guillory. Gurdon S. Hubbard, who first visited Chicago as a young fur-trade apprentice in 1818, was told by Antoine des Champs, then a veteran in the Illinois River fur trade, that Guary had lived at Chicago as early as 1778, and the remains of a cornfield cultivated by him were pointed out to Hubbard. Although this story rests on oral tradition, supporting evidence is not wanting. The government ex ploring expedition of Major Stephen H. Long passed through Chicago in 1823, and its historian designates the north branch as "Gary River." Since the writer was a profes sor in the University of Pennsylvania, with no local knowl edge of Chicago, some informant here must have told him that this was the name of the river. The trader whose fame was thus celebrated was evidently a member of the Guil- lory (sometimes spelled Guyari) family of Mackinac. Jo seph Guillory came from Montreal to that place prior to 1747, in which year he married Louise Bolon there. The Bolons were long residents of St. Joseph, and Jean Bap- tiste Guillory, who was probably a son of Joseph, was en gaged in trade at both St. Joseph and the Illinois at the time of the American Revolution. In 1778 he was licensed to convey two canoe-loads of goods to "Illinois via St. Joseph"; the next year he became one of the proprietors of the general store at Mackinac; and a document of July 21, 1781, shows that he had been operating at St. Joseph in 1779-80. These facts, together with others which might be recited, suggest the probability that the trader whose story the aged Des Champs reported to Hubbard was Jean Bap- tiste Guillory, and inspire the hope that more definite rec ord concerning this early settler of Chicago may some time be found. Lacking such record, however, the title belongs to Jean Baptiste Point Sable, whose story, for the most part, is here for the first time recorded in print. Of the place and date of his birth, as of the names of his parents, we have no certain information, and our first definite record pertains to the summer of 1779. Yet the name of Du Sable (De Sable, Point de Sable, etc.) is one of ancient and respecta ble origin in New France, and there is strong reason for be lieving that on his father's side he was a descendant of this family. Its story leads back to sunny France in the time of the successor of King Henry IV of glorious memory. In the early years of the seventeenth century there lived in the city of Bourges Jacques Dandonneau and his wife Isabella. Bourges is the Avaricum of ancient Gaul, stormed by Julius Caesar in the year A.D. 52. From the days when it served as the capital of the race of the Biturigi until the present time it has continued to be a center of much im portance. For centuries it was the seat of a bishopric, and here was constructed during the later Middle Ages one of the great cathedrals which stand as the chief monuments of Gothic civilization. In recent decades Bourges has been the seat of great arsenals and cannon foundries, maintained by the French government as the heart of the nation's de fense. To Jacques and Isabella Dandonneau of Bourges in the year 1627 was born a son, to whom the fond parents gave the name Pierre. At a subsequent date the family migrated to Canada, where in due time Pierre Dandonneau married Frangoise Jobin. The couple lived for a time at Three Riv ers, one of the three chief settlements of Canada, but they later removed to the newer settlement of Champlain, where Pierre Dandonneau became a leading citizen, and where he died at some date prior to July, 1702. The connection of Point Sable with the Dandonneau family must now be explained. It is a matter of common knowledge that in New France men frequently acquired, in addition to their ancestral name, a second one by which they were commonly known, and that succeeding genera tions might lose the original family name altogether, and be known only by the acquired one. An illustration of this custom familiar to all Chicagoans is afforded by the ex plorer and empire builder, La Salle, whose real name was Robert Cavelier. In the case of the Dandonneau family, Jacques, the ori ginal emigrant to Canada, boasted only the family name; but Pierre (who married Frangoise Jobin) acquired the title "Sieur du Sable/ 1 and his descendants were known by the two names of Dandonneau and Du Sable. The family became a notable one in Canada, and if time and space per mitted it would be easy to show that among its members were numbered an imposing proportion of the aristocracy of New France. Passing over its story in Lower Canada, however, and turning our attention to the upper country, we find it honorably represented in the settlement of infant Detroit. When Cadillac founded that city in 1701, he was accompanied thither by Surgeon Henry Lamarre, other wise known as Belisle, who thereby heads the list of De troit physicians. His father was a druggist in the city of Augurs, France, and the son was acquainted with drugs from his boyhood days. He studied medicine, and migrated to Canada prior to 1690, in which year he was married at Quebec. His wife had died about the time of his removal to Detroit, and on November 29, 1705, he married at Champlain a second wife, in the person of Frangoise Dan donneau, daughter of Pierre Dandonneau, Sieur du Sable. She accompanied her husband to his Detroit station, where she lived until her death on May 8,1711. The surgeon and his wife were prominent members of the little Detroit com munity, and were frequently witnesses at weddings and sponsors at baptisms. On these occasions Mme Belisle signed the church records in a legible hand instead of mak ing her mark; invariably, too, she signed, beside her hus band's name of Belisle, her own as Dandonneau. Soon after her death Cadillac was deposed from the command of De troit, and with him went also Belisle, to spend the re mainder of his life in Canada. Mme Belisle left no children to perpetuate the family name. More important to our present story, therefore, is another Du Sable who early came into the Northwest and there became the forerunner of a notable and numerous line of descendants. Angelique Dandonneau was a grand daughter of Pierre Dandonneau of Champlain. On Octo ber 13, 1704, she married at Montreal an elderly wood- carver, Charles Chaboillez. He died a few years later, but not before Angelique had presented him with three chil dren. On February 2, 1710, she married Ignace Jean, who was also called Vien, and soon thereafter the couple came west to Mackinac. Here they resided many years, and chil dren born to them were baptized in March, 1714, and June, 1726. It is significant to note that in the earlier of these baptisms the mother signed the church record not as Dan donneau or as Jean, but simply as "Angelique du Sable." The couple later removed to Detroit, where in 1745 Cath erine (the daughter born in 1726) married Jacques St. Aubin, whose memory is preserved in the name of one of Detroit's oldest streets. Ignace Vien (or Jean) was buried here in October, 1751, and his wife, Angelique du Sable, on August 11, 1764. We return to the children of her first marriage with Charles Chaboillez. They had attained maturity before the parental removal to Detroit, and their careers are associat ed with Mackinac rather than with the latter place. We need take note of only one of them, who bore his father's name. He spent his entire life at Mackinac, engaged in the Indian trade. In September, 1735, he married Marie Anne Chevalier, and by the union became allied with a family which for several generations figured prominently in the annals of Mackinac and St. Joseph. He died in 1757, still in the prime of life. Already, however, he had accumulated a fortune and a family of nine children, six of whom were sons. All but one of them followed their father's calling, the Indian trade, in which they achieved notable success. In the period of revolutionary warfare, all remained loyal to the King. The careers of all are worthy of separate men tion, but we will pause to note only that of the oldest brother, who bore his father's name. For many years his field of activity was the Far Northwest, and at the time of the Lewis and Clark expedition he was in charge of the trade of the Assiniboin River. He was one of but two French Canadians who were admitted to partnerships in the famous North West Company of Montreal. One of his daughters married Simon McTavish, one of the most noted of the fur- trade barons of the great company, while a second married Roderick Mackenzie, cousin and able lieutenant of the famous explorer, Sir Alexander Mackenzie. We have thus established that the Dandonneau or Du Sable family figured prominently in the Indian trade of the Northwest for generations, and from an early day had numerous representatives at Detroit, Mackinac, and St. Joseph. In view of the easy way in which the French- Canadian families adopted alternative names, any one of the numerous posterity of Angelique du Sable, wife (suc cessively) of Charles Chaboillez and of Ignace Jean, might be familiarly known by the ancestral cognomen of Du Sable, which, as we have seen, Angelique herself commonly employed. To account for the probable parentage of Chi cago's first settler, it only remains to adduce one other cus tom of the time, the existence everywhere in the western country of negro and Indian slavery. The church registers of Detroit and Mackinac contain the baptismal and other vital records of scores of slaves. At both Detroit and Chi- cago negroes continued to be held in slavery until after the War of 1 8 1 2. The wife of Captain Heald of Fort Dearborn, for example, had a slave woman who was killed in the mas sacre of 1812. At Mackinac, as at Detroit, the baptismal register contains frequent record of both Indian and negro slaves, and there is no lack of evidence that white men frequently cohabited with them. Point Sable himself, in documents still existing, described himself as a "free ne gro/' In the absence of any specific record concerning his parentage, we can only resort to speculation, based on the reasonable probabilities of the case. Evidently he was "base born," and his mother was probably a slave. His oc cupation and place of residence, his ability and good repute with his contemporaries, his French name and speech all support the conclusion that he was, on his father's side, a member of the ancient and widespread family of Dandon- neau dit Du Sable, one of the most notable in the annals of Canada and of the Northwest. The ramifications of the fur trade were far flung, and those engaged in it were subject to frequent changes of residence. Our first definite documented knowledge of Point Sable belongs to the year 1779, "when he had a house and trading establishment at present-day Michigan City. It was a period of great confusion in the western country, occasioned by the conflict between George Rogers Clark and his British opponents. Point Sable found himself on the borderline between the hostile forces, and in midsum mer, 1779, a corporal's guard of soldiers appeared at Michi gan City and placed him under arrest. The capacity to win the confidence of men of ability and character is in itself an indication of the possession of these qualities. Point Sable was arrested in time of war and on suspicion of treasonable intercourse with the enemy, yet his captor. Lieutenant Bennett, reported to his superior, Major de Peyster, that he had behaved "in every respect" as became a man in his situation, adding that he "has many friends who give him a good character." He was car ried a prisoner to Mackinac and almost coincident with his arrival, De Peyster was transferred to the command of Detroit, the vacancy at Mackinac being filled by the ap pointment of Lieutenant-Governor Patrick Sinclair. The new governor was a man of considerable ability, who ul timately attained the rank of lieutenant general in the British army. His administration at Mackinac was a stormy one, however, and in its course he became em broiled with almost every servant of the King in this re gion. Yet Point Sable succeeded, despite the heavy handi cap of his unfavorable introduction, in winning the com plete confidence of Governor Sinclair. It was to this success that Point Sable owed his employ ment during the next three or four years. Some time be fore coming to Mackinac, Sinclair had developed a con siderable establishment on the St. Clair River, a few miles south of modern Port Huron, Michigan. In charge of this was a Detroit Frenchman, Francois Bellecour. For some reason the latter's conduct aroused the displeasure of the Indians of the region, and in the summer of 1780 a con siderable delegation proceeded to Mackinac, where they laid their complaint before the governor and asked that Bellecour be dismissed and Point Sable be placed in charge. Sinclair complied with this request, and from this time until the spring of 1784 Point Sable was more or less con tinuously at this place. The "Pinery" (as Sinclair's estab lishment was called) was within the commercial orbit of Detroit's merchants, and thus it chances that certain ac count-books of the latter, preserved in the Detroit Public Library, contain entries which shed incidental light upon the activities of Point Sable. Two of these in particular are of importance to our story. One is an account with Point Sable in the ledger of Thomas Smith. The account is head ed "J ean Bte. Point au Sable living at Chicago," and the entries run from December 25, 1782, to April 10, 1783. Al though this seems to indicate that Point Sable was living at Chicago in 1782-83, other records show him to have been at the Pinery at this time, and point to 1784 as the year of his removal to Chicago. We shall see presently that he terminated his stay here in 1800. Whether it began in 1784 or a year earlier, the period is amply long to justify the title of permanent resident of Chicago. Another well-known Detroit merchant who had dealings with Point Sable while at his St. Clair River station was James May, near the end of whose daybook for 1784 is a partial memorandum of Point Sable's personal effects. The lower half of the page is missing; the entries on the portion still remaining are chiefly of pictures, which, for some rea son not stated, had been intrusted to May's custody. The inventory discloses that at his wilderness station he had twenty-three pictures. The schedule of them lists such titles as Lady Strafford, Lady Fortescue, the King and Rain, the Magician, and Love and Desire, or the Struggle. Two explanations of this surprising inventory may be sug gested: one, that the pictures were the property of the cul tured Sinclair, whose agent Point Sable was; the other, that they were Point Sable's own property, as the record actu ally represents them to have been. Colonel de Peyster, commandant at Mackinac and Detroit during the Revolu- tion, has recorded that Point Sable was "well educated/* The possession of the pictures lends support to this state ment, although from some other sources we know that his penmanship was limited to writing his initials. From the years of Point Sable's residence at Chicago two significant documents have come down to us, both of them . preserved in Detroit. In the early spring of 1790 William Robertson of Detroit sent his clerk, Hugh Reward, on a business mission to the Illinois country. Heward kept a detailed journal of his voyage, and its contents read strangely enough at the present day. He had several Cana dian boatmen to assist him, and the entire journey was made by water. The route taken led down the Detroit Riv er to Lake Erie, up the Huron to the headwaters of Grand River, and down the latter stream to Lake Michigan, at Grand Haven, thence around the lake shore to Chicago, and down the Des Plaines and Illinois to the Mississippi. The voyagers reached Chicago May 10, forty-eight days out from Detroit. Here they exchanged their canoe for a perogue belonging to Point Sable, and procured also a sup ply of flour, bread, and pork from him. The journal estab lishes the fact of his residence here in 1790, and discloses his ability to meet an unexpected demand for considerable quantities of flour, bread, and pork to which items we shall presently return. In May, 1 800, Point Sable sold his Chicago property to Jean la Lime of St. Joseph. Witnesses to the transaction were the St. Joseph traders, Burnet and Kinzie, and short ly following its completion the bill of sale was carried to Detroit for recording, and here in the Wayne County Building it may still be seen. Written in French, it is a document of peculiar interest; it sheds a flood of light upon the character and mode of life of Point Sable, and it gives the most detailed and authentic picture in existence of the storied Kinzie home., for whose creation Point Sable was responsible. Readers of Mrs. Juliette Kinzie's book, Wau Bun, are familiar with her description of the family "mansion/' which stood on the north bank of the river directly facing the fort, "a long, low building, with a piazza extending along its front, a range of four or five rooms." The bill of sale of 1800 gives much precise information about Point Sable's domestic establishment. Besides the "mansion," described by Mrs. Kinzie (22 by 40 feet in size), there were numerous outbuildings: two barns, 24 by 30 and 28 by 40 feet, respectively; a horsemill, 24 by 36 feet; a bakehouse, 1 8 by 20 feet; a poultry-house, a workshop, a dairy, and a smokehouse, each of smaller dimensions. The equipment included 8 axes, several saws, 7 scythes, 8 sickles, 3 carts, and a plow. There were 2 mules, 30 head of full-grown cattle, 2 calves, 28 hogs, and 44 hens. A mo ment's reflection will suffice to show that these figures indi cate an extensive civilized establishment. One does not build and equip a mill and a bakehouse unless he has grain to grind and flour to bake. Corn might be bought from the Indians, but to have wheat for his mill Point Sable must have raised it himself. This, and the cutting of hay for his live stock, explains the use to which his seven scythes and eight sickles were put. We are now ready to perceive the significance of Point Sable's transaction with Hugh He- ward, his chance visitor of 1790. Evidently the wheatfield, the mill, and the bakehouse had all been developed prior to that year. Evidently, too, Point Sable produced the lumber used in the erection of his buildings: 8 axes, i plank saw, i large ripsaw, I crosscut saw with 7-inch blade, I cooper's handsaw, and a kit of carpenter's tools, tell their own story. Noticeable in this connection is the inventory item "i horse stable all the wood for a barn/' This can only mean that prior to selling his establishment Point Sable had planned to erect a third stable, and had already manufactured the lumber for it. Within the house, two items attract our particular at tention, a large number of copper kettles (eleven in all), and a cabinet of French walnut, 8 by 4 feet, with four glass doors. Was this manufactured at Chicago, or was it brought here from some point closer to civilization by the tedious process of bateau transportation? And to what use did the owner put it? Although Colonel de Peyster tells us that Point Sable was "well educated/ 7 no mention of the ownership of books has been found. Yet the present in ventory contains no item of chinaware to require the set ting of a French walnut cabinet with four glass doors. The problem of its use must be left unsolved. In passing, it may be noted that the many pictures owned at the Pinery seem never to have been brought to Chicago; the inventory of 1 800 lists but two. Two other considerations press upon our attention at this point. The existence of so large an establishment im plies the presence of a considerable number of workers to maintain it; such items as 8 axes, 7 scythes, and 8 sickles are significant in this connection. Point Sable was a trader, and must frequently have been absent from his home. When there he can hardly have found time to indulge in regular manual labor. Both in the conduct of his trading operations and in the maintenance of his domestic estab lishment he must have had a considerable number of em- ployees. Evidently there were Frenchmen in his employ whose names are preserved on no list of early Chicagoans that has come down to us. The other consideration brings us to the question of Point Sable's family. The establishment he maintained ob viously required a housekeeper, and Point Sable had not neglected to procure one. On October 27, 1788, he married at Cahokia an Indian woman named Catherine. This was but a formal celebration, however, of a union consum mated years before. Such a custom was common in the wilderness, where years might pass without the visit of a priest, and where civil magistrates were commonly non existent. Two years after the formal marriage of Point Sa ble to Catherine, their daughter, Susanne, was married at Cahokia to Jean Baptiste Pelletier, and in this connection several interesting facts appear. She is described in the marriage register as the natural child of Point Sable and an Indian woman. On October 7, 1799, Eulalie, a daughter of Jean Baptiste Pelletier and Susanne Point Sable, was bap tized, and the record states that she was born October 8, 1796, and that the parents were living at Chicago. Catholic doctrine demands the prompt baptism of infants, and in practice the ceremony is often performed within a few hours after birth. The delay of three years in the case of little Eulalie indicates that it had not been practicable for the parents to convey her three-hundred miles to Cahokia until the autumn of 1799. Since the couple were living at Chicago at this time, it is a probable supposition that they had been doing so from the time of their marriage in 1790. It may reasonably be assumed, also, that Susanne Point Sable was not less than sixteen years old when she became a bride. With this starting-point, we may conclude that Point Sable himself was born not later than the year [1745] Besides his daughter, Susanne, Point Sable had a son, also named Jean Baptiste, who, it is reasonable to pre sume, lived at Chicago during the years of his father's resi dence here. At any rate they were closely associated dur ing the subsequent years in Missouri, until the death of the younger man in 1814. Their names occur in various docu ments which have been preserved, and their identity ren ders it impossible at times to know whether the senior or the junior Point Sable is the person in question. In 1812, for example, Point Sable accompanied a trading expedi tion dispatched by Manuel Lisa to the Mandan tribe on the Upper Missouri. Many of the expedition were killed by the natives, and the survivors reached St. Louis in the early summer of 1813. Considerations of age render it probable that it was Point Sable, Jr., rather than the Chi cago settler, who went on this expedition, but the record left us does not itself enable us to determine the point. Why Point Sable in 1800 terminated his long career of prosperity at Chicago is a matter of uncertainty. Mrs. Kin- zie, who in Wau Bun supplies a brief and inaccurate state ment concerning his career, states that he went to Peoria to live with his friend Glamorgan, "another St. Domingo negro," and suggests that disgust over his inability to gain the chieftainship of the Chicago Potawatomi was the cause of his removal. That Point Sable had been at Peoria at a much earlier date is proved by the fact that the United States commissioners who investigated the private-land claims of the French settlers in the Northwest were con vinced that he had cultivated a farm at Peoria prior to 1780, and on the strength of this evidence he was awarded eight-hundred acres of land there. But Jacques Glamorgan was not a Peorian, nor was he a San Domingo negro. On the contrary,he was a resident of St. Louis., and was long one of the most enterprising merchants of Spanish Louisiana. He stood high in the favor of the Spanish government, and years before the exploration of Lewis and Clark he had taken a leading part in exploring the Upper Missouri and in combating the British traders in that region.- After the transfer of Louisiana to the United States, he became one of the first judges of the Court of Common Pleas at St. Louis. If Point Sable was his intimate friend, the fact is much to the credit of our Chicago settler, affording one more indication of his ability to win the confidence of men of responsible station in life. Some scattering legal documents shed considerable light upon Point Sable's career after his departure from Chicago. In December, 1801,, he was plaintiff in a case in the Court of Common Pleas of St. Clair County, Illinois, which was transferred the following March to the Indiana Supreme Court. In June, 1801, he testified concerning some horses which had been stolen by Indians, and the record implies (although it does not clearly state) that he had seen the horses in the vicinity of Peoria. A record of February 10, 1814, concerning the title to a piece of real estate in St. Charles, Missouri, discloses that Point Sable, Jr., was then residing in that place. Another of April 6, 1825, respecting the title to a house and lot in St. Charles certifies that about the year 1 805 the property had been sold to Point Sable, and had been occupied and cultivated since that time. From this time until June, 1813, several transfers of property in the city and county of St. Charles were made jointly by the elder and the younger Point Sable. The lat- ter died shortly prior to February 17, 1814, on which date one Henry High was appointed administrator of his estate. Five months later. High was removed and Point Sable, Sr., was appointed in his stead. About this time we encounter two documents of mourn ful significance to our story. In June, 1813, Point Sable conveyed a house and lot in St. Charles, together with other property of various kinds, to Eulalia Baroda, wife of Michael Derais, the consideration being her promise to care for him, and to bury him in the Catholic cemetery at St. Charles. The nature of the transaction, taken with the identity of name, justifies the inference that Mrs. Derais was none other than Point Sable's granddaughter, the little Eulalie who was born at Chicago on October 8, 1796, and whose infant years were passed in the rambling home of Point Sable on the north bank of the river. The other document, dated September 14, 1814, recites that Point Sable, now imprisoned in the St. Charles jail, proposed on October 10 to apply to the court for permis sion to take the benefit of the laws concerning insolvent debtors; for the information of his creditors this notice is published. Henceforth the records are silent concerning Point Sable. Whether Granddaughter Eulalie fulfilled her promise to care for him in his declining years, and whether she buried him in the St. Charles Catholic Cemetery, are questions to which we have found no answer. Too long have Chicagoans regarded their first citizen with feelings mingled of levity and contempt. The sober historical record, pieced together from many divergent sources, discloses him as a man in whom the modern city may take legitimate pride. Base-born he probably was, but in his veins coursed the best blood of New France. If one chooses to reject my conclusion concerning his paternity, the alternative then remains that from the humblest con ceivable origin Point Sable achieved; unaided, a position of commercial importance and assured respectability. He was enterprising and industrious, he inspired friendships which were not shaken by fortune's frown, and he com manded the confidence of men in responsible governmental and commercial stations. He was a true pioneer of civiliza tion, leader of the unending procession of Chicago's swarm ing millions. Even in his mixed blood he truly represented the future city, for where else on earth is a greater con glomeration of races and breeds assembled together? His story is one with that of early Chicago.
Quaife, Milo Milton. Checagou; from Indian Wigwam to Modern City, 1673-1835. The University of Chicago Press, 1933.
Comentarios