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?"
"A major document of African American participation in the struggles of the Depression, The Negro in Illinois was produced by a special division of the Illinois Writers' Project, one of President Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration programs. The Federal Writers' Project helped to sustain "New Negro" artists during the 1930s and gave them a newfound social consciousness that is reflected in their writing.
Headed by Harlem Renaissance poet Arna Bontemps and white proletarian writer Jack Conroy, The Negro in Illinois employed major black writers living in Chicago during the 1930s, including Richard Wright, Margaret Walker, Katherine Dunham, Fenton Johnson, Frank Yerby, and Richard Durham. The authors chronicled the African American experience in Illinois from the beginnings of slavery to Lincoln's emancipation and the Great Migration, with individual chapters discussing various aspects of public and domestic life, recreation, politics, religion, literature, and performing arts. After the project was canceled in 1942, most of the writings went unpublished for more than half a century--until now."-
-Gabby
In those times the Indians used to say that the first “white” settler in Chicago was a Negro. They had in mind, of course, Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable, the man who built his home at the mouth of the Chicago River in 1779 and lived there for more than sixteen years. Du Sable, also known as Au Sable, Du Saible, De Sable, Sabre, and Le Grand Sabre, was born about 1750. No one knows just where. The tradition is that Du Sable was a Haitian Negro who visited New Orleans prior to his coming to Chicago, his intention being to establish a colony of free Negroes in the lake Region. It is possible that he had been educated in France. But another story is told by Milo M. Quaife in his book Checagou. He says,
The history of the Du Sable family can be traced to France in the early seventeenth century when the ancestral name was Dandonneau. After the migration of the Dandonneau family to Canada, the son of the emigrant was known as Dandonneau’s Sieur du Sable. This was in keeping with the custom of the times of adding a second name to the ances- tral name.” (La Salle, the explorer, whose real name was Robert Cheveler, is a familiar example of this custom.)
Succeeding generations of the family were known as Dandonneau and Du Sable, which names became prominent in the aristocracy of New France. Following the settling of Detroit, and subsequent migrations of the family to that city, the family name can be traced through the custom of the times, of the wife signing her name beside that of her husband on the church baptismal records. This custom left it possible for the children to be known by the name employed by the mother Dandonneau and Du Sable.
For many generations the name of Du Sable was prominently associated throughout the Northwest Territory with Indian Traders.
Thus several factors serve as connecting links between Jean Baptiste De Saible and the ancient Du Sable family of French ancestry: the similarity of the name, his occupation, and his location in the Northwest Territory. His patronage may be accounted for by a custom of the times: Negro and Indian slavery. “At Mackinac, as at Detroit, the baptismal register contains frequent records of both Indian and Negro slaves, and there is no lack of evidence that white men frequently cohabited with them. . . .” This account is substantiated by an existing document in which Point Du Sable referred to himself as a “free Negro.”
The first reliable record of Du Sable at Chicago is dated 1779. At that time the English had taken over the great Northwest from the French, and the American Revolutionary War was being waged. In the no man’s land of the Northwest the loyalty of almost everyone was under suspicion. In his official report of July 4, 1779, Colonel Arent de Peyster, British commandant at Michilimackinac, wrote: “Baptist Point de Saible, a handsome Negro, well educated and settled at Eschikagou but was much in the interest of the French.” Remembering Du Sable’s name and connections, his sympathy for the French is not inconceivable. De Peyster ordered Du Sable detained because of suspicion of “treasonable intercourse with the enemy,” but he left the vicinity and was later apprehended near what is now Michigan City. The report of the arresting officer, Lieutenant Thomas Bennet, throws some light on Du Sable’s personality and position in the community.
I had the Negro Baptiste Point de Saible brought prisoner from the River Du Chemin. Corporal Tascon who commanded the party very prudently prevented the Indians (English allies) from burning his home and doing him any injury. He secured his packs etc., which he had taken with him to Mackinac. The Negro, since his imprisonment, has in every way behaved in a manner becoming to a man of his station, and has many friends who give him a good character.
The charges of espionage against Du Sable were dropped and he was released. In fact, the British governor Patrick Sinclair, a man who was usually hard to please, was so impressed with Du Sable that he hired the former captive’s services for the next three or four years. In the summer of 1780 the vicinity of the “Pinery,” an establishment which Sinclair had developed on the St. Clair River just south of modern Port Huron, sent a delegation to Mackinac to complain of the manager. Sinclair complied with their request that Du Sable replace the incumbent, a Detroit Frenchman. Although Du Sable was in this location until 1784, his accounts with Detroit merchants, which have been preserved, show that he used Chicago as his “permanent” address. During the time he was not too busy to conduct his business and increase his land holdings. As early as 1780 he began developing a plot of eight hundred acres at Peoria, and in 1783 he satisfactorily proved his ownership to a federal agency.
In 1784 Du Sable returned to Chicago, and during the sixteen years he lived there his profits and influence increased. Hugh Howard, the agent of a Detroit merchant, journeyed to Chicago with several Canadian boatmen in the spring of 1790. The party stopped at Du Sable’s place and on May 10 exchanged their canoe for a “pirogue.” They also obtained 41 pounds of flour, 29 pounds of pork, and a supply of baked bread for which they traded 13 yards of valuable cotton cloth. Evidently Du Sable’s establishment was of such size that it could supply these unexpected demands for goods.
In 1800 Du Sable’s trading post consisted of a house forty feet by twenty two feet, a bake house, dairy, smoke house, poultry house, work shop, stable, barn, and horse mill. The presence of the mill indicates that he raised his own wheat, and the large number of tools suggests that he produced his own lumber. To care for his stock and help him in his business of trading, Du Sable must have had a large number of employees. He carried on a lively trade and the popular conception that his home was just a “cabin” is not borne out by the records.
Du Sable’s wife was a Pottawatomie Indian named Catherine, and on October 27, 1788, their union, consummated years before, was legalized at Cahokia by a Catholic priest stationed there. Two years after her parents’ formal marriage, their daughter Suzanne was married to Jean Baptiste Pelletier. They had a daughter, Eulalie, who was born at Chicago on October 8, 1796. Du Sable also had a son, Jean Baptiste Point, Jr.
Du Sable was a typical pioneer; he was a trader, cooper, husbandman, and miller not to mention a good many other occupations which the wilderness required. He is described as being “about six feet tall,” of commanding appearance, “handsome,” “venerable” in his old age, and “of very pleasant countenance.” Some accounts say that he was “well educated,” others that he could only “make his mark.” The British greeted his arrival with a salute of cannons when he came to Mackinac in 1796, as the leader of a band of Indians in birch canoes. Jacques Clamorgan, an influential Spaniard of St. Louis, was his friend.
Du Sable was also a lover of art. In the inventory of 1800 two pictures were listed. Years earlier a list of the personal effects of Du Sable which appeared in the Day Book of James May of Detroit included twenty-three pictures. Some of the titles give an indication of his taste: Lady Strafford, Lady Fortesque, The King and the Rain, The Magician, Love and Desire (of The Struggle). This collection, modest though it may seem by modern museum standards, was unusual indeed in the primitive and almost isolated country in which Du Sable lived.
In May of 1800 Du Sable sold out to Jean La Lime of St. Joseph. John Kinzie and William Burnett witnessed the transaction, “and the bill of sale, written in French, was recorded in the Wayne County Building in Detroit.” La Lime paid 6,000 livres, about $1,200 for the property. Why Du Sable sold his flourishing business and left Chicago is a mystery. Per- haps the region was becoming too “crowded”; perhaps he was seized with wanderlust. Perhaps disappointment was the cause, for Du Sable had recently failed to win election as chief of the surrounding Indian Tribes. Whatever the reason, Du Sable left his trading post on the shores of Lake Michigan, never to return. Little is known of him after his departure.
In December 1800, Point Du Sable was a plaintiff in a case concerning some horses stolen by Indians and seen by him in the vicinity of Peoria. The case was brought to court in St. Clair County, Illinois, and the following March was transferred to the Indiana Supreme Court.
The years from 1805 to 1814 he spent in and about St. Charles, Missouri, where his son lived. Records of real estate negotiations document this fact. In June 1813, in return for her promise to care for him and to bury him in the Catholic Cemetery at St. Charles, Point Du Sable transferred a house, lot and other property in St. Charles to Eulalie Barode, his granddaughter, wife of Michael Derais. These requests were probably not carried out. It is uncertain whether filial neglect or unavoidable circumstances is the explanation. At any rate, Du Sable “applied for the benefit of the law relative to insolvents” on October 10, 1814. He died soon thereafter.
DOLINAR, BRIAN, editor. The Negro in Illinois: The WPA Papers. University of Illinois Press, 2013.
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