Haitian-born ‘du Sable’ Point to Chicago.

Point du Sable a Haitian born is the Black Founder of Chicago.

Point du Sable was a frontier trader, trapper and farmer is generally regarded as the first resident of what is now Chicago, Illinois. There is very little definite information on DuSable’s past. It is believed by some historians that he was born free around 1745 in St. Marc, Saint-Dominique (Haiti).

DuSable arrived in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1765 whereupon he learned the colony had become a Spanish possession. Having lost his identification papers and been injured on the voyage to New Orleans, DuSable was almost enslaved. French Jesuit priests protected him until he was healthy enough to travel. DuSable migrated north, up the Mississippi River, later settling in an area near present-day Peoria, Illinois. He also lived in what is now Michigan and Indiana as well during the 1770s. In 1779 DuSable was arrested at what is now Michigan City, Indiana by British troops who considered him a spy and was imprisoned briefly at Fort Michilimackinac before being released to manage a tract of woodlands claimed by British Lt.Patrick Sinclair on the St. Clair River in Eastern Michigan. Sometime in the late 1770s DuSable married a Pottawatomie Indian woman, Kitihawa who was also called Catherine in a traditional Pottawatomie ceremony. The couple had a daughter, Susanne, and a son, Jean. They married again in a Catholic ceremony in Cahokia on the Mississippi River on October 27, 1788.

https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/dusable-jean-baptiste-point-1745-1818/

Point du Sable is first recorded as living at the mouth of the Chicago River in a trader’s journal of early 1790. By then he had established an extensive and prosperous trading settlement in what later became the City of Chicago. He sold his Chicago River property in 1800 and moved to the port of St. Charles, where he was licensed to run a ferry across the Missouri River. Point du Sable’s successful role in developing the Chicago River settlement was little recognized until the mid-20th century.

Point du Sable was of African descent, but little else is known of his early life prior to the 1770s. During his career, the areas where he settled and traded around the Great Lakes and in the Illinois Country changed hands several times between France, Britain, Spain and the United States. Described as handsome and well-educated, Point du Sable married a Potawatomi Native American woman, Kitihawa, and they had two children. In 1779, during the American Revolutionary War, he was arrested by the British on suspicion of being an American Patriot sympathizer. In the early 1780s, he worked for the British lieutenant-governor of Michilimackinac on an estate at what is now St. Clair, Michigan.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Baptiste_Point_du_Sable