Jean Baptiste Du Sable

Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable (1750 - 1818)Chicago’s history is brimful of characters; heroes and gangsters, artists and actors, arch-criminals and architects, poets, actors and saints that it is often overlooked that the acknowledged founder of the Second and Windy City was a man of color, courage and vision.Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable is a larger-than-life person in the history and mythology of Chicago and little is known of his origins and slightly more of his life. He was reputed to be born of parents of either African and French descent or from Haiti. What is known is that the handsome and educated Du Sable took part in the American Revolution as a colonial and was briefly imprisoned by the British in Michilimackinac in modern-day Michigan.Around 1790, Du Sable is said to have moved south around the Lake Michigan shore and settled at the mouth of a large river spilling out into the great lake. The area was called by the indigenous Potawatomi people Che-ca-gou, after a wild and pun