In recent years, Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable has been known by many titles. He is called the first non-Native resident of the Chicagoland area, Chicago’s founder and Chicago’s Black “father.”

Most recently, Lakeshore Drive was renamed to commemorate him in 2021, but little is definitively known about his life. He was a man of African and French descent, possibly educated, who first settled in New Orleans before coming to Illinois, according to historical sources like the Field Museum and Lake Forest College professor Courtney Joseph.

The oral traditions surrounding DuSable place his birth on the island of St. Dominque near St. Marc, modern-day Haiti. However, confirmation of this has proved difficult, Joseph said. 

“That is, and can be, controversial for folks because his archive is largely lacking,” Joseph said.

Upon finding his way to Chicago, he encountered the local Indigenous nations, spending the majority of his time with the Potawatomi. He would marry one of them, a woman known as Kitihawa, who is also referred to as Catherine by some sources. 

From there, he established a trading outpost where he sold furs and possibly other goods. 

Charles Bethea, the Chicago History Museum’s director of curatorial affairs, said DuSable’s homestead included “a smokehouse for meats, a barn with livestock, a mill and an area to process and trade furs.” Documents from the museum archive also indicate that he had a bakehouse, a milkhouse, farming equipment and about 114 animals. 

He had two children, Suzanne and Jean Baptiste Jr, and would eventually retire to St. Charles, Missouri, where he died. This is where the certainty about his movements ends.

Every source examined or interviewed for this story says the documentation surrounding him is lacking, and thus, myths and stories have filled in the gaps. For instance, Joseph, at Lake Forest College, and archival sources say that DuSable was either considered or vied for the position of chief among the Potawatomi.

Other sources, like the late John F. Swenson, a corporate lawyer turned historian, stated that DuSable was not mixed race or educated but was a Louisiana-born slave who later won his freedom. What is agreed upon by everyone, however, is the nature of DuSable’s character.

“So one of my favorite archival things that is known about him is he’s described by a fellow merchant as a good-looking or handsome Negro who was a good host and had an affinity for drink,” Joseph said. “The other way, I would say that we know that he, at least in terms of personality, was personable is because of his ability to work with folks across various cultural and ethnic backgrounds.”

Starla Thompson, a historical scholar and a member of the Potawatomi tribe, further emphasized DuSable’s charisma by outlining his relationship with her people. 

According to her, it is unlikely that DuSable established himself without support from the locals, who acted as his trading partners. Additionally, by marrying one of their own, he effectively married his way into the tribe, a strategy numerous Frenchmen had employed before him, according to Thompson. 

“This is the time in the historical record that all these sovereigns are vying for power,” Thompson said. 

This included the English, Spaniards and Americans, all vying for a stake in a new land. The fact that DuSable and Kitihawa had land in Chicago and a trade center speaks volumes.

“Their ties had to be incredibly strong, and they were multicultural,” Thompson said.

Bethea and the Field Museum also paint DuSable as a man who knew how to transcend cultural boundaries, with Bethea calling him “a critical arbitrator among several groups of people during his lifetime.”

Others say DuSable was so well-liked and important that when the British imprisoned him for suspicion of being an American sympathizer, his wife sent a band of Ojibwe to demand his release. They released DuSable with a British officer reportedly saying he had “many friends who give him a good character,” according to an archived article in the St. Charles Post. 

“He turned from POW to a trusted British agent. That tells you this was a pretty remarkable guy,” Swenson, the late historian, told the St. Charles Post in 1996.

Today, DuSable stands as an important figure in Chicago’s Black community, especially among Haitian Americans. According to Joseph, the Haitian community in Chicago was instrumental in remembering DuSable’s story, one she says has fallen victim to historical erasure.

 “We know that one of the things that has survived orally is that Indigenous folk in the area say the first ‘white man’ in Chicago was (actually) a Black man …,” Joseph said. “That would have really been troubling and contradictory for early American authors, early American historians — early Americans, period — to claim Chicago was a city that was founded by a Black man.” 

Thompson says the same thing has happened to Kitihawa, so she has dedicated a good portion of her career and research to remembering her story. That, in turn, has helped uncover more about DuSable, as one cannot know Kitihawa without knowing him too.

“It wasn’t something that just escaped the historical record,” Thompson said. “We remember everything else. 

“Matter of fact, we create false narratives and histories in the United States historical record, but we just conveniently forget this person … It’s a part of the erasure that’s been done over time.”

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