Jean Baptiste Point du Sable

Uncommon card · No. 109542

Jean Baptiste Point du Sable (French pronunciation: [ʒɑ̃ batist pwɛ̃ dy sɑbl]; also spelled Point de Sable, Point au Sable, Point Sable, Pointe DuSable, or Pointe du Sable; Around 1745 – August 28, 1818) is regarded as the founder of what would become Chicago, Illinois, United States. The site where he settled near the mouth of the Chicago River around the 1780s is memorialized as a National Historic Landmark, now located in Pioneer Court. Point du Sable was of Black African and possibly European descent, but little else is known of his life before 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 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...

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