Campaign to Give Du Sable His Due By Annan Boodram New York, July 2002: It's time to give du Sable his due. That's what supporters of Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable said Saturday (June 22) as they rallied along the Chicago River near where the Haitian-born immigrant built a home and trading post after he became the first settler to arrive in what would become Chicago. Records do not agree on the precise spelling of his name and it may be found variously as Pointe de Sable, Au Sable, Point Sable, Sabre and Pointe de Saible. Du Sable, who appears to have been a man of good taste and refinement, was a husbandman, a carpenter, a cooper, a miller, and probably a distiller. In Du Sable's home the first marriage in Chicago was performed, the first election was held, and the first court handed down justice. The religion of the first Chicagoan was Catholic and every contemporary report about Du Sable describes him as a man of substance who started the story of Chicago as well as the story of the African American in Chicago. Now the community leaders and history enthusiasts want du Sable formally honored every March 4 as Chicago's founder when the city celebrates its birthday. Du Sable has history on his side but until recent years at least, apparently lacked the support to leave his name as widely on Chicago's street map. Just two tiny streets were named for du Sable--Jean Avenue, a two-block long street on the West Side, and the oddly named De Saible Street, a private, blocklong South Side street. Du Sable, though, did get a high school named in his honor, as well as the DuSable Museum, the nation's first African-American history museum, and Du Sable Harbor. A new park at the mouth of the Chicago River also bears his name, but the site is tainted with toxic waste that needs to be cleaned up before it can be used for recreation. A statue also is being planned in his honor. Du Sable was said to have been born a free Black in St. Marc, Saint Dominique (Haiti). He was the son of a French mariner and an African-born slave mother. His father took him to France to be educated. In about 1773 he made his way up the Mississippi to the Chicago area. He established a trading post on the North Bank of the Chicago River mouth, at what would later become Peoria. His business prospered and became the center of a permanent Chicago settlement. His trading post was the main supply station for White trappers, traders, les coureurs des bois and the natives. Du Sable made many trips to Canada to bring back furs and it was reported that he was very closely associated with the French in New France. His loyalty to the French and the Americans led to his arrest in 1779 by the British, who took him to Fort Mackinac. From 1780 to 1783 or 1784 he managed for his captors a trading post called the Pinery on the St. Clair River in present-day Michigan, after which he returned to the site of Chicago. By 1790 Du Sable's establishment there had become an important link in the region's fur and grain trade. In 1800 he sold out and moved to Missouri, where he continued as a farmer and trader until his death. His 20-year residence on the shores of Lake Michigan had established his title as Father of Chicago. But his admirers say du Sable remains underappreciated. "He is the founder and the reason we exist,'' said Antoinette Wright, president of the DuSable Museum of African American History. "He really put an imprint on it, but he wasn't recognized for it.'' For years, du Sable was overshadowed in the history books and in local honors--including streets and statues named and created in his honor--by later-arriving, white settlers whose names are still familiar in the city: Hubbard, Kinzie, Wentworth. "It was the climate of the day,'' Wright said. It was only in 1999 that city officials formally recognized du Sable as Chicago's founder--almost 225 years after he and his family arrived at the unsettled, fertile land that would later become the city. Du Sable, who was married to a Potawatomi Indian woman by the name of Kittihawa (Catherine), presided over a frontier settlement that in some ways mirrored the diversity found in the sprawling city that exists today. His settlement welcomed American Indians as well as Canadians, British, French and Americans. "There was an incredible fusion of cultures and languages,'' said Russell Lewis, director of collections at the Chicago Historical Society. Despite the existence of slavery in the United States, du Sable was the acknowledged leader of the settlement. "He came here, and he was a leader while others were enslaved,'' said Haroon Rashid, founder of Friends of du Sable, a community group. Still, much remains a mystery about du Sable, including when he arrived in the Chicago area, as well as his reasons for selling his property around 1800 and moving away from the region. Even his birthday is unknown, although he is believed to have been born about 1745. "He's an enigma. There's a lot we don't know about him,'' Lewis said. But that lack of knowledge in some ways adds to his appeal, Lewis said. Historians and history buffs are still trying to fill in the gaps about du Sable, which keeps alive interest in the city's founder. "I meet two or three people a year who have new theories about who he was,'' Lewis said, calling him "a very powerful symbol for who we are today.'' Community leaders, though, say there needs to be more official recognition of the role du Sable played. DuSable Museum founder Margaret Burroughs is calling for a 20-story arch to be built in his honor along the Chicago River, or even straddling the river near where du Sable once lived. Lewis thinks at the very least Pioneer Court along Michigan Avenue at the north bank of the Chicago River should be renamed in du Sable's honor, particularly because that spot is thought to be near where du Sable settled.