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Entrepreneurs & Business Pioneers

Jean Baptiste Point du Sable

c. 1745 – 1818

Saint-Domingue (Haiti); Chicago and Peoria, Illinois; St. Charles, Missouri, United States

Trader of African descent, probably born in Saint-Domingue, who with his Potawatomi wife Kitihawa built the first permanent non-Indigenous settlement and trading post at the Chicago River around 1778–79.

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Rush Street Bridge over the Chicago River, c. 1900, near the river-mouth site of Du Sable's 1780s trading post
Credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division (postcard). License: No known restrictions on publication (LOC; c. 1900).

Content pending: verified research needed.

Sources

  1. Field Museum, "Who Was Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable?" (Primary source)
  2. WTTW (Chicago PBS), "Early Chicago: Jean Baptiste DuSable" (Reference)

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