The universe is thought to have begun approximately 13.8 billion years ago, according to the Big Bang theory.

The planet Earth forms.

Precambrian period. At its beginning, the earliest traces of life on Earth, blue-green algae, develop in the oceans; during its later stages, the Earth experiences its first glacial age (800-600 million years ago).

Cambrian period, during which a profusion of plants, sea shells, and trilobites thrives on the ocean floors.

Ordovician period, marked by the development of vertebrate fish. Toward the end of this period, marine or fresh water arthropods begin to colonize the land, the first multicellular animals to do so.

Silurian period. Plants appear on the dry lands. A warm, shallow sea covers what is now Chicagoland and beyond, the deposits of which harden into Niagara limestone, the bedrock that underlies Chicago. Though located at an average depth of 50 to 100 feet, the limestone does outcrop in multiple locations.

Devonian period, during which vertebrate animals (Amphibia) first develop legs and begin to colonize the land. The first insects appear, initially wingless.

Mississippian period, marked by an abundance of marine animals called crinoids.

Pennsylvanian period, which includes the second glacial age. Reptiles develop from amphibians.

Permian period. Reptiles dominate the lands.

Triassic period, marked by the development of both dinosaurs and mammals.

Jurassic period, when dinosaurs dominate and give rise to the first birds (Archaeopterix).

Cretaceous period, ending with a mass extinction of dinosaurs.

The Cenozoic era begins, during which time mammals diversify and establish dominance.

Gradual cooling begins (Cenozoic decline), associated with continental drift and the dissolution of Pangaea, the early single continent, first into Gondwanaland, and then into the continents known today.

Mountain glaciers appear in the Northern Hemisphere, marking the beginning of the third glacial age, which technically continues to the present time, although the Earth currently experiences a warm interglacial period.

The earliest hominids develop in Africa, south of the Sahara, and will remain restricted to this continent for the next three million years.

The genus Homo emerges with its initial species Homo habilis (`handy man`).

Homo erectus (`upright man`) appears in eastern Africa, the first hominid to devise complex tools and use fire.

Homo erectus begins its migration from Africa to Europe and Asia.

Homo sapiens (`wise man`) develops and gradually replaces all other ancestral species of man.

Start of a warming period for the Northern Hemisphere and Chicagoland that still continues. With temperatures rising, the Wisconsin glacier, which had covered Chicagoland completely, begins to retreat.

In full retreat, the Wisconsin glacier leaves behind early geographic features: the terminal (Valparaiso) moraine, trapping meltwater that forms Lake Chicago, and gravel and sand; a layer of impermeable clay that causes a high water table and swampland. Indian tribes, now well established in North and South America, are widely dispersed, resulting in a great diversity of languages and cultures; milder temperatures bring migrating Indians, who follow the large game from the central plains east across the Mississippi River and into the Chicago locale.

Lake Chicago overlays the area eventually covered by the City of Chicago [see entries on Lake Chicago in the Encyclopedic and Monument sections]. A near arctic climate prevails and coniferous forests slowly overrun the tundra. Musk ox, caribou, and moose are likely local inhabitants.

latest period of ice age of the Northern Hemisphere (glacial maximum at 18,000 years ago), causing the sea to drop by 500 feet – compared to the current level – with formation of a broad land bridge (paleocontinent of Beringia) between northeast Asia and Alaska. During this period, various groups of people appear in North and South America [see map]. In addition to traditionally recognized Siberians, ancestors of most Indians, the latest anthropological and genetic studies of human remains find strong affinities with Europe, southeast Asia, Australia, and Japan. They seem to have come in small groups, perhaps by sea as well as land; no evidence yet suggests migration away from the Americas. While archaeology confirms habitation as early as 12,500 years ago [Monte Verde site, Chile], later finds at the same site strongly suggest 33,000 years ago. More recently (Nov. 17, 2004), Dr. Albert Goodyear of the University of South Carolina announced that he has found pre-clovis stone tools in a 50,000 year old Pleistocene layer at the Topper site along the Savannah River in South Carolina. If confirmed, this would indicate arrival of humans on the American continents prior to the last ice age.
At approximately 4,000 B.C., the Inuit are the last to arrive.

Lake Chicago, larger and deeper than present-day Lake Michigan, overflows through the Des Plaines and Calumet Sag low areas. As the residual northern portion of the glacier gradually melts over the next 6,000 years, the waters find access to the St. Lawrence River in the north, causing successively lower lake levels (the Glenwood, Calumet, and Tolleston phases), defining shore ridges that will be recognizable throughout the 20th century by the course of the Indian trails they first determined.

Indian presence is established in southwestern Illinois at the Madoc Rock Shelter and elsewhere.

Blue Island, Stony Island, and Mount Forest [Argonne Forest] remain true islands in Lake Chicago; Indian occupation of the Illinois River valley begins.

Lake Chicago`s level temporarily drops to 480 feet. (The current level of Lake Michigan is 580 feet.) Lake Calumet forms from Calumet Bay, dries, then reforms as waters rise again. Local forests change from balsam fir and spruce to oak and hickory.

The Indian Mississippi culture begins in the fertile flood plains of the Mississippi River valley, particularly near Cahokia, Illinois, where large mounds are constructed and where a community of 20,000 will florish until 1300.

The Norse again reach North America at Vinland, probably Newfoundland, from their colonies on Iceland and Greenland where they lived until the 15th century or later.

Marco Polo returns from his 25-year journey into China and writes his travel account, widely circulated in manuscript, a narrative which plays a major role in making this fabled exotic land of the Orient a place to dream of and to reach.

On April 17, Spain`s King Ferdinand agrees to finance Christopher Columbus` voyage to find the westward route to China. Columbus` first transatlantic expedition leaves the harbor of Palos, Spain, in three small caravels, weighing anchor on August 3. On October 12, Columbus sights one of the islands within the eastern Bahamas, an island he names San Salvador and where he lands, there claiming the territory for Castile (Spain) by raising the flag on October 12.

On November 3, Columbus lands at Dominica in the Lesser Antilles on his second expedition to the new world. After extensive exploration of many islands, large and small, he returns to Spain June 11, 1496.

On June 7, the Treaty of Tordesillas is signed by Castile (Spain) and Portugal, sanctioned by Pope Alexander VI, roughly establishing a meridian of longitude between Portugal and Castilian “Asia,” meaning the Americas. That these were new continents only gradually dawned on Europeans; the Magellan-Del Cano circumnavigation of 1519-22 finally confirmed speculation begun after Columbus` first voyage.

Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot), a naturalized Venetian in English service, reaches the North American mainland, probably northern Maine or Nova Scotia, on June 24, and claims the land for King Henry VII, conflicting with that of Spain [see 1494]. After this single landing he coasts northeasterly for a month and returns to Bristol. On a second voyage, in 1498, Cabot and his ship are lost at sea, but evidence points to a southeasterly passage as far as the Carribean and Cuba.

Amerigo Vespucci accompanies the Spanish conquistador Alonzo de Ojeda on an expedition to the New World. Vespucci`s recognition and description of South America as a continent will lead the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller to name the New World after him.

On September 29, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, Spanish conquistador, reaches the Pacific Ocean upon crossing the land bridge of Panama, and thus confirms the presence of another ocean between America and Asia.

Alonzo de Pineda, Spanish conquistador, explores the Gulf of Mexico and arrives at the mouth of the Mississippi River, but does not pursue the inlet. This large gateway to the North American continent remains unused by Europeans for nearly two more centuries.

On September 7, navigator Juan de Elcano returns to Spain, completing the first circumnavigation of the globe with an expedition that began under Ferdinand Magellan on September 20, 1520.

Waldseemüller’s globe of 1507 for the first time uses the word America, printed across the southern continent. He did not yet know the Central American land bridge to the northern continent. Waldseemüller believed that [see] Amerigo Vespuci had discovered the new continent, and named it after him. The image shows a portion of the gore he had prepared for his globe. [94]

Jacques Cartier, commissioned by King François I, explores the Gulf of St. Lawrence in search of the northwest passage to Cathay and its riches, beginning the process of French discovery that will in time reach Chicagou and beyond. On July 24, he claims for the king this undefined area, over the protest of the local Iroquois leader, Donnacona. By a ruse he kidnaps two of the latter`s sons and takes them back to France for training as interpreters. This treachery sows the first seeds of the growing Iroquois distrust of the French which will become burning hatred and destruction by the late 17th century.

Cartier, on his second voyage, explores the St. Lawrence from Quebec [kebec, meaning “narrows”] to Hochelaga [“beaver dam,” Montreal] with guidance from Donnacona`s sons and others; he learns of the Great Lakes to the West. Both great river entrances to North America, the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence, are now known to Europeans. He and his large crew overwinter, many dying of scurvy before he learns the cure, a vitamin-rich infusion of white cedar bark. The next May Cartier leaves for France with several Iroquois, now including Donnacona, who spins fabulous tales, mostly untrue, of the riches of Canada [kanata, “settlement”].

In this year Sebastian Münster prepared a wood engraving map of the New World, showing the St. Lawrence river inlet behind an early version of Newfoundland [named Corterati]. What is to become Canada is named Francisca in honor of French King Francis I. [94]

Cartier is now merely a subaltern of Jean-François de La Rocque de Roberval, who disastrously fails to comply with a royal commission as the king`s lieutenant-general to found a colony in Canada; the resulting disillusionment and failure to find riches causes France to ignore North America until the time of Champlain, just after 1600.

In this year Nicolas de Nicolai drafted Nouveau Monde, the navigational chart a part of which is here shown [Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris]. The chart incorporates many details of Cartier’s 1534-35 exploration of the St. Lawrence River and Gulf [upper third of image]. The land to the north he calls Labrador. [94]

On August 28 Phillip II, king of Spain, proclaims himself monarch of North America.

Abraham Ortelius publishes Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first modern atlas of the world that provides the most accurate depiction of settlement within the Americas. The northeast portion of this map exhibits the extensive geographic knowledge of the coastal region, but there is no hint yet of the Great Lakes of the interior. The mythical region of [see] Chilaga near the upper reaches of the St. Lawrence River is shown. The atlas will be continually revised and expanded well into the next century. [94]

Cornelis van Wytfliet published the first atlas with all its 19 double page maps devoted entirely to America, text in Latin, and titled Descriptiones Ptolomaicae augmentum. Subsequent editions appeared in 1598 and 1603, followed by editions with French text in 1605, [see Maps] 1607, and 1611, which were combined by the publisher with maps from India and Japan under the title Histoire universelledes Indes occidentales (et orientales). The map shown here is a cropped sample from the 1607 edition. The Great Lakes and the extensive upper reaches of the Mississippi were not yet known to van Wytfliet.

Samuel de Champlain, often regarded as the founder of Canada or Nouvelle Franse, begins his career of exploration and colonizing as a passenger on a voyage from France. First as cartographer, then as explorer, shrewd observer, visionary, and (from 1620 to 1636) de facto governor, his reports fill six volumes.

At a large Algonkin village called Stadacona, Samuel Champlain founds the city of Quebec; he discovers Lakes Ontario and Huron; of his maps, none earlier than that of 1612 has been found. His achievements secure Canada and its Indian trade for France.

James I of England grants to the Virginia Company of London an amended charter enlarging its boundaries “from sea to sea, west and northwest,” which becomes the basis for Virginia`s claims to western lands including Illinois, to 41° north, just above Peoria, which it will finally cede to the United States in 1784, as part of the settlement of debts arising out of the American Revolution.

Samuel de Champlain, as governor of Nouvelle Franse, begins to prepare maps documenting the new terrain he is exploring, the first to be published in Paris the following year. This map of 1612, based on his own explorations, is the first to indicate the existence of a chain of great lakes west of the upper St. Lawrence River [only the western half of the map is shown here; see next 1612 entry for the eastern half]. In the years to follow, his maps become more detailed and accurate. [94]

Samuel de Champlain`s map, eastern half.

The first mission among Indians in North America is established near Quebec in Huron territory by French Récollet priests.

Fathers Jean de Brébeuf and Anne de Noue establish the first Jesuit mission among the Huron near Georgian Bay, in Ontario where Récollet priests had earlier labored.

The Jesuit Relations, an annual report on the religious and political activities in Canada, is first published in Paris.

Charles Huault de Montmagny is appointed governor of Nouvelle Franse, the first to bear this title; he succeeds Champlain, the de facto governor since 1620. Montmagny`s name, meaning “great mountain,” is translated by the Iroquois as Onontio, the title given by all Indians to subsequent governors for more than a century.

Jean Nicollet, who lived and traded from 1618 to 1633 among various Indian groups in present Ontario to strengthen fur trade relationships, is sent by Champlain to visit Indians as far west as as the Baie des Puants (Green Bay); he is the first European known to have crossed upper Lake Michigan, searching for the ocean route to China as well. Nicollet ascends the Fox River but does not reach the portage to the Wisconsin River; he learns of the Iliniouek (Illinois) people to the south and returns to Quebec in the autumn of 1635.

The Mission de Sainte-Marie is established by Jesuit priests among Huron tribes near present-day Midland, Ontario. This is the first permanent fortified European mission on the Great Lakes; many more missions follow.

Montreal is founded under the name Ville-Marie at the location of Hochelaga [“beaver dam-at”], where for many years a settlement of some sort had been proposed. The village quickly becomes the hub of the fur trade.

The Iroquois, armed by and allied with the Dutch and English, are deadly rivals of the Huron, associates of the French for the fur trade; they now begin their systematic destruction of the Huron nation. This virtual genocide is completed by 1649, marked by the gruesome martyrdom of St. Jean Brebeuf, the great ethnographer of these people; the surviving Huron take refuge with various other peoples near Quebec.

The Iroquois begin to war against the Huron and their allies, the French.

Nicolas Sanson d`Abbeville, French cartographer, drew the first map of North America that shows all five Great Lakes in 1650 and had it printed in Paris in 1656. See excerpt here and in Maps section.

Médard Chouart Des Groseillers, enterprising trader and explorer, may be the first European to travel the western shore of Lake Michigan, presumably passing the site of Chicago; the exploration was probably inspired by Nicollet`s 1634-35 voyage and his own experiences in the Huron country since 1646.

This portion of Pierre Du Val`s 1655 map of America shows that all five Great Lakes are known, with the western shores of Lake Superior and Lake Michigan not yet delineated. Du Val, son-in-law of the cartographer Nicolas Sanson, borrows much from his famous teacher, but in this instance surpasses him in clarity of arrangement. Lake Huron is called Mer douce [“sweet sea”]; the other lakes are unnamed, although Sanson`s 1656 map will label Lakes Superior, Erie, and Ontario with the names used today, though Lake Michigan is still Lac de Puans. [94]

Louis XIV appoints Jean Baptiste Colbert as minister of the French colonies in North America. Marquis de Tracy is appointed governor and Jean Talon is appointed intendant of Canada, then with a population of 3,000 European civilians and 1,300 French officers and troops.

On April 23, English King Charles II grants Connecticut a charter that allows the extension of its western border to the “South Sea.” This will later become the basis for Connecticut`s claim to Illinois country, which it maintains until September 13, 1786.

Louis XIV, ending more than a century of Nouvelle France`s rule by a series of privately-owned companies, quasi-private rule, declares it a royal province and establishes a government system like that of the French provinces. There is a governor in charge of military and external affairs, Marquis Alexandre de Prouville de Tracy, and an intendent for internal administration, the great Jean Talon; they are key members of the Conseil Souverain, an executive- and legislative-like council and supreme judicial court. Nouvelle France`s population is approximately 2,000.

Minister Colbert sends the first breeding stock horses to the St. Lawrence River colonies. Jesuit Father Allouez founds the Mission de Saint-Espirit and begins missionary work among the Huron and Ottawa at Chequamegon [from Ojibwe zhaagawaamikaang, `place where the bottom of the water is oval`, from the verb zhaagawaamikaa, where the initial zhaagaw- means “oval, extended shape,” -aamik is “bottom of a body of water,” and -aa is the stative aspect marker.] Bay, Lake Superior [near present-day Ashland, Wisconsin]; he remains three years, until relieved by Father Marquette. [464c]

Father Allouez establishes the Mission de Saint-François-Xavier at Point Sable, Wisconsin, but within two years it is moved to present De Pere on the Fox River, a few miles above Green Bay.

Fathers Marquette and Allouez explore the entire shoreline of Lake Superior and create an invaluable manuscript map that, as an engraving, will be published in the Jesuit Relations · 1670-1671. [105aa]

Des Groseillers and his relative Pierre-Esprit Radisson, after suffering unfair treatment by Governor Jean de Lauson, participate in funding the English-financed Hudson`s Bay Company, beginning a series of events leading to the British conquest of 1763.

Fathers Dablon and Marquette found the Mission de Saint-Ignace on the north side of the strait of Mackinac. A small fortified and garrisoned trading post is established at the same location in order to control the Indian fur trade. The 1669 map of Lake Superior is published as an engraving in the Jesuit Relations · 1670-1671.

At Sault Ste. Marie, Simon François d`Aumont, Sieur de St. Lusson, takes possession of the entire interior of the North American continent for France, extending Nouvelle France.

In September, Intendant Talon and Governor Frontenac appoint Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette to explore westward in an effort to locate the rumored great river. On December 8, Jolliet arrives at the Mission de Saint-Ignace to inform Marquette of his appointment.

The Jesuit Relations, an annual report on the religious and political activities in Nouvelle France that had been published in Paris since 1632, is discontinued as a result of initial suppression of the Jesuits by French authorities.

On May 17, Louis Jolliet and Father Marquette begin their quest from the Mission de Saint-Ignace. They travel in two canoes and in the company of five donnés. After first heading south on Lake Michigan, they travel up the Fox River and portage to the Wisconsin River [Fox-Wisconsin Portage].

On June 17, they discover the Mississippi River by canoing down the Wisconsin River.

On June 25, they make contact with the Peoria-Illinois along the banks of the later state of Missouri.

On July 17, after reaching the Arkansas River and now aware of the Spanish at the lower Mississippi River, they return northward.

On August 25, they enter the Illinois River and find that the Illinois population is concentrated at Kaskaskia; the Indians befriended them, and Father Marquette promises to return.

In September 1673, Chicago`s recorded history begins. Louis Jolliet and Father Marquette portage to the Chicago River and discover the future site of Chicago; this is the first historically confirmed presence of Europeans at Chicago. During this portion of their journey, Jolliet conceives the idea that a canal between the Chicago River and the Des Plaines River can join the Great Lakes with the Mississippi River.

On September 30, Louis Jolliet and Father Marquette reach the Mission de Saint-François-Xavier at Green Bay.

Upon completion of the journey, Father Marquette prepares a map, that documents their exploration.

Jolliet reports the discoveries of his 1673 joint exploration with Father Marquette to Governor Frontenac, and presents him with a map of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River basin. Unfortunately, the map was drawn from memory because the original was lost on his return trip to Quebec, in a canoe accident that nearly cost him his life.

On October 25, Father Marquette sets out from the Mission de Saint-François-Xavier on the Wisconsin-Fox River for his second trip to the Kaskaskia village on the Illinois River to establish a mission.

On December 4, Father Marquette arrives at Chicago again, in the company of donnés Pierre Porteret and Jacques Largillier. Early severe blizzards force the group to winter in an improvised cabin near the portage.

Father Marquette, ill from a gastrointestinal infection, is visited at the Chicago hut during the winter by Indians with whom he trades, and by the fur traders Pierre Moreau and The Surgeon [Jean Roussel], who advises the ailing father (Father Marquette`s Winter in Chicago · Richard Fayerweather Babcock, artist [285]).

On March 30, Father Marquette and his two companions leave their winter quarters and travel to Kaskaskia. On arrival during the Easter week, April 11-14, Father Marquette establishes the Mission de la Conception near Starved Rock, Illinois. Marquette`s illness worsening, his companions escort him during the last week of April back to Lake Michigan, then north along the lake`s eastern bank, heading for Saint-Ignace.

On May 18 or 19, Father Marquette dies and is buried near what will later be Ludington, Michigan.

Governor Frontenac grants René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, permission to explore the lands west and south of Lake Michigan and to claim them for the French Crown.

In April Father Claude Allouez, Father Marquette`s successor in the Illinois country, visits the Chicago area. He spends several days in a native village along the Des Plaines River, then moves on to the great village opposite Starved Rock, and carries on mission work with the Kaskaskia Illinois intermittently until 1687.

In late January, La Salle and Tonti build the short-lived Fort Crevecoeur at the lower end of Lake Peoria, the first such structure built by Europeans in the Illinois River valley.

Melchisédech Thévenot, Paris-based French scholar and chronicler of explorations in the New World, publishes the first map to mark the Jolliet-Marquette discoveries of 1673, and also the earliest to attach the name Michigan (Michigami) to one of the Great Lakes.

In January La Salle, with Tonti, Father Membré, the physician Jean Michel, and others, begins a Mississippi expedition from Chicago by way of the portage and the Illinois River. On February 5, the expedition enters the Mississippi, and on April 9, the men reach the Gulf of Mexico where La Salle stakes France`s claim to the entire Mississippi River valley, the province of Louisiane.

During the winter of 1682-83, La Salle`s engagé Antoine Brassard selects the site, probably at Hickory Creek near present New Lennox, Illinois, where André Eno (Hunault) and Jean Filatreau were briefly in a small shelter “at the portage of Chicagou,” enlarged in the spring and garrisoned by about 20 of La Salle`s men. This location fits La Salle`s notation in his letter of June 4, 1683, that it is 30 leagues (72 miles) from Fort St. Louis and is about 20 miles south of the main Chicagou portage des chênes, which La Salle disliked and avoided after his 1681-82 southward journey.

Tonti and crew build Fort St. Louis on Le Rocher [Starved Rock]; La Salle visits here and returns to his Chicagou fort, from which a portage route leads to the Calumet River system and Lake Michigan. La Salle writes three letters from this fort to the governor of Nouvelle France. Meanwhile, unknown to La Salle, the new Governor de La Barre, replacing his sponsor Frontenac, joins with Montreal merchants jealous of La Salle`s Illinois monopoly and sends troops and traders to take over Fort St. Louisunder joint command with the experienced Tonti. La Salle learns of this treachery en route to his Chicagou fort, for which he has requisitioned munitions and falconets (small cannons), but his pleas are ignored by de La Barre, who has trade plans of his own. La Salle abandons the Hickory Creek fort in September and, taking with him his Indian friends Ouiouilamet and Nanangouci, leaves for France to ask the king to oust de La Barre`s people from Illinois and back his expedition to colonize and secure the mouth of the Mississippi. De La Barre is silent partner of trading ventures with the Iroquois and even encouraged them to attack other French traders; this duplicity is the final detail which prompts his removal from office; Denonville replaces him.

La Salle`s colonizing expedition arrives at Matagorda Bay in Spanish Texas, which in no way resembles the mouth of the Mississippi. Through his blunders and the incompetence of others, his ships and most of the colony`s supplies and equipment are lost. He founds a short-lived colony, in which most of the inhabitants eventually die of sickness and attacks by Indians who are constanly lurking nearby. [One of La Salle`s lost ships, La Belle, has recently been found, raised, and preserved by marine archaeologists.]

La Salle gets royal authority and financing for a three-ship, 300-person expedition to establish a French colony on the mouth of the Mississippi. He is also granted a royal order returning his Louisiana interest. The flotilla finally sets sail on August 1 and, after a series of hardships largely caused by La Salle`s intransigence, sails past her destination, the mouth of the Mississippi.

Oliver Morel de la Durantaye, French commandant at Michilimackinac, comes south to Illinois with 60 of his men to assist Tonti, who commands at Fort St. Louis (Starved Rock), against Iroquois attacks. Durantaye builds a post or fort at Chicagou, and is there visited by Tonti the following year. Within less than a year, Durantaye returns to Michilimackinac, and the post likely becomes a depot (French Fort at Chicago, 1685 · Edgar Spier Cameron, artist [285]).

Jean-Baptiste Louis Franquelin, royal hydrographer, revises his 1684 map of North America, marking the Chicagou settlement on the west side of the south branch of the river, thereby putting Chicago on a map for the first time.

La Salle desparately, but unsuccessfully, tries to find the Mississippi by overland excursions and loses several of his best men during the effort; this produces lasting enmity towards him which leads to his assasination the next year by mutinous members of the expedition. Meanwhile Tonti, hearing at Fort St. Louis vague news of La Salle`s Texas difficulties, goes to the Gulf with 25 Frenchmen and 18 Indians, in an unsuccessful search east and west of the Mississippi, leaving a letter for La Salle with the Mongoulascha (La Salle`s Quinipissa) Indians near present Venice, Lousiana, which in 1699 will help convince d’Iberville that he has found the mouth of the Mississippi by ship (which he knows only under its local name, Malbanchya). On his return, Tonti passes through Chicagou just before the Iroquois raid it. [Tonti`s rescue mission, though unsuccessful, acquainted many of the French with the Mississippi and the Gulf coast and must have stimulated informal private travel in advance of official settlement beginning in 1699.]

About July 1, Iroquois destroy the French-Miami settlement and post at Chicagou, scattering its people.

After La Salle`s murder on March 19, six survivors of his expedition, including their leader Joutel, set off by land route from Texas for Canada to send rescuers to the dying colony, but it is destroyed, and most people, including Father Membré, will be killed by the local Indians. Joutel`s memoirs, published in French but not fully in English, are an essential record of this harrowing trip.

Joutel and his five companions [Père Anastase Douay, Abbé Jean Cavelier {La Salle`s brother}, Jean Baptiste Cavelier {no relation}, a pilot named Tessier, and a young Parisian named Bathelemy] reach Fort St. Louis on September 14, where they meet Father Allouez and Tonti, from whom, at Father Cavelier`s insistence, they conceal the death of La Salle. Joutel sketches the geography of the Chicagou area and the history of Allouez`s short-lived Chicagou settlement at the time Durantaye maintained a fort here, but not its destruction by Iroquois about July 1, 1686. He arranges for interpreter-guides to lead them to Chicagou, which they reach on September 25. Joutel learns that Chicagou is named for the local woodland wild garlic, Allium tricoccum, which he tastes and describes the following spring. After spending a week in the area, which Joutel describes minutely (including the site for the canal proposed by Jolliet), they set off up Lake Michigan`s western shore but Cavelier, with his hidden agenda, frightens them into returning to the reluctant hospitality of the now-crowded Fort St. Louis.

Governor Denonville organizes a massive French-Indian raid on the Seneca, in part as retaliation for Iroquois attacks on French traders and settlements, including the destruction of the Chicagou settlement, which presumably scattered Durantaye`s garrison as well as its French and Miami settlers. Denonville`s raid destroyed Iroquois crops and heightened their hostility toward the French. Tonti returns to Fort St. Louis from the Denonville raid and becomes well acquainted with Joutel, a retired fellow soldier. Joutel had unwisely invested, and ultimately loses, his life savings in La Salle`s chimerical scheme. Father Cavelier promises to reimburse Joutel but ignores him once they return to France. But Cavelier also loses his investment; his ploy to conceal his brother`s death and be paid from his bankrupt estate will be defeated when creditors finally learn the truth.

On March 29, Joutel and his party once again reach Chicago and remain until April 5. Joutel finalizes his research of the name Chicagou, en route to Canada and France, where they arrive too late to arrange rescue of La Salle`s Texas colony.

Franquelin prepares a new map of North America, prominently showing “Fort Checagou” and “Ft. Crevecoeur,” both of which were already destroyed at the time of publication, but evidence to the world of France`s occupation in support of her claim to Louisiana.

Vincenzo Maria Coronelli, the Venetian cartographer to Louis XIV, prepares a map and globes incorporating reports of Jolliet, Marquette, La Salle, Tonti, and others.

Miami settle at Chicago, locating their village on the main part of the river; a second settlement soon forms on the south branch. French traders, soldiers, and missionaries will follow shortly.

Baron Lahontan, a French officer and unreliable historian, travels in the Great Lakes region and later publishes a report in which he claims to have passed through the Chicago portage des chènes on April 24.

A Spanish party investigates reports of La Salle`s illegal Texas colony given by two survivors. The party finds the place in ruins, many unburied bodies, and the remains of Joutel`s vegetable garden.

Constantly lurking Iroquois raiders seen around Fort St. Louis prompt Tonti, with the advice of Indian leaders, to set up a new fort among eight Indian villages at the wide south end of Peoria Lake, on the Illinois River`s east bank. Tonti calls it Fort St. Louis de Pimiteoui (or Pimiteewi), meaning “place of fat game,” from the multitude of animals drawn to the pastures and shallow waters along the beach in front of the fort. De Liette, Tonti`s cousin, describes in his writings the game of lacrosse played by the Indians on the extensive meadow behind these villages. The elevated location of the fort commands river traffic through the outlet of the lake, and is used for successive forts until 1763, when the last French garrison was withdrawn; its charred ruins were well known 10 and more years after that. The United States built Fort Clark opposite this site, on the west bank, in 1813, in the middle of a French village begun by Jean Baptiste Maillet about 1790.

Lt. Nicolas d’Aillebout, Sieur de Mantet is dispatched by Governor Frontenac [whom the King had reappointed for a second term, following Denonville] to the Chicagoland area to set up a fort and deal with Indian troubles. He builds and commands the fort which is shown on the map he and Louvigny, former commandant at Michilimackinac, draw in 1697, on which it is called fort des françois et 8iatanons [8iatanon, or Ouiatanon, an early name for Wea, a subtribe of the Miami].

In April, Pierre You de la D`couverte, one of La Salle’s men on the 1682 trip to the mouth of the Mississippi, is married at Chicagou to an Indian woman, Chicago’s first recorded marriage.

Also that month, La Forêt sells half of his share in the Illinois colony’s exclusive trading rights to Michel Accault at “Checagou,” payment to be made there in August, making it Chicago’s first recorded business transaction and the potentially largest of all time — one-quarter of Illinois’ trade.

The Jesuit Mission de l’Ange Guardien is established at Chicagou by Father Pierre François Pinet, probably on the present site of the Merchandise Mart. Two Miami villages exist nearby.

During his time at the Chicagou mission Father Pinet begins to write a French/Miami-Illinois dictionary that is to survive over 300 years.

A glut of furs prompts Louis XIV to suspend the fur trade and withdraw the garrisons of the Great Lakes posts, including Mantet’s at Chicagou; Tonti is exempted from this order.

Louis de la Porte de Louvigny drew a map of the Mississippi River [see Maps section and entry on Louvigny for further detail]; seen here is the Illinois River and Lake Michigan detail of this map.

Tonti, Michel Accault, and François de La Forêt receive permission from Governor Frontenac to establish a fortified trading post at Chicagou that is managed by Pierre de Liette, Tonti’s cousin, and lasts until c.1705.

Probably in this year Antoine Laumet, who had acquired the title of nobility “Antoine de la Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac” under questionable circumstances, then commandant at Michilimackinac, visited the Great Lakes posts, including Chicagou, “on the Garlic River” with the Miami village, and writes a report of his findings.

The Mission de l’Ange Gardien is closed for one year by order of anti-Jesuit Governor Frontenac.

Pierre Le Moyne, Seigneur d`Iberville, an explorer, fierce soldier, and Indian diplomat, is selected by Pontchartrain, minister of marine, to find the mouth of the Mississippi and secure the river and Louisiana against Spanish and English incursions.

D`Iberville’s expedition to the Gulf of Mexico is outfitted at Brest, France. In aid of his search, he had interviewed experienced travelers, including Joutel, who declined to join him; he also has many Spanish navigational charts and aids, and he reads or takes along the mostly inaccurate reports of Hennepin and others as well as knowledge gathered by La Salle and Tonti. The Spanish, apprehensive of d`Iberville’s mission, hasten to strengthen Pensacola Bay and prevent him from landing there. Ironically, when d`Iberville arrives in 1699, the ill-supplied Spaniards, many of them convicts, must beg food from the better provisioned French.

The Mission de l’Ange Gardien at Chicagou is reopened. Governor Frontenac, protector of La Salle and Tonti, and silent partner of many trade enterprises, dies.

On New Year’s Eve 1698, Pierre Le Moyne, Seigneur d`Iberville, on orders of King Louis XIV, sets sail from St. Domingue (Haiti) determined to find the mouth of the Mississippi [which La Salle had discovered traveling downstream in 1682 but could not find by sea in 1684] and establish French control of the water route between Nouvelle France (Canada) and Louisiane by building a fort on or near the Gulf of Mexico; he begins his methodical search at Choctawhatchee [hatchee, meaning ‘stream’] bay in late January and on March 2 finds the three mouths of the locally named Malbanchya river, which La Salle had described under its upriver name, Mississippi, when claiming Louisiane for France in 1682. For three more weeks he explores the river to Baton Rouge and beyond, and interviews Indians, some of whom remembered La Salle and Tonti. A 1686 letter, written by Tonti to La Salle, is retrieved from the local Mongoulascha (La Salle’s Quinipissa) Indians, which clinches d’Iberville’s identification of the Malbanchya (its Choctaw name) as the Mississippi. Now convinced that he has found his objective, he returns to his anchorage at Ship Island opposite present Biloxi, Mississippi, and establishes Fort Maurepas (commonly called Fort Biloxi) at present Ocean Springs, Mississippi. This first French habitation in Louisiane is a military base, not a settlement, and its garrison of 80 soldiers under sub-Lieutenant M. de Sauvole, plus a few civilian officials with their families, is in place by May 2 when d`Iberville leaves for France. It is in effect the capital of Louisiane until abandoned for Fort Louis on Mobile Bay in April 1702, where a civilian village is soon established.

In March, the Mission de Sainte Famille de Caoquias (later also called Mission de Saint-Sulpice) is established by Father Pinet at Cahokia.

On October 21, Abbé St. Cosme, en route from Quebec to the Illinois River for the purpose of planning further missionary work among the Indians, visits the Chicagoua Mission de l’Ange Gardien under Fathers Pinet and Bineteau. With him are Rev. de Montigny and Abbé Davion, with Tonti as their guide. The party stays until October 24 and visits again on its return trip to Canada during the Easter week of 1700. In his report, Abbé St. Cosme mentions two large Miami villages near the mission house.

In February, alarmed by English exploration and trade on the Mississippi, d’Iberville builds and garrisons Fort Mississippi [also called Fort La Boulaye], near present Phoenix, Louisiana, below New Orleans. M. de Sauvolle, commandant at Fort Maurepas, has written to the Illinois country to invite workers to the coast, and in February several come from Fort St. Louis de Pimiteouiand Cahokia bearing furs they sell to d’Iberville, who sells them at New York on his way back to France. Thus is begun the major trade route down river from Illinois to lower Louisiane and New Orleans, first for furs and ultimately for food. Canada and Louisiane are now linked, as Jolliet and La Salle had envisioned, forming a major element of French strategy and potential containment of English expansion.

In early September, Father Jacques Gravier visits the Mission de l’Ange Gardien while on a trip to the Mississippi River by way of the Chicago portage.

By this time an estimated 16,000 French people live in the huge portion of North America then claimed by France. The territory extends from the arctic tundra south to New Orleans and the Appalachian Mountains, from the Rockies east to the Atlantic Coast, past New England. Quebec, the capital of Nouvelle France, had been founded in 1608. Reports by early visitors, such as Father St. Cosme, suggest that a few Frenchmen with Indian wives already live at Chicago in 1700; their names, however, are unrecorded.

Antoine Laumet, the self-styled Cadillac, persuades the king to let him establish Detroit and Fort Pontchartrain and abandon Michilimackinac, where he had commanded. He also forces the Jesuits, whom he dislikes, to abandon their mission there; the autocratic Laumet is essentially a dictator and rules with an iron hand. Many French settlers are induced to come; Laumet forces many Indians to leave their homes and move to Detroit, which intensifies a long period of inter-tribal conflict, especially the Fox wars, and assured that the Fox would be permanent enemies of the French. Henri Tonti’s brother Alphonse commands the garrison.

At this time Chicagou is merely a trading post with a few French habitants; as the Fox wars begin, the Illinois River route becomes hazardous even for the French traders, who increasingly favor the Maumee-Wabash-Ohio river route to the Illinois country, ultimately to be secured by posts at Les Miamis (Fort Wayne), Ouiatanon (Lafayette), and Vincennes, all in present Indiana; Chicagou village becomes intermittently deserted. These wars last until 1740, and control of the portage will remain in the hands of often hostile Indians until the Treaty of Greenville in 1795.

Guillaume Delisle, royal cartographer to Louis XIV, completes his map of North and Central America and the Caribbean, incorporating all documented reports of travelers to date.

Joseph Kellogg of Deerfield, Massachusetts, captured there at age 13 by Indians in a 1704 raid and abducted to Caughnouaga, Quebec, has learned Indian ways and joins six French voyageurs on a trading trip to the Mississippi. They spend the winter at Michilimackinac. In the spring of 1711, they pass through “Chigaquea,” finding no settlers, then down the Illinois River to Cahokia and Kaskaskia, French villages which he later describes, and to the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi, whence they return to Canada. Kellogg is the first Englishman known to have visited Chicago.

French soldiers establish a fortified post and trade center at Michilimackinac [later Mackinaw City] on the southern coast of the strait of Mackinac. This French outpost will flourish until 1760; in 1761 British troops will take over the fort.

In November the acting governor of Nouvelle France, Claude de Ramezay, and Intendant Begon recommend that a fort be built at Chicago to facilitate access to the Illinois country. The recommendation is not acted upon.

John Melish of Philadolphia published in 1816 the first wall map of the entire United States with the Contiguous British & Spanish Possessions [shown here is the Chicago area detail of the 1820 edition of this map].

On September 27, most of Illinois country becomes a district of the French province of Louisiane. Illinois country is now ruled by the governor at New Orleans, who appoints all officials of the military-style Illinois government at Fort de Chartres. The boundaries of Louisiane are never clearly defined, but the northern line runs north of Peoria and Ouiatanon; Chicagou remains part of Nouvelle France.

In January, John Law’s Compagnie des Indes receives from the French Crown exclusive rights to organize, import slaves into, and commercially exploit Louisiane, of which southern Illinois is then the northernmost portion.

In June, Guillaume Delisle’s map of Louisiane and the Mississippi River basin notes the location of Chicagou and accurately traces its river’s course.

James Logan, British agent from Pennsylvania who surveys French routes in the West, reports coming through Chicago where he finds only ruins of a “fort” [possibly de Liette’s trading post, abandoned by 1705].

In November, the Virginia legislature creates the county of Augusta, which technically includes the Illinois country.

On his 1744 map of the Great Lakes, of which a Chicago area detail is presented here, Jacques Nicolas Bellin shows a portage between the north branch of the Chicago River and the Des Plaines River. Two such portages are known to have existed [see Portage in Encyclopedia section], although the major Chicago portage connected the south branch with the Des Plaines River.

In early October, Louis Amiot is born along the Des Plaines River near Chicago and is baptized at Mackinac the following June.

Beginning of the French and Indian War.

Englishman John Mitchell produces a map of the British and French Dominions in North America that provides the most up-to-date information of its time, becoming the standard for the last half of the 18th century.

In July, Fort Niagara falls to the British, marking the end of French dominance on the Great Lakes.

On September 18, the French surrender Quebec to the British and on November 29, Detroit. The French era in Chicago officially ends, but most French settlers remain and French influence lingers.

In November an expedition under Capt. Henry Balfour, Eightieth Regiment, comes through the Chicago region, mapping Lake Michigan’s coastline as part of the effort to incorporate the previously French territory into the British empire.

Also in this year, British Lt. Dietrich Brehm maps the “Chigago” locale. An excerpt of his map shows the “Chigago River and village,” and portrays with fair accuracy the portage, Mud Lake, and the Des Plaines and Illinois rivers.

The British reestablish Fort St. Joseph, abandoned by the French in the previous year, and establish a naval shipyard on the Niagara River.

Thomas Hutchins, British cartographer and captain of engineers, traverses the extensive terrain of the Great Lakes region from 1762 to 1769 to prepare maps of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, North Carolina and Illinois that included a map of what became known as the American Bottom [see here], and an early map of the “Chikago” region, noting an Indian village and fort at the entrance of the unnamed river [see Hutchins, Thomas, in the Encyclopedia section; both maps to be printed in London, 1778].

On February 10, the Treaty of Paris is signed. Great Britain has won the French and Indian War, and France renounces all North American mainland east of the Mississippi River, excluding the New Orleans area. Canada comes under the British crown and with it, Chicagoland. However, the French will continue to govern the district north of the Ohio River until 1765, when the British take over.

Spain acquires the territory of Louisiane from the French and holds the land until 1802, when Napoleon regains the province in a secret treaty.

The English take possession of Illinois and the Great Lakes region; Chicago comes under English rule although its people are still French.

Pontiac is murdered by a Peoria Indian in front of the Brynton, Wharton & Morgan store at Cahokia. Contrary to legend, there is no record that this provoked massive retaliation against the Illinois Indians; the 1723 seige which gave Starved Rock its name was an episode in the Fox wars.

A tornado strikes near the Chicago Portage, uprooting trees and crosses Lake Michigan to destroy a swath of trees two arpents(384 feet) wide at the Rivière du Chemin (site of Michigan City). At the mouth of the Chicago River are a few minor unnamed French traders and a small village of Mascouten.

On November 26, the Roman Catholic Jesuit order is officially suppressed in France, although its missionary activity in North America will continue until the end of the century.

On March 5, Spain takes possession of New Orleans from the French.

The British establish a shipyard and headquarters at Detroit, enabling them to effectively dominate the upper lakes for years to come, even after they lose the Revolutionary War.

William Murray, of Kaskaskia, forms the Illinois Land Company, which acquires from the Indians two very large tracts of land in exchange for trade goods; one of the tracts includes the present site of the city of Chicago. The deed will later be reversed by Congress, making land purchases from the Indians by private individuals illegal.

Patrick Kennedy, a Kaskaskian trader, ascends the Illinois River and observes the ruins of the French fort at Peoria; he finds no French people in the village. His description is important, because it refutes the legend, later fabricated by land speculators around 1801, that Jean Baptiste Maillet, militia commander at Peoria, granted land there to Jean Baptiste Point de Sable in 1773

On April 19, the American Revolutionary War against the British begins at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts.

On December 9, Virginia claims a corridor of western lands to the Mississippi River, including Illinois country, which becomes its “County of Illinois.”

In this year or earlier, a French trader named Guillory from Mackinac establishes a trading post on the west bank of the north branch of the Chicago River, at the Forks. English occupation of Montreal severely reduces trade via the Great Lakes, and in 1778 and 1779, the Potawatomi and Guillory may be the sole inhabitants of Chicagou.

The armed British sloop, Archangel, is the first modern ship of record to enter Lake Michigan since the loss of Le Griffon in 1679.

In January, the remnants of Fort St. Joseph are captured by a band of 65 men and some 200 Indians under the leadership of Don Eugenio Pourre and briefly occupied in the name of the King of Spain.

On October 19, the British Gen. Lord Cornwallis surrenders to Gen. George Washington after the Battle of Yorktown.

This year, and again in 1783, British licenses are issued at Montreal for traders going to the Grand Calumet River at the south end of Lake Michigan. These are the only such licenses for any place near Chicago since about 1700. In fact, there is no record of any licensed trade to Chicago except a 1770 scouting mission by French trader Jean Orillat and voyageurs which carried no trade goods.

On September 3, America and Britain sign the definitive peace articles in Paris, ending the Revolutionary War. Britain’s claim to the Illinois country is thus terminated, and the land becames part of the United States.

On June 7 Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, proposes to the Continental Congress a resolution calling for a declaration of independence from Britain.

On July 4, the Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence. Chicago becomes American.

There are still a few French at Chicagou as evidenced by a French-language pass issued on July 4 by George Morgan, colonial Indian agent at Pittsburgh, promising safe conduct to its inhabitants and those of Illinois (Kaskaskia and Cahokia) who wish to apply.

On October 3, the British sloop, Felicity, sails past Chicago in an effort to keep supplies from rebellious American colonists along the shoreline of Lake Michigan.

Jean Baptiste Gaffé of Cahokia sends boats with trade goods to Chicagou to establish a trading post where none had been since about 1778. De Peyster, British commander at Detroit, sends a party to evict Gaffé but results are not recorded. As recently as 1779, French traders occasionally visited Chicagou but did not live there.

Virginia cedes her claimed western territory, including Illinois [see 1609], to the United States as part of the settlement for her debts incurred during the Revolution; the deed of cession reserves the right of French and other settlers to their “titles and possessions,” which were never clearly defined.

Notwithstanding the 1783 Treaty of Paris, British officials in Canada develop clandestine strategies to keep the United States out of what will soon become the Northwest Territory, Illinois included. Designed to control the Indians and the fur trade, the principal element of the Canadian economy, these plans include placement of secret Indian agents at important locations and the [unrealized] creation of an Indian “buffer state.”

The Illinois and Chicagou rivers have become safe for trade and travel; Peoria settlers and traders, who had fled to Cahokia or Vincennes during the Revolution, have returned, and perhaps in this year [possibly as early as 1784, but certainly no later than 1788] Jean Baptiste Point de Sable, the founder of modern Chicago, moves there from near Detroit. Illinois country is not yet sufficiently organized by United States authorities to block or expel a known agent of the British Indian Department.

On September 3, Connecticut surrenders to the United States its claim to western lands, including Illinois country and Chicago [see 1662].

On August 7, Congress establishes the Department of War and Indian Administration, and Henry Knox becomes the first secretary. Congressional policy is set forward in Article 3 of the act, part of which reads as follows: “The utmost good faith shall always be observed toward the Indians; their land and their property shall never be taken from them without their consent, and their property, rights and liberty shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress, but laws founded in justice and humanity shall from time to time be made, for preventing wrongs being done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them.”

On July 13, under President Washington, the U.S. Congress unanimously passes an ordinance creating the “North West Territory” out of all United States territorial possessions northwest of the Ohio River, including Illinois country. The same ordinance provides for a governor of said territory, for a system of representation in Congress “as soon as there shall be five thousand free male inhabitants, of full age,” and further provides for the elimination of slavery within the territory, a provision that will not be enforced for decades to come. These territories are to be admitted in due time to the Union “on an equal footing with the original states.” The North West Territory eventually becomes Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota.

Point de Sable and Catherine, his Indian wife of many years, travel from Chicagou to Cahokia to have their marriage solemnized by Father St. Pierre at the Mission de Sainte Famille de Caoquias.

On July 17 Gen. Arthur St. Clair, newly appointed governor of the Northwest Territory, inaugurates the territorial government.

In May Gen. Arthur St. Clair, appointed Governor of the Northwest Territory by President Washington mid 1787, finally reaches the area and starts to organize its government. He organizes St. Clair County, in present southern Illinois. First at Kaskaskia, he appoints officials and militia officers, and adopts laws without authorization to do so. He then removes to Cahokia and does likewise. In June, Governor St. Clair organizes Knox County to include Peoria and Chicago.

Governor St. Clair and Winthrop Sargent, Secretary of the Northwest Territory, compile lists of French and American settlers in Illinois and at Vincennes, under a controversial 1788 law of the Continental Congress which was enacted to carry out the 1784 promises, in Virginia’s cession of western lands to the United States, to protect these settlers in their “titles and possessions.” These lists, and further lists compiled 1795-1797, open the floodgates for hundreds of fraudulent land claims, particularly at Peoria, by unscrupulous land spectulators, including the future governor of Illinois, John Reynolds, and attorney Isaac Durneille, who created documents that, if authentic, would make him the sole owner of Peoria.

On May 10 Hugh Heward, Detroit trader on his latest trip to Cahokia, visits Point de Sable at Chicagou for two days, trading cloth for food and leaving his birchbark canoe in exchange for the use of a pirogue for the balance of his voyage. In mid May Heward visits Peoria and lists 10 men “settled among the Indians” there, including Jean Baptiste Maillet, commander of the St. Clair County militia.

Lt. John Armstrong, U.S. Army, makes his second trip to Illinois, a top secret mission in trader’s guise to evaluate the feasibility of U.S. travel and trade up the Mississippi River from its junction with the Illinois River. Prominent people at Cahokia discourage him, and Governor St. Clair confirms. Armstrong’s report of June 2 to Secretary of War Henry Knox, includes a copy of a French map of western North America and a narration of his 1789 trip to Chicago and down the Illinois River, accompanied by a copy of a map of the river basin from Chicago to the Mississippi, the most accurate of its kind for another 30 years or more.

On June 20, Chicago becomes part of newly formed Knox County, Northwest Territory.

On July 16, the District of Columbia is established as the seat of the United States government.

Antoine Ouilmette locates in Chicago on the north side of the river, near Point de Sable’s homestead.

On April 2, Congress authorizes establishment of the U.S. Mint.

In total disregard of the Treaty of Paris, the British create Kent County, of the Province of Upper Canada, in which they include Chicago. Although this move is in conflict with the Northwest Ordinance adopted by the U.S. congress in 1787, England will remain in de facto control of Illinois county until the year 1796.

Jean Lalime and his Potawatomi wife, Nokenoqua, settle in Chicago north of the river near the Ouilmette family.

On August 20, Gen. Anthony Wayne defeats the Indians at Fallen Timbers in northwestern Ohio, reducing Indian pressure that had made settlement precarious. This makes the Treaty of Greenville possible.

On November 19, Jay’s Treaty is signed in London, resolving multiple serious Anglo-American diplomatic issues. Most difficulties have been the result of Great Britain’s resistance in meeting all agreements of the definitive Treaty of Paris of 1783, and its clandestine agitation against the United States with the Indian tribes now in American territory.

On August 3 the Treaty of Greenville is signed; by this treaty the federal government acquires, among other large tracts of land ceded by the Indians, “one piece of land six miles square at the mouth of the Chicago River.”

On October 27, the Treaty of San Lorenzo between the United States and Spain settles Florida’s northern boundary and gives navigation rights on the Mississippi River to the United States.

Jean Baptiste Point de Sable and Antoine Ouilmette are the only Chicago residents in this year; see map.

On July 6, the Catholic priest Michel Levadoux travels from Cahokia to Detroit by way of the Illinois River and Chicago.

On August 15, Chicago becomes, until 1800, part of Wayne County, Northwest Territory.

On October 2, British troops leave Michilimackinac, the last frontier post to be evacuated under the terms of Jay’s Treaty; this opens the upper lakes to American commerce.

On October 8, Eulalia Pelletier, granddaughter of Jean Baptiste Point de Sable and daughter of Jean Baptiste Pelletier and his wife Suzanne, is born at Chicagou; Suzanne and her daughter will be baptized at St. Louis in 1799.

During the summer Gen. Victor Collot visits Illinois country and later records his impressions in the book A Journey in North America which includes his map of the “American Bottom� [see image].

In early May John Kinzie arrives from St. Joseph on horseback. With him are his wife, Eleanor, their son, John Harris, aged six months, and Eleanor’s daughter, Margaret. Kinzie purchases the Point de Sable estate from Lalime and Burnett.

In the autumn the United States Indian Agency opens its first office at Fort Dearborn, with Indian agent Charles Jouett in charge. An attorney by training, Jouett becomes Chicago’s first lawyer. He brings his wife, Eliza, and they will live in the agency house soon to be built by the soldiers.

On November 3, the Treaty of St. Louis is concluded between the United States and various leaders of the Sauk and Fox tribes, resulting in cession to the government of 14,803,500 acres of land in Missouri, Illinois, and southern Wisconsin. The Indians receive in return $22,234 and the right to live on the land as long as it is owned by the government. Later this treaty will be bitterly denounced as unfair by the Sauk leader Black Hawk, and his defiance will lead to the Black Hawk War in 1832, involving Fort Dearborn and Chicago.

In early November John Kinzie, recently appointed justice of the peace, performs the first marriage ceremony at Chicago for James Abbott and Sarah, Captain Whistler’s daughter, in the rude and unfinished fort. Abbott, a young Detroit merchant, journeys to the fort to marry; afterward the couple immediately ride back to Detroit.

On December 27 Ellen Marion Kinzie, the first known child of European descent, is born at Chicago, the daughter of John and Eleanor Kinzie.

The first U.S. factor, Ebenezer Belknap, arrives early in the year and remains until December.

In the spring Col. Jacob Kingsbury stops shortly at Fort Dearborn with a company of troops on his way to superintend the establishment of Fort Belle Fontaine, near the mouth of the Missouri River.

The first U.S. Indian Agency house is built by the Fort Dearborn soldiers on the south bank of the river, immediately west of the fort.

In the autumn Meriwether Lewis Whistler, son of Lt. William and Mrs. Mary Julia Whistler, becomes the first known boy child of European descent born at Chicago.

Captain Whistler struggles to keep the garrison adequately supplied in the spare wilderness; see his following letter to Secretary of War Gen. Henry Dearborn:

Fort Dearborn 6th Jany 1807

Sir On the 11th of November last I left this fort, having leave of absence from Col Burbach for a few weeks to visit Detroit & I took Fort Wayne in my rout, for the purpose of seeing the Contractor Agent ther as he is impowered to furnish this post, with the article of meet,—At the time I left here there was not more than was sufficient for two months Issues of that article on hand, this was the occasoin of my making Fort Wayne in my rout, on my arrival ther which was on the twenty first of novemr I informed the agent, of the situation of this post as wanting the articl of meat in particular, he replyed it was not in his power to remedy the evil accept with a few poor Beeves, ninteen in number these were sent in Dec. and arrived here in the latter part of that month I made Fort Wayne in my rout on my return purposely to gain infermation looking for better success the said agent informed me that it was not in his power to make a purchase as the bills in favour of the Contractor were protested, and the people would not sell there property without some other means than his bills, he also informed me, he was not able to Furnish Fort Wayne or this post, Capt Whipple also informed me he was under the necessity himself of procuring some Hogs (that happened thereabout) for the use of his Garrison as the agent could not supply it—These circumstances were alarming to me as being in so remoat a part of world where little could be purchased I informed the agent, I should be under the necessity of purchasing that article of my arrival at Fort Dearborn if to be had there—on my arrival I found by making a survey of what meat was in store including the ninteen head already mentioned ther was not a suffient quantity for three months Issues finding no hoaps of a further suply, I nade inquiry and found a small quanty of hoch for sail I made a purchase of it on as reasonable terms as posiable, for which I inclose the acct with my Certificate annexed therto hoaping you will acknowledge it as suffient for discharging the acct in favor of the persin of whom I made the purchase, I am Ignorant of the manner in shich I aught to draw for the payments of such purchase, but finding mysilf under the necessity of acting under the 3d and [?], article of your agreement with Olivre Phelps Esqr of the 6th June 1806 I mad the purchase and that being not suffient I have entered into an agreement with a man that happined here from Staunton for Beer, a Copy of which I have taken the liberty also to inclose this last I hoap will be a suffient quanty with what ws already on hand for six months commencing the first instant,—I am happy to find that the Contractor is gainer for what he looses on the first purchase, he gains much more on the latter—Sir I have the Honor to be your most Obt & Humb J Whistler Capt

The Honorable Henry Dearborn Secrettary of War

N.B. I have given a draught to the person whom I mad the purchase from—but whether it is in form or not I am not a judge—

In September Maria Indiana Kinzie is born to John and Eleanor Kinzie at Chicago

On January 25 Capt. John Whistler dates a prepared draft of Fort Dearborn I and its environs and submits it to the secretary of war [It is now at the National Archives, Washington, DC; see reproduction of said draft with this entry].

Dr. John Cooper arrives on the Adams to succeed Dr. William Smith, becoming the second physician at Fort Dearborn.

See map showing the location of Chicago`s first public ferry, established across the North Branch—an Indian ferry attended by the man of the house to the east.

On February 9 Chicago, formerly in the Indiana Territory, becomes part of the new Territory of Illinois, with Kaskaskia as the capital.

On March 3 part of Indiana Territory, including St. Clair County with Chicago, becomes the new Territory of Illinois, with Kaskaskia as its capital.

On April 28, Chicago becomes part of the new St. Clair County of the Territory of Illinois.

In late June, William Johnson journeys from Fort Wayne to Fort Dearborn and records his observations of the land he traverses, portaging, the fort and its officers.

On October 29, Charles Lalime Jouett is born to Indian agent Charles Jouett and his second wife, Susan.

A bitter feud develops between the trader John Kinzie and many officers of the fort. Among the issues is Captain Whistler’s attempt to stop Kinzie’s distribution of liquor to the Indians. Politics allow Kinzie to prevail, resulting in the removal of Captain Whistler and the principal officers from the garrison in April.

In June, Capt. Nathan Heald succeeds Captain Whistler as commandant of Fort Dearborn until its disastrous evacuation on August 15, 1812.

In the summer Matthew Irving succeeds Joseph Varnum as U.S. factor.

Violent actions by Indians begin to be reported from many locations on the western front.

On April 1, Dr. John Cooper resigns his commission, and Dr. Isaac Van Voorhis fills the vacancy to become the third surgeon at Fort Dearborn.

Aggressive actions by local Indians begin. On May 26 Jean Baptiste Lalime, interpreter at Fort Dearborn, sends a letter of complaint to General Clark at St. Louis, regarding horse stealing by Indians.

In June Lt. Linai Helm arrives at the fort, transferring from Detroit, filling the vacancy created by the death of Lt. Seth Thompson on March 4. With him is his wife Margaret, stepdaughter of John Kinzie.

On July 7, Jean Lalime sends a letter to Fort Dearborn, complaining of Indian depredation near Fort Dearborn.

On October 1, the U.S. Indian agent Charles Jouett removes to Kentucky and does not return until 1816.

On November 7, Gen. William Henry Harrison, governor of the Indiana Territory, defeats the Shawnee at Prophetstown on Tippecanoe Creek in northern Indiana. But the victory is indecisive and most of the Indians will join the British in the War of 1812.

Within his account book on December 16, John Kinzie notes an earthquake occurring at Chicago.

In this year, Jean Baptiste Beaubien moves permanently to Chicago and builds his first house on the east side of the south branch

See Chicago housing map of 1812 prior to the Fort Dearborn Massacre.

On April 6, marauding Winnebago kill Liberty White and Jean Baptiste Cardin on Leigh’s farm at Hardscrabble.

In early June, John Kinzie kills Jean Lalime during a quarrel just outside the fort. He goes north into hiding, but returns to his residence once an investigation by Fort Dearborn authority “exonerates” him during his absence.

On June 18, the U.S. Congress approves war with England. The struggle does not initially go well for the United States.

On July 12, U.S. forces invade Canada; Mackinac is lost on July 17.

In late July, Captain Heald receives instructions to encourage “the Chiefs of the different nations in the vicinity of Chicago to go” to a council at Piqua; John Kinzie assists and “… 17 Chiefs &c; of the Potawatimies, Ottowas, Chippewas & Winebagoes set out, well satisfied, from chicago ….” [Thomas Forsyth, Sept. 7, 1812]

On August 9 the Potawatomi messenger, Winnemac, brings orders from Gen. William Hull at Detroit to Captain Heald that Fort Dearborn is to be evacuated because of a possible large scale attack by Indian tribes.

On August 13, at “… a place called Terre Coupee, distant from Chicago about 90 miles …,” the Indian chiefs meet the Indian agent William Wells from Fort Wayne, with Cpl. Walter Jordan and “Winemege or Catfish a Potawatimy Chief,” escorted by 20 or 25 friendly Miami, en route to Fort Dearborn with orders to assist the beleaguered inhabitants. The chiefs are directed to join them and “[a]ll returned back to Chicago, where they found a very great number of Indians.”

August 15, the day of the Fort Dearborn massacre; see next entry.

On August 16, Fort Dearborn is burned by Indians and General Hull surrenders Fort Detroit.

On September 14 Chicago, formerly in St. Clair County of the Illinois Territory, becomes part of Madison County.

On October 3 an article appears in The Weekly Register, published in Baltimore by H. Niles: “Fall of Fort Dearborn at Chicaugo.—Yesterday afternoon, the Queen-Charlotte arrived at fort Erie, in 7 days from Detroit. A flag of truce soon landed at Buffaloe creek maj. Atwater and lt. J. L. Eastman, who gave the following account of the fall of fort Dearborn. On the 1st Sept. a Potawatamie chief arrived at Detroit, and stated, that about the middle of Aug. capt. Wells, from fort Wayne, (an interpreter) arrived at fort Dearborn, to advise the commandant of the fort to evacuate it and retreat. In the mean time a large body of Indians of different nations had collected and menaced the garrison. A council was held with the Indians in which it was agreed that the garrison should be spared, on condition that all property in the fort should be given up. The Americans marched out but were fired upon and nearly all killed. There were about 50 men in the fort besides women and children, and probably not more than 10 or 12 taken prisoners. Capts. Wells and Heald (the commandant) were killed. …” Buffaloe Gaz.

Ten or more private homes have existed at Chicago during this year, among them those belonging to Kinzie, Ouilmette, Buisson, and Burns, who lived on the north side of the river. Leigh lived south of the fort, with a farm four miles southwest of the fort on the south branch of the Chicago River. Clark lived near the Forks. LaFramboise and Robinson lived on the west side of the south branch and Beaubien on the east side; see map.

Fort Dearborn massacre. Soon after the garrison’s evacuation of the fort, as the retreating party advances south 1.5 miles along the beach on the way to Fort Wayne, an attack by c.500 Indians kills a large number of soldiers and dependents. Survivors are taken prisoner. Aided by friendly Indians, the Kinzie family escapes to Detroit. The map of contemporary Chicago, prepared by Juliette Kinzie in 1844, shows the place of combat in its lower left corner. [342a, 405, 544]

The Chicago community is (and will remain for years) severely decimated by the Indian attack; see 1812 post-attack housing map.

On March 22, Robert Dickson comes to the Fort Dearborn site and observes: “There remains of this Garrison, Two Pieces of Brass Ordnance – three pounders – one in the River with wheels & the other dismounted. I shall endeavor to get them conveyed to Michilimackinac. The Powder Magazine is in a state of high Preservation & the Houses on the outside of the Fort are well constructed & will be excellent for lodging troops should it be found necessary to make any establishment here.â€�

Antoine Ouilmette and Louis Buisson farm around the ruins of the fort; see map.

On June 4 an article appears in the Baltimore Niles` Weekly Register: “CHICAGO. Among the prisoners who have recently arrived at this place, (says the Plattsburg paper of the 21st ult.) from Quebec, are James Van Horn, Joseph Knowles [Noles], Paul Grummow [Grummo], Elias Mills, Joseph Bowen, Nathan Edson, Dyson Dyer, James Corbin, and Phelim [Fielding] Corbin, of the 1st regiment of U. S. Infantry, who survived the massacre at fort Dearborn or Chicago, on the 15th of August, 1812. It will be recollected that the commandant at fort Chicago, captain Heald, was ordered by general Hull to evacuate the fort and proceed with his company to Detroit—that having proceeded about a mile and a half the troops were attacked by a body of Indians, to whom they were compelled to capitulate.—Captain Heald, in his report of this affair, dated October 23, 1812, says, `Our strength was 54 regulars and 12 militia, out of which, 26 regulars and all the militia were killed in the action, with two women and 12 children. Lieut. Lina T. Helm, with 25 non-commissioned officers and privates, and 11 women and children, were prisoners when we separated.` Lt. Helm was ransomed. Of the 25 non-commissioned officers and privates and the 11 women and children, the nine persons above mentioned, are believed to be the only survivors. They state that the prisoners who were not put to death on the march, were taken to Fox River, in the Illinois Territory, where they were distributed among the Indians as servants.—Those who survived remained in this situation about nine months, during which time they were allowed scarcely a sufficiency of sustenance to support nature, and were then brought to Fort Chicago, where they were purchased from the Indians by a French trader, agreeable to the direction of gen. Proctor, and sent to Amherstburg, and from thence to Quebec, where they arrived on the 8th of Nov. 1813.
John Neads [Needs], formerly of Virginia, who was one of the prisoners, died among the Indians, between the 15th and 20th of January, 1812[3].
Hugh Logan, an Irishman, was tomahawked and put to death, he not being able to walk, from excessive fatigue.
August Mott, a German, was killed in the same manner for the like reason.
A man by the name of Nelson was frozen to death while a captive with the Indians. He was formerly of Maryland.
A child of Mrs. Neads [Needs], the wife of John Neads, was tied out to a tree to prevent its following and crying after its mother for victuals.—Mrs. Neads afterwards perished with hunger and cold.
The officers who were killed on the 15th of Aug. had their heads cut off and their hearts taken out and broiled in the presence of the prisoners.
Eleven children were massacred and scalped, in one waggon.
Mrs. Corbin, the wife of Phelim [Fielding] Corbin, in an advanced stage of pregnancy, was tomahawked, scalped, cut open, and had the child taken out and its head cut off.”

On November 28, Chicago becomes part of Edwards County, Illinois Territory.

On December 24, the War of 1812 formally ends with Britain’s defeat when the United States and Britain sign the Treaty of Ghent. The United States now begins rebuilding relations with the tribes of the western Great Lakes and the Mississippi River valley.

John Dean, army contractor, arrives and builds a house at the mouth of the Chicago River, south of the fort’s ruins.

The number of French Catholics known to be living at Chicago is significant; reporting to the Holy See, Bishop Flaget of Bardstown, KY, writes: “… in the very midst of the Indians [are] four French congregations belonging to my diocese; one on the upper Mississippi, another in a place usually designated as Chicagou, still another on the shores of Lake Michigan and a fourth toward the source of the Illinois River [Peoria]; ….”

In September Maj. Stephen H. Long, of the Corps of U.S. Topographical Engineers, explores a proposed route for the canal and visits Fort Dearborn. He submits a map of the “Illenois River” with his survey report to the acting secretary of war, George Graham, and writes: “… a canal uniting the waters of the Illinois with those of Lake Michigan, may be considered of the first importance of any in this quarter of the country.” [On the map detail shown here, the black line N of Mud Lake represents the “portage road” followed by Major Long`s expedition.]

1816 On July 4, Capt. Hezekiah Bradley arrives on the schooner, General Wayne, with two companies of the Third Infantry and begins reconstruction of Fort Dearborn on the same site. With him is the fourth Fort Dearborn military surgeon, Dr. William Gale.

Charles Jouett, who had previously been the fort’s Indian agent, is reappointed and arrives with his family. Lt. Taliaferro will later recall: “[s]o hostile were the Winnebagos and others that the Quartermaster had to move daily with an armed party for the security of the men engaged in felling and hewing lumber for the post.”

At the Treaty of St. Louis, on August 24, the Fox and the Sauk cede to the United States, among other lands, a 20-by-70-mile strip of land, running southwest from the shore of Lake Michigan to the Fox River, its midline coinciding with the outlet of the Chicago River. This strip includes the historic portage route, and its acquisition facilitates the later construction of the Illinois & Michigan Canal. Outside this corridor, its borders known as the Indian Boundary Lines, the land is still owned by Indians.

In the autumn the Kinzie family returns from Detroit, and John Kinzie becomes the first Chicago agent of the American Fur Co. William Cox teaches school to the children of John Kinzie and others from the fort in an old bakery building on the Kinzie property.

Also in this year, the Detroit firm Conant & Mack sends John Crafts to establish a trading house at Hardscrabble on the south branch.

On October 13 the new U.S. factor, Jacob Varnum, arrives with his bride, Mary Ann. On December 31, Chicago becomes part of Crawford County, Illinois Territory.

The U.S. Army establishes several new garrisons in the upper Northwest, in addition to rebuilding Fort Dearborn: Fort Howard at Green Bay; Fort Crawford at the mouth of the Wisconsin River; and Fort Edwards and Fort Armstrong on the Mississippi River.

In May Maj. David Baker, Third Infantry, replaces Capt. Hezekiah Bradley as commandant at Fort Dearborn.

In this year, the schooner Heartless attempts to navigate the passage from the lake into the Chicago River, but is grounded on the sand bar and cannot be freed, becoming Chicago’s first shipwreck.

From October 2 to 4, Samuel Appleton Storrow, Judge Advocate Major of the Northern division, U.S. Army, under Major General Jacob Jennings Brown, visits Fort Dearborn and recounts the following:
… On the 2d of October, after walking for three or four hours, I reached the River Chicago, and after crossing it, entered Fort Dearborn, where I was kindly entertained by Major Baker and the officers of the garrison, who received me as one arrival from the moon. At Chicago I perceived I was in a better country. … At some remotely future period, when a dense population enables the husbandman to apply artificial warmth to his grounds, means of life may be extracted from this soil which are latent at present. It requires industry, and is capable of repaying it. … The river Chicago (or, in English, Wild Onion river) is deep, and about fifty yards in width, before it enters the Lake, its two branches unite—the one proceeding from the north, the other from the west, where it takes its rise in the fountain of the De Plein, or Illinois, which flows in an opposite direction. The source of these two rivers illustrates the geographical phenomenon of a reservoir [Mud Lake] on the very summit of a dividing ridge. In the autumn they are both without any apparent fountain, but are formed within a mile and a half of each other by some imperceptible undulations of the Prairie, which drain it and lead to different directions. But in the spring, the space between the two is a single sheet of water, the common reservoir of both, in the centre of which there is no current towards either of the opposite streams. … The ground between the two is without rocks, and, with little labor, would admit of a permanent connection between the waters of the Illinois and Michigan. … The site and relations of Fort Dearborn I have already explained. It has no advantage of harbor, the river itself being always choked, and frequently barred, from the same causes that I have imputed to the other streams of this country. In the rear of the fort is a prairie of the most complete flatness, no sign of elevation being within the range of the eye. The soil and climate are both excellent. Traces yet remain of the devastation and massacre committed by the savages in 1812. I saw one of the principal perpetrators, Nes-cot-no-meg. … On the 4th of Oct. I left Chicago for Fort Wayne …. Our course was to lay, for about 60 miles, on the beach of Lake Michigan, from thence inclining eastwardly to the St. Joseph’s of the Lake, and thence due south to the Miami of Lake Erie. On the night of the 4th I slept on the beach, after having forded the little Kennomick. I call it after the Indian pronounciation—Calumet is probably the name. On our right lay an expanse of flat prairie, extending, as I supposed, to the Illinois. ….

Captain Smith of the U.S. Department of Engineering prepares a map of the Chicago River from the confluence of its two major branches to its mouth, indicating the exact location of Fort Dearborn and the properties of Antoine Ouilmette and John Kinzie.

In April Nathaniel Pope, delegate from the Illinois Territory to the U.S. House of Representatives, convinces the assembly that the state-to-be must have its northern border extended northward by an additional 41 miles, deviating from the stipulation of the original ordinance, thereby providing access to Lake Michigan. Chicago is thus included in the state of Illinois.

On April 18, President James Monroe signs the bill that converts the former Illinois Territory into the 21st state of the Union. Chicago is now in Crawford County, Illinois. Also on this day, the U.S. Senate confirms Dr. Alexander Wolcott’s appointment as Indian agent; he immediately leaves for Chicago to succeed Charles Jouett.

On August 26, the first constitutional convention for the state of Illinois, attended by 33 delegates, completes its task at Kaskaskia.

On October 4, the schooner Hercules is wrecked between the two Calumet River mouths after leaving Chicago; all aboard perish, including Lt. William Evileth, who had assisted in the construction of the second Fort Dearborn.

On October 6 Shadrach Bond, from St. Clair County, becomes the first governor of the state of Illinois.

On November 1, 16-year-old Gurdon Hubbard makes his first visit to Chicago in his new job as apprentice clerk for the American Fur Co.

On December 3 Illinois, previously part of the Illinois Territory since March 1, 1810, becomes the 21st state of the Union.

In this year, Dr. John Gale, Fort Dearborn surgeon, is succeeded by J. Ponte Coulant Mc Mahon, M.D., the fifth physician at the fort.

On March 22, Chicago becomes part of Clark County, Illinois.

John C. Sullivan, a U.S. government surveyor, prepares a detailed map of the Chicago portage area and the 20-by-70-mile corridor acquired from the Indians through the Treaty of St. Louis, for which canal construction is proposed.

On January 1, Indian agent Wolcott records that the ice is 14 inches thick in the river; later on February 2, it is 18 3/4 inches thick. On January 31, 22 inches of snow falls.

In June Capt. Hezekiah Bradley, Third Infantry, reassumes command at Fort Dearborn.

On August 29, Henry Schoolcraft arrives at Fort Dearborn as a member of a government expedition under Lewis Cass that has explored the Northwest.

Before leaving, he sketches the much-copied “View of Chicago,” showing the lakefront with Fort Dearborn at the center, Kinzie’s house on the right, and Indians with canoes at the sand bar in the foreground. Excerpts of Schoolcraft’s account of the visit follow:
The next day’s journey, 28th, carried us forty miles, in which distance, the most noticeable fact in the topography of the coast was the entrance of the Racine or Root River; its eligible shores being occupied by some Pottawattomie lodges. Having reached within ten or twelve miles of Chicago, and being anxious to make that point, we were in motion at a very early hour on that morning of the 29th, and reached the village at 5 o’clock a.m. We found four or five families living there, the principal of which were those of Mr. John Kinzie, Dr. A. Wolcott, J.B. Beaubien, and Mr. J. Crafts, the latter living a short distance up the River. The Pottawattomies, to whom this site is the capital of their trade, appeared to be lords of the soil, and truly are entitled to the epithet if laziness, and an utter inappreciation of the value of time, be a test of lordliness. Dr. Wolcott, being the U.S. Agent for this tribe, found himself at home here, and constitutes no further a member of the expedition. Gov. Cass determined to return to Detroit from this point, on horseback, across the peninsula of Michigan, accompanied by Lt. Mackey, U.S.A., Maj. [Robert Allen] Forsyth, his private secretary, and the necessary number of men and pack horses to prepare their night encampment. This left Capt. Douglass and myself to continue the survey of the Lakes, and after reaching Michilimackinac, and rejoining the party of Mr. Trowbridge, to return to Detroit from that point. The preparations for these ends occupied a couple of days, which gave us an opportunity to scan the vicinity. We found the post (Fort Dearborn) under the command of Capt. Bradley, with a force of one hundred and sixty men. The River is ample and deep for a few miles, but is utterly choked up by the lake sands, through which, behind a masked margin, it oozes its way for a mile or two til it percolates through the sands into the lakes. Its banks consist of a black, areneceous, fertile soil, which is stated to produce abundantly, in its season, the wild species of cepa or leek. This circumstance has led the natives to name it the place of the wild leek. Such is the origin of the term Chicago. … The country around Chicago is the most fertile and beautiful that can be imagined. It consists of an intermixture of woods and prairies, diversified with gentle slopes, sometimes attaining the elevation of hills, and it is irrigated with a number of clear streams and rivers, which throw their waters partly into Lake Michigan and partly into the Mississippi River. As a farming country, it presents the greatest facilities for raising stock and grains, and it is one of the most favored parts of the Mississippi Valley. The climate has a delightful serenity, and it must, as soon as the Indian title is extinguished, become one of the most attractive fields for the emigrant. To the ordinary advantages of an agricultural market town, it must add that of being a depot for the commerce between the northern and southern sections of the Union, and a great thoroughfare for strangers, merchants, and travellers.

On November 6, having returned with Schoolcraft in late August from the four-month Cass expedition that had included himself as physician, Indian Agent Wolcott writes to his brother-in-law in Middleton, Connecticut:
… You wanted me to write some account of my domestic affairs. The principal part of my stock consists in two horses, ten milch cows (two yoke of oxen belonging to Uncle Sam) and about ten head of young cattle. Mr. Kinzie planted for me during my absence six acres of corn from which I gathered three hundred and seventy measured bushels, more than sixty bushels to the acre, a pretty good crop that, considering the season. I intend next spring to enclose a pasture of about a hundred acres to keep my cows and twenty sheep. … [Am now] digging a space for an ice house as I find my old one will not answer my purpose. During the winter & spring I propose to build an additional kitchen, a store-house, a blacksmith’s shop, a council house, and office, an old fashioned connecticut corn-barn, a poultry house, a smoke-house, a milk-house, and a root-house, besides putting up enclosure of palings around my yard &c.; &c.; Do you see I do not propose to be idle between this & the next planting season. If Uncle Sam lets me stay on this farm of his for five or six years I intend to make it one of the most convenient and inviting little posts in the country.

In this year, Dr. William S. Madison succeeds Dr. McMahon to become the sixth Fort Dearborn military surgeon.

In January Maj. Alexander Cummings, Third Infantry, assumes command at Fort Dearborn.

On January 31, Chicago becomes part of Pike County, and the capital of Illinois reverts back to Kaskaskia from Vandalia.

On June 18, John Walls, of the U.S. General Land Office, Washington, D.C., created a survey of the Illinois & Michigan Canal Route with the Chicago River, Mud Lake and Part of the Des Plaines; 18 June.

On August 29, a treaty is concluded in Chicago between the United States and various Indian tribes which, among other large land cessions [approximately five million acres], gives the United States the right-of-way to construct the Chicago Road between Detroit and Chicago. About 3,000 Indians are in Chicago for the occasion to receive in return an immediate distribution of merchandise, grants of small parcels of land to certain individuals, government-provided instructions for the Indians in blacksmithing, agriculture, &c.;, and the assurance of certain annuities in perpetuity. The treaty clears the way for the Illinois & Michigan Canal project. Note John Walls` survey.

In September, Dr. M.H.T. Hall replaces Dr. Madison at Fort Dearborn, to become the seventh military surgeon. He remains two months and is followed by Dr. Thomas P. Hall, the eighth military surgeon, who will serve until 1823, when the garrison will be withdrawn.

In October Lt. Col. J. McNeil, Third Infantry, assumes command of Fort Dearborn and serves until July 1823.

During this year, Ebenezer Childs of Green Bay passes through Chicago and reports the following later:
In 1821, I made a trip to St. Louis in a bark canoe. … [There] I remained two weeks, did my business, when I was advised to return by way of the Illinois River. … We continued up the Illinois to the junction of the Kankakee and the Eau Plaine, and thence up the Eau Plaine to where I supposed we had to make a portage to Chicago River; but I could not see any signs of the portage. There had been heavy rains for several days, which had so raised the streams that they overflowed their banks. I concluded that I had gone far enough for the portage, so I left the Eau Plaine and took a northeast direction. After travelling a few miles, I found the current of the Chicago River. The whole country was inundated; I found not less than two feet of water all across the portage. That night I arrived at Chicago, pitched my tent on the bank of the Lake, and went to the Fort for provisions. … There were, at this time, but two families residing outside of the Fort at Chicago, those of Mr. Kinzie and Col. Beaubien. …

In March, the U.S. Congress makes available property for the Illinois & Michigan Canal and appropriates $10,000 for a canal survey.

In this year, Rev. Isaac McCoy establishes an Indian Baptist mission and school where Niles will develop in the Michigan Territory. Several Chicago children attend the school as boarders, among them Josette Ouilmette and Madore Beaubien.

A military burial of the 1812 massacre victims’ remnants is held sometime this year; until then the bones have remained scattered among the sand dunes south of Fort Dearborn.

During the summer, U.S. government agent Charles C. Trowbridge travels to Fort Dearborn to fulfill provisions of the Chicago Treaty of 1821, stating specifically: “… the establishment of a teacher, farmer, and blacksmith, for the period of fifteen years, among the Pottawattamies of the St. Joseph river, and a like establishment among the Ottawas for ten years on the Grand river; and the object of the journey [is] to select suitable places for their location.”

On the first Monday of August, the second election for governor and lieutenant-governor of Illinois takes place; Edward Coles, from Madison County, is elected governor.

The U.S. Congress passes the General Survey Act, which gives the president the power to plan improvements on the Great Lakes, such as harbor or canal construction, although Congress must approve the cost. As a consequence of this act—but not until 1831—$5,000 will be appropriated for a Chicago lighthouse, and, in 1833, $25,000 for harbor improvement.

Col. René Paul and Col. Justus Post, both engineers from St. Louis, begin a survey and cost estimate of a proposed canal connecting the Chicago River with the Illinois River at La Salle, completing their work the following year. Their estimate is $639,946 to $716,110. [When eventually built from 1836 to 1848, the cost ran over $700,000,000; eds.]

In June Joseph Bailly, believing he is in Michigan Territory, builds a home and trading post on the bank of the Calumet River [near Chesterton, Indiana], becoming the first settler in the Calumet region.

On August 22 W.T. Barry, postmaster general, requests proposals “for carrying the mail of the United States from Chicago, Ill. to Green Bay, M.T. and back once a week, on horseback, for three years, from 1st January, 1825.” [The advertisement appeared in the Chicago Democrat between Sept. 17 and Dec. 24, 1834, possibly to highlight the community’s growth in 10 years; eds.]

On December 1, John Quincy Adams is declared president of the United States by the House of Representatives, following a four-way electoral deadlock among Adams, Andrew Jackson, William Crawford, and Henry Clay.

The Erie Canal is under construction and will open in the following year; see map.

On January 13, Chicago becomes part of Putnam County, Illinois, but is administered by Peoria County. The property value for all of Chicago’s 14 land owners is assessed at a total of $9,047, of which $5000 is assessed against John Crafts, the local representative of John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company. At 1%, Astor pays $50 in tax.

On May 15, John Crafts dies; Jean Baptiste Beaubien assumes responsibility as the American Fur Co. agent.

On July 28, John Kinzie is commissioned justice of the peace of Peoria County, the first Chicagoan to hold this office.

On September 8, the Peoria Court appoints Archibald Clybourne constable for the Chicago district of Peoria County.

On October 9, the visiting Rev. Isaac McCoy gives the first Protestant sermon in Chicago.

On October 25, the Erie Canal opens as America’s first man-made waterway, and establishes a new route for trade with and emigration from the settled East.

In December, William H. Wallace opens a trading post at Hardscrabble on the south branch.

Also in this year, Heinrich Rothenfeld, first German settler, comes to Chicago, but settles further west at what will soon become Dunklee’s Grove. Alexander Robinson opens his tavern on the west bank of the river, near the Forks. Note map of the housing pattern.

John H. Fonda, trader and mail carrier of Prairie du Chien, passes through Chicago and will later record his experience:
[Lake Peoria] … At length the councils were concluded, and our [Indian] guide signified his willingness to procede. Under his direction we paddled along until we came to the Des Plaines river, from which we passed into a large slough or lake [Mud Lake] that must have led us into a branche of the Chicago river, for we followed a stream that brought us opposite Fort Dearborn. At this period, Chicago was merely an Indian Agency; it contained about 14 homes, and not more than 75 to 100 inhabitants at the most. An Agent of the American Fur Company, named Gurdon S. Hubbard, then occupied the Fort. The staple business seemed to be carried on by Indians and run-away soldiers, who hunted ducks and muscrats in the marshes. There was a great deal of low land, and mostly destitute of timber. The principal inhabitants were the agent, Mr. Hubbard, a Frenchman by the name of Ouilmette, and John B. Beaubien. It never occurred to me that a large city would be built up there. … But to go on with my story, we departed from Fort Dearborn in a fishing boat and proceded north along the Lake shore toward Green Bay.

On July 29 Elizabeth, John Kinzie’s daughter from his first marriage, marries Samuel Miller, with her father officiating as justice of the peace.

On August 7, a state election is held by the Chicago precinct of Peoria County at Indian agent Wolcott’s house and 35 ballots are cast to chose a governor [Ninian Edwards], lieutenant-governor, and a member of Congress [Daniel Cook].

In this year, Mark Beaubien arrives with his wife, Monique, and children, purchasing a small log cabin on the south bank near the Forks from James Kinzie.

Stephen J. Scott settles at Grosse Pointe with his family. David and Bernardus Laughton open a trading post on the south branch at Hardscrabble, but within a year move to the Des Plaines River to build and maintain a trading post and tavern.

On March 2, by an act of Congress, the federal government grants to the State of Illinois alternate sections, six miles wide, of public land along both sides of the proposed route of the Illinois & Michigan Canal. The money realized in land sales will be used to meet canal construction costs.

On May 18, Deborah Watkins files Chicago’s first divorce proceedings in a Peoria court against her spouse, Morrison Watkins, for being “an habitual and excessive drunkard who sought the companionship of women contrary to his marriage vows &c.; &c.;”

During the summer [June to August], the Winnebago uprising in Wisconsin causes much concern in the Chicago settlement, where Fort Dearborn has been ungarrisoned since 1823. A company of militia is organized in July under the command of Jean B. Beaubien. Gurdon Hubbard goes to Danville and returns with 100 men for reinforcement, the “Vermillion Rangers,” but no action occurs.

In early July, the unoccupied Fort Dearborn is struck by lightning; the barracks on the east side, the storehouse at the south gate, and part of the adjoining guard house are destroyed.

In this year, the brothers John and Samuel Miller build their tavern on the projection of land between the north branch and the main channel of the Chicago River, opposite Wolf Point. Archibald Clybourne builds the first slaughterhouse for cattle to supply the garrison.

On January 6, John Kinzie dies hours after suffering a cerebral stroke.

On May 11, a Peoria County election for constable is held at the agency house; nine votes are cast; elected are David Hunter and Henley Clybourne.

On August 4, the Chicago precinct casts 33 votes in a congressional election.

On August 28, Alexander Doyle is elected justice of the peace. David Hunter and Henley Clybourne are reelected as constables.

On October 3, Fort Dearborn is reoccupied with a military garrison. The commanding officer is Capt. and Bvt. Maj. John Fowle, Fifth Infantry. With him is Dr. Clement Alexander Finley, who becomes the ninth Fort Dearborn physician.

On October 20, 69 men—among them 61 from Chicago—petition the Illinois General Assembly to set off a new county from Peoria County to be named Michigan County; proposed boundaries embrace all territory in Illinois north of the Kankakee River and east of the Fox River. The legislature does not act on the petition.

On November 3, U.S. presidential elections are held at J.B. Beaubien’s house; 40 votes are cast. Andrew Jackson captures the presidency on a platform demanding massive, systematic removal to the West of all eastern Indians.

The Department of Indian Affairs builds the first frame house in Chicago as an award to Billy Caldwell (Sauganash) for his services on behalf of the U.S. government; the house is constructed near the corner of the later Chicago and Wabash avenues.

An aerial view of Wolf Point as the forks may have looked in 1828 was painted by James Herriot in c.1900. [56]