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Description

The Cabin of the Founder of Chicago -- Signed by the Artist

Fascinating image of Eschikago in 1779, at the time when Jean Baptiste Point de Sable (1750-1818) settled on the Chicago River, thereby becoming the first permanent resident of site which would become the City of Chicago.

The image shows a small cabin across from a Native American settlement on the far side of the river, with a larger image of the Cabin and portrait of Saible.  

Saible is believed to have been of African descent, most likely from Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) in the Caribbean, although some historians believe that he was born in French Canada.  He likely trapped and traded furs  in the Great Lakes and Illinois Country from the 1770s onward.  He married a Native American woman named Kitiwaha.  During the American Revolution, he was arrested as a suspected American patriot at Trail Creek by British troops and imprisoned at Fort Michilimackinac for short period, after which time Point du Sable was sent to the Pinery on the St. Clair River north of Detroit, where he remained from 1780 to 1784, managing a tract of woodlands on the St. Clair River in eastern Michigan. owned by Lieutenant. Patrick Sinclair, a British Officer.    

After the war, Point du Sable settled with his family on the north bank of the Chicago River, with the earliest written account of his residence noted in the Journal of Hugh Heward on May 10, 1790.  By 1794, he had been described as a wealthy trader.  Point du Sable sold his land to Jean La Lime in 1800 and move to St. Charles (future Missouri capital, but then part of French Louisiana), where he likely remained until his death in 1818.

This image first appeared as the frontispiece for A.T. Andreas's History of Chicago, published in 1884 and is here reissued in as part of a numbered limited edition by (61 of 125) by Raoul Varin in 1930.  Varin, a French watercolorist, created a number of early images of Chicago.

Condition Description
Some toning and mat burn in the margins, but generally a nice example.