Uncovering the Story of DuSable: A Chicago Visionary Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable (c. 1745-1818) is regarded as the first permanent non-native settler of what would later become Chicago, Illinois. Recognized as the city’s founder, the site where he settled near the mouth of the Chicago River around the 1780s is memorialized as a National Historic Landmark, now located in Pioneer Court. DuSable was born to a French father and a Black African slave mother in Saint Domingue (present day Haïti).
