Fort Dearborn - Background

Background

The history of human activity in the Chicago area prior to the arrival of European explorers is mostly unknown. In 1673, an expedition headed by Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette, though possibly not the first Europeans to visit the area, was the first recorded to have crossed the Chicago Portage and travelled along the Chicago River. Marquette returned in 1674, camped a few days near the mouth of the river, then moved on to the portage, where he stayed through the winter of 1674–75. Joliet and Marquette did not report any Indians living near the Chicago River area at this time, though archaeologists have since discovered numerous Indian village sites elsewhere in the greater Chicago area. Two of La Salle's men built a stockade at the portage in the winter of 1682/1683. A Jesuit mission, Mission of the Guardian Angel, was founded somewhere in the vicinity of Chicago in 1696, but was abandoned in around 1700. The Fox Wars effectively closed the Chicago area to Europeans in the first part of the 18th century. The first non-native to re-settle in the area may have been a trader named Guillory, who might have had a trading-post near Wolf Point on the Chicago River in around 1778. Jean Baptiste Point du Sable built a farm and trading post near the mouth of the Chicago River in the 1780s, and he is widely regarded as the Founder of Chicago. Antoine Ouilmette is the next recorded resident of Chicago; he claimed to have settled at the mouth of the Chicago River in July 1790.

In 1682, René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle had claimed a large territory, including the Chicago area, for France. In 1763 the French ceded this area to Great Britain following the French and Indian War. Great Britain then ceded the area to the United States at the end of the American Revolutionary War, though the Northwest Territory remained under de facto British control until 1796. Following the Northwest Indian War of 1785–1795, the Treaty of Greenville was signed at Fort Greenville (now Greenville, Ohio), on August 3, 1795. As part of the terms of this treaty, a coalition of Native Americans and Frontiers men, known as the Western Confederacy, turned over to the United States large parts of modern-day Ohio, and various other parcels of land including six square miles centered at the mouth of the Chicago River.