The first trading establishment at Chicago of which we have any certain knowledge was that of Baptiste Point du Sable in the latter years of the eighteenth century. Hugh Heward, who in 1790 passed from Lake Michigan by way of the Chicago Portage to the Illinois, tarried at Chicago a day to prepare for the further journey. He exchanged his canoe for a pirogue belonging to Du Sable, and bought from him a quantity of flour and pork, for which he gave in exchange thirteen yards of cotton cloth.[712] How long Du Sable continued to reside here or how extensive was his trade is somewhat conjectural. It is evident that during the closing years of the century the St. Joseph traders, Burnett and Kinzie, at times extended their trading operations around the lake as far as Chicago. It is evident, too, from the fact that when the garrison came in 1803 there were four traders' huts here, that still other traders had established themselves at Chicago for a shorter or longer period.[713]
[712] Heward, Journal.
[713] See in this connection the letters of William Burnett, the St. Joseph trader, in Hurlbut, Chicago Antiquities, 49-70, passim.
So far as existing records are concerned, the first quarter of the nineteenth century marks the heyday of the Indian trade at Chicago. The establishment of the garrison here not only attracted traders and others, as in the case of Kinzie, but it also resulted in the handing down of more numerous and extensive accounts of the trading activities of this region than had ever been done before. Perhaps the most important private source of information for the period prior to 1812 is the transcript of names in Kinzie's account books.[714] Far overshadowing this in importance for the whole period from 1805 to 1822, however, are the records of the Department of Indian Trade, which maintained a government factory at Chicago.
[714] Barry Transcript.
The trading operations of Kinzie during the first period of his residence at Chicago were evidently of considerable importance. An entry at St. Joseph in April, 1804, less than a month before the removal to Chicago, shows that the sum of two hundred and forty-five pounds was invested in a single "adventure" at Peoria. That similar enterprises were being simultaneously conducted appears from an entry a week later concerning "Billy Caldwell's adventure." At Chicago, in addition to the trade he himself conducted and the "adventures" he financed, Kinzie was in partnership with his half-brother, Thomas Forsyth, during the entire period prior to 1812. Although the articles of indenture of Jeffrey Nash describe Kinzie and Forsyth as "Merchants of Chicago,"[715] Forsyth was stationed at Peoria until his establishment was broken up by Captain Craig's militia in the late autumn of 1812. In Kinzie's account book under date of June 13, 1806, settlements with four individuals, amounting in all to fourteen hundred and thirty-one pounds, are noted. The names of these men, Sigrain, Bourbonnais, LaVoy, and Maisonneuf, furnish a typical illustration of the nationality of the men who conducted the Illinois fur trade in the first decade of the nineteenth century.
[715] Supra, p. 150-52.
Some individual entries taken at random from Kinzie's account books may be of interest as showing the prices that prevailed at Chicago a century ago. Thirty bushels of corn sold in 1805 for forty-five dollars. The same year, however, two bushels were sold by Kinzie to Ramsey Crooks for five dollars. Another entry for 1806 states that tobacco sold at fifty cents a pound; whisky at fifty cents a quart; powder at $1.50 a pound; and shot at thirty-three cents a pound. In May of this year butter was quoted at fifty cents, the same price which Kinzie paid at Detroit ten years later for a shipment of ten pounds sent on his first Chicago adventure after the return of the garrison to Fort Dearborn. This same "adventure" included two barrels of whisky invoiced at ten shillings or $1.25 a gallon. A comparison of this with the selling price already noted of fifty cents a quart would seem to indicate that the profit from the sale of fire-water proceeded mainly from the dilution of it with water, which the traders customarily practiced. Returning to 1806, flour is priced at ten cents a pound, while the pay of six boatmen, hired to assist in pulling a trader's craft up the river, is fifty cents a day. In 1810 raisins sold for four shillings and tea for twenty shillings a pound; while the price of "1 tyson" which Jouett ordered was thirty shillings. "A silver brooch for six rats," "2 large silver crosses, $7.50," and "Francis Bourbonnaé Dr. to 1 negro wench sold him by Indenture £160" are entries which suggest their own explanation.
It seems evident that the fur trade of Illinois in the period under consideration was of considerable magnitude. "I had no idea of there being so extensive a trade carried on in that quarter," wrote Colonel Kingsbury to Captain Whistler in the fall of 1804, in reply to an inventory which the latter had sent him of peltries passing Fort Dearborn the preceding spring.[716] The operations of Kinzie and Forsyth could have constituted but a small part of the fur trade of Illinois at this period. In the spring of 1805 Kingsbury was himself at Chicago, seeking to conduct a company of soldiers down the Illinois River to establish a new fort near the mouth of the Missouri.[717] Whistler had been ordered to secure suitable boats for the transportation of the detachment, but his efforts to do so had been unavailing. Upon Kingsbury's arrival at Chicago, however, he succeeded in securing two traders' bateaux on condition that the goods, amounting to one hundred packs of peltry and ten bags, should be transported to Mackinac in the brig "Adams," which had brought the troops to Chicago. A few entries from Kinzie's account book will serve further to show the extent of the trade which passed through Chicago. June 14, 1806, Ouilmette is charged with the hire of a wagon and oxen to transport a trader's goods to the forks of the Illinois River. Three weeks later Hugh Pattinson and Company become indebted to Kinzie for the labor of four men for six days each pulling boats up the river, and at the same time for the portage of one hundred and fifty-six packs of peltries. In July, 1807, Kinzie transported forty-six packs across the portage for James Aird, and in the same month on two occasions transported enough for Auguste Chouteau to incur charges of almost forty pounds. A similar entry in July, 1808, charges Chouteau with two hundred and fifty-six dollars for carrying one hundred and twenty-eight packs from Mount Joliet to Chicago.
[716] Kingsbury Papers, Whistler to Kingsbury, August 14, 1804; Kingsbury to Whistler, September 10, 1804.