[315] Mrs. John H. Kinzie, Wau Bun, the "Early Day" in the Northwest, Caxton Club edition. This work has been reprinted several times since its first appearance in 1856. Page references to it in this work are to the Caxton Club edition of 1901.
[316] See, for example, Mason, "Early Visitors to Chicago," in New England Magazine, VI, 205-6.
[317] The following sources, on a study of which the accompanying account of Du Sable is based, contain practically all the information I have been able to collect concerning him: Kinzie, Wau Bun, 146; De Peyster's allusion, in speech to the Indians at l'Arbre Croche July 4, 1779, in Wisconsin Historical Collections, XVIII, 384; McCulloch, Early Days of Peoria and Chicago, 91-92; "Recollections of Augustin Grignon," in Wisconsin Historical Collections, III, 292; Lieutenant Bennett's report of arrest of Du Sable, August, 1779, in Wisconsin Historical Collections, XVII, 399; inventory of goods taken from Du Sable by Bennett, in Michigan Pioneer Collections, X, 366; Journal of Hugh Heward (MS original owned by Clarence M. Burton of Detroit; I have used the copy in the Chicago Historical Society library'); Schoolcraft, Personal Memoirs, 478; Draper Collection, S, Vols. XXI and XXII, passim; McCulloch, "Old Peoria," in Illinois State Historical Society, Transactions, 1901, 46.
[318] Matson, N., French and Indians of Illinois River, 187-91. Matson's information purports to have been obtained from a grandson of Du Sable.
[319] McCulloch, Early Days of Peoria and Chicago, 91.
As a trader he moved from place to place and the date of his settlement at Chicago and the regularity of his stay here are alike uncertain. De Peyster says that he was here in 1779, and also darkly hints at some punishment meted out to him by Langlade, the reputed "father of Wisconsin."[320] In the summer of that year, however, we find him established with a house on the River Chemin, later known as Trail Creek, probably on the site of Michigan City, Indiana. Here he was arrested by Lieutenant Bennett, who had been sent by De Peyster toward Vincennes to forestall an anticipated attack on Mackinac by George Rogers Clark.[321] Du Sable's offense seems to have consisted only in his attachment to the American cause, and even his captor speaks highly of him. Curiously enough, he was in the employ of a British trader, Durand, at Mackinac, who this same summer had undertaken to guide a British war party to the Illinois country to co-operate with Bennett. The goods which Bennett seized from Du Sable belonged to Durand, Who proceeded to file a claim with his government for their value. Because of this circumstance there is preserved an itemized inventory of Du Sable's stock in trade.[322] Perhaps the most interesting entry, aside from the quaint designation of Du Sable as a "naigre Libre," is the rum, ten barrels of twenty gallons each, with a value nearly twice as great as all of the remainder of the stock.
[320] Wisconsin Historical Collections, XVIII, 384; see also in this connection ibid., 399, note 98.
[321] Wisconsin Historical Collections, XVIII, 399.
[322] Michigan Pioneer Collections, X, 366.
Whatever his nativity may have been, Du Sable proved, at least to the satisfaction of a government commission, that he was a citizen of the United States. In pursuance of a series of congressional acts and resolutions providing for grants in the Illinois country to citizens of the United States who had made improvements or who were heads of families, Du Sable made proof that both before and after 1783 he had resided at Peoria, that he was the head of a family, and that he had improved a farm of thirty acres at Peoria as early as 1780.[323] The commission therefore reported that he was entitled to eight hundred acres of land. How long after 1783 he continued to reside at Peoria does not appear, but in 1790 we find him established at Chicago near the mouth of the river. Whether, as Mrs. Kinzie suggests, he went into politics and sought election as a chief of the Pottawatomies is dubious,[324] but when Heward passed through Chicago in the spring of 1790, he was entertained by Du Sable. The traveler exchanged some cotton cloth with him for a supply of food, and also borrowed his boat. Four years later he was still here, if Grignon's recollections are to be trusted. Alexander Robinson in his old age related that Du Sable, who had long lived at Chicago and was prominent among the Indians, came to Mackinac about the year 1796, accompanied by quite a band of Indians in several birch-bark canoes. The British greeted him on his arrival by the discharge of cannon.[325]