To early writers of Chicago’s history, John Kinzie, a white Protestant involved in trade and politics, was the embodiment of a founding father—so they designated him the city’s first citizen. Yet these writers overlooked Jean-Baptist-Point Du Sable, the man who is thought to have first occupied the area at the mouth of the Chicago River in the late 18th century. Du Sable built a cabin and a prosperous trading post that served Native Americans and European traders. Having been born in what is now Haiti to a French sailor and an enslaved woman of African descent, been married to a Potawatomi woman, and sold his property in 1800, Du Sable was unlike the typical founding father, and so he was largely left out of Chicago’s history. The city did not recognize Du Sable as its official founder until 2006.
In fairness, the first inhabitant of Chicago was neither Jean-Baptist-Point Du Sable nor John Kinzie—it was an as-yet-unknown Native American.