THE story of Chicago, like Knickerbocker's History of New York, begins with original chaos and primal creation. Moreover, Chicago is one of the latest successes of creative power.

Only by slow emergence through innumerable ages did it come to light in the midst of the New World. Not only when a large part of North America lay under water but afterward, when the central valley had been uplifted, when the mighty Mississippi six times its present breadth had cut its channel to the gulf, when the chain of great lakes began to pour a part of their overplus down the ancient Niagara, almost the entire corporate limits of the present city of Chicago, (eight miles by twenty-four) lay twenty feet beneath Lake Michigan. It is all "made land"-the de

posit of a shorewise reflex current, left bare by a subsidence of thirty feet in the level of the lake.

The ancient shore line, starting at the north in the Wilmette suburb, trends southwest to Norwood Park (where formerly the North Branch through high banks emptied into the lake); thence southward and again. southwest until at Riverside it reaches a distance of eleven miles from the present shore. Here the line was broken by a great placid river, twenty feet in depth and two miles wide, flowing gently outward from the lake. At its initial point absorbing the insignificant Des Plaines, and filling the present valley of that stream, it glided over the "twelve mile level" toward Lockport. Here it suddenly broke into a bawling race down a declivity of seventy-seven feet in ten miles to Lake Joliet, whence it continued through the broad channel of the Illinois valley and the Father of Waters to the Gulf of Mexico.

From the northern shore of the lake and the straits came great icefloats loaded with large water-worn granite boulders. These were carried inland and as the ice melted were

North of Riverside, on the Des Plaines in that ancient day you would have found a beaver dam and an industrious colony. Looking southward from the same point two miles across the lake outlet at Summit, you would observe the low shore-line begin again trending away six miles southeast to Washington Heights, Heights, where it rises a hundred feet above the brimming lake.

During the untold ages the lake level is gradually lowered, and by the action of the waves always washing up a ridge of sand and gravel upon the margin, successive new shore lines are formed within the one we have traced. When the lake has fallen twenty feet or more, the bar of the Divide appears at the surface, and the southwestern outflow of the lake wholly ceases. Ten feet more and the present shore-line is formed, while the Divide or "Portage," as it was called by the early explorers, is left eight or ten feet above the lakelevel, and for commercial purposes. must be pierced by a canal. The

As far as we can judge the Moundbuilders came first. They wrought in the copper-mines of Lake Superior; they settled, raising their monumental tumuli and fortifications, in Wisconsin and along the Mississippi; but in their eyes poor, flat, reedy and barren Chicago had no attractions.

Next came the rude, untamable Red-man, who lived by the chase, and whose pastime was predatory warfare. His enslaved women set up his lodge-poles by many a lake and stream; but even this savage scarcely deigned to make of the dreary plain with its sluggish creeks a temporary fishing-camp.

In 1607 the English took root at Jamestown, in 1612 the French at Quebec, in 1614 the Dutch were well established at New York, in 1620 the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. Following the natural water-ways the French were one hundred years before the English pioneers in finding Chicago and the Mississippi Valley.

"In 1639, Nicolet visited the west shore of Lake Michigan. In 1673, Sieur Joliet and Father Marquette,

his priestly scribe, started from Green Bay, ascended the Fox, made portage across the Wisconsin Divide and descended the Wisconsin to the Mississipppi. On this they floated far down (to the Arkansas?) and then they paddled back to the mouth of the Illinois, and up the latter, (pausing at the Indian Village of Kaskaskia where they were 'well received') and entered the northern fork (Des Plaines), which they called the 'Chicagou,' and so on to our own Chicago streamlet which they called the Portage river, a name which clung to our South branch until about 1800. Through this they reached Lake Michigan (called by them the 'Lake of the Illinois') and they sailed along the lake shore to Green Bay, whence they had started. Joliet went on to Montreal, where he reported his discoveries, the most important which was the Chicago Portage. Of this he said, with an accuracy which time has only confirmed, that it would be possible to go from Lake Erie to the Mississippi in boats 'by a very good navigation.' 'There would be but one canal to make by cutting a half league of prairie to pass from the Lake of the Illinois [Michigan] to the St. Louis River [the Illinois] which empties into the Mississippi.""

After Joliet had launched his canoe in the South Branch or "Portage River," and had declared this the point where water communication between the lakes and the gulf might readily be opened, one hundred and

French occupation which followed, there are only very slight and infrequent mentions of Chicago as a route of travel between more favored places -once as "the house of the Jesuit Fathers at Chicago"-once suggested as a place of rendezvous for an expedition against the Sacs and Foxes. For a part of the time at least there must have been some traders on the ground and a Jesuit missionary or two. In 1765 the country by treaty passed to the English; and nearly fifteen years later in 1779, the fourth year of the colonial struggle for independence, the region was captured for the State of Virginia by one of the most extraordinary expeditions on record, under the command of Col. George Rogers Clark, for whom are named Clark Street, Clark Coun

ty, and Clarksville. This hardy

pioneer and bold, far-seeing patriot was a Kentuckian of the Daniel Boone stamp.

In 1778 Clark traveled all the way from Kentucky to the James River, to lay before Patrick Henry, Virginia's first governor, a plan for seizing Fort Chartres, Kaskaskia, Vincennes and perhaps Detroit itself, and so adding to Virginia all the country northwest of the Ohio. He told of the outrages of the Indians under English influence, and promised the sympathy and support of the Kentuckians and other settlers who still survived, all embittered to the last extent and all good fighters. He added that the Kaskaskia settlement, being French, was surrounded by friendly Indians. Also that among the French themselves we should find a most friendly feeling, especially when they should

be apprised of the alliance with France just then accomplished by Franklin.

Virginia gave Clark arms, ammunition and supplies, a commission as colonel, and leave to recruit men where he could. She also gave John Todd, of Kentucky, the appointment of “County Lieutenant, or Commandant of the County of Illinois," and a letter of instructions under Patrick Henry's own hand.

With a small force of "buckskins' Clark surprised the garrison of Kaskaskia on the Mississippi. When the French and creole inhabitants were told of the alliance with France, and saw that they were to be treated with kindness, while their religion would have complete tolerance, under the lead of their priest Père Gibault, they freely gave allegiance to the American cause as did also Cahokia and soon after Vincennes. Thereupon Col. Hamilton, British Commandant at Detroit and over all this region, fitted out an expedition with which he marched upon and occupied Vincennes. Here he proposed to winter having interposed between. Clark and his base of supplies, and expecting in the spring to make short work of his greatly inferior force. However, Clark in February, with one hundred and seventy men, with incredible hardship, marched through the flooded Wabash country, fording rafting and swimming the ice-cold floods and for days without food, till at last they had struggled to Vincennes, where they soon compelled Hamilton to surrender the fort with

all the forces, munitions and stores it contained. So ended the contest and these towns and lands of French exploration and occupation have remained in our hands ever since.

Up to the date of the signing of the Declaration of Independence it does not appear that any person whatsoever had established an ownership of Chicago soil which has endured. But about two years later, one Jean Baptiste Point de Saible left Peoria and settled in Chicago. Here he lived seventeen years in a cabin on the North Side near the river and almost opposite the point where Fort Dearborn was erected twenty-five years later. It has been. said that "the first white inhabitant of Chicago was black." Baptiste Point de Saible was a Haytien mulatto. He is described by Col. De Puyster, commandant at Mackinaw (July 4, 1779) as a handsome negro, well settled at Eschicagou, but much in the French interest." His cabin he sold to a French trader, La Mai, who sold it in 1804 to John Kinzie. During a portion at least of Baptiste Point de Saible's occupancy another man, one Guarie had a trading cabin on the west side of the North Branch, which was called River Guarie. By the year 1800 other traders had located at Chicago, but the place was of far less importance than St. Joseph upon the opposite side of the lake.

Pointe de Saible, Le Mai and disappeared and left no sign. other Frenchman who was for

Guarie have Not so ana time their

contemporary-Antoine Ouillemette. Major Whistler found him here when he arrived in 1803 to build the first Fort Dearborn. Ouillemette remained here and hereabouts for the next thirty years, and was the only white inhabitant during the four years following the massacre of 1812. He lived about the Fort until 1829, with his wife, a Pottawatomie, when he obtained through her, a reservation at Gross Point (Evanston), which he cultivated until 1835, at which time he moved with the tribe to Council Bluffs. The fine suburb "Wilmette" perpetuates his name and marks the place which he fenced and cultivated.

In 1795 by a treaty which General Wayne arranged with twelve Indian tribes, among other tracts for trading posts, they ceded "One piece of land six miles square at the mouth of the Chicago river emptying into the southwestern end of Lake Michigan where a fort formerly stood."

This is the first official recognition by the United States government of the name Chicago. Here also appears the tradition of a fortification of some sort at this place in that dim century and more since the days of Joliet and La Salle. Nine years later, in 1803, Captain John Whistler was sent with a company of soldiers to build a fort-the first, or Old Fort Dearborn.

John Wentworth (in Fergus Historical Series, No. 16) quotes Mrs. Julia Whistler regarding the settlement in 1803 as follows: