The Chicago portage had attracted visitors long before Du Sable. Traders and Indians used the narrow waterway because it connected Lake Michigan with the Des Plaines River, thence the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. Du Sable was the first to settle there, however, and he found it a good choice.

There, in 1779, Du Sable was found by Colonel Arent Schuyler De Peyster, British commandant at Michilimackinac, a fortified trading post now known as Mackinac Island. In one of the few remaining written references to Du Sable, Peyster described him as "a handsome Negro, well educated and settled at Eschikagou, but much in the French interest." Later in 1779, Du Sable was arrested for spying for the French by British Lieutenant Thomas Bennett of the King's Regiment, then located near what is now Michigan City, Indiana.

Du Sable was taken to Mackinac, where Bennett later reported that he behaved "in every respect becoming to a man in his situation, and has many friends who give him good character." From 1780 to 1784, Du Sable was made superintendent of Lieutenant Governor Patrick Sinclair's business interests. Upon his release, he returned to Eschikagou (an Indian word said to mean "great," "skunk cabbage," "wild onion" or "garlic.")

In 1790 Hugh Heward from Detroit stopped at Du Sable's post, which was near the site of today's Chicago Sun-Times building. Heward wrote that he was provided with flour, bread and pork. Historians contend that Du Sable must have had his own flour mill, hogs, crops and even a baker.

Du Sable prospered during his approximate 20 years as Chicago's first settler. When he sold his property in 1800 to Jean Lalime, a French trader, the listed inventory for the sale included a house, 40 by 22 feet; a horse mill, 36 by 24; a bakehouse, 20 by 18; a barn, 40 by 48; a dairy; a poultry house; workshop and stable.

Du Sable's furnishings included a French cabinet with glass doors, a large feather bed, a couch, four tables, seven chairs, mirrors, paintings, dishes and a coffee mill. Undoubtedly, it was one of the most complete establishments owned by a frontiersman in the Middle West, outside of Detroit or St. Louis. To live on the edge of the frontier as Du Sable did, you had to be a jack-of-all-trades. He was a fur trader, probably a farmer, carpenter, cooper and miller -- and perhaps even an early distiller.

Some historians have called John Kinzie, who bought Du Sable's old place from Lalime in 1804, the "first Chicagoan." Some, perhaps, dismiss Du Sable because he was not white and because he lived so closely with the Indians. Whatever his ancestry, Du Sable was able to prove he was an American citizen in 1783 when he obtained a government land grant.

Says an Illinois historian, the late Father Thomas A. Meehan: "The title and honor 'first Chicagoan' belongs to Jean Baptiste Pointe Du Sable, a man whose claim can be substantiated by at least three contemporary documents. He resided in Chicago for almost 20 years, reared three children there, and even, in the last years of his residence, saw a grandchild born in almost the heart of the present-day city . . . From this ingenious, resourceful and seemingly well-educated Negro, Chicago draws her permanency.

After Du Sable left Chicago, he moved to St. Charles, Missouri, to the home of an old friend from Peoria. He died there in 1818.

The stamp was issued February 20, 1987, as a unit of Black Heritage series.