Don Wildman

The missionaries are coming out and trying to evangelize people.

Explain how the French find the place and why they're there.

It's so interesting that the identity that many of us carry, think of when we think of Chicago today is actually roots itself then in terms of the mixed populations, people getting along, figuring it out together.

That's basically why Chicago feels cool, you know, and it felt cool even then.

In a way, a golden age, wasn't it?

I mean, this was a period of, of course, it's the beginnings of what becomes quite dark.

But at this point, people are getting to know each other.

There's some hope there.

The first permanent non-Indigenous settler is a guy, very tellingly, Jean-Baptiste Pointe du Sable.

He arrives in this area sometime in the 1770s into the 80s, right?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And Potamami is going to be a very important nation to know about as we move through this story.

So he's married into that tribe, I guess.

John Kinsey, another name, a fur trader who acquired DuSable's house in 1800.

It all happens very recently, really, in the scheme of things, isn't it?

Everything's been established for hundreds of years on the East Coast.

This is all happening around the 1800s.

I want to caution folks, because we're going to jump back and forth in time here, because there's a lot that goes into this.

And that's the whole sort of quilting of this story that takes place here through these events.