<p>Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable is regarded as the first permanent, non-Indigenous settler of what would later become Chicago, Illinois, and is recognized as the "Founder of Chicago". A school, museum, harbor, park, and bridge have been named in his honor. The site where he settled near the mouth of the Chicago River around the 1780s is identified as a National Historic Landmark, now located in Pioneer Court.</p> <p>Pointe du Sable was of African descent. During his career, the areas where he &nbsp;settled and traded around the Great Lakes and in the Illinois Country changed hands several times among France, Britain, Spain and the new &nbsp;United States. Described as handsome and well educated, Pointe du Sable married a Native American woman, Kitiwaha, and they had two children. In 1779, during the American Revolutionary War, &nbsp;he was arrested by the British military on suspicion of being an &nbsp;American rebel sympathizer. In the early 1780s he worked for the British &nbsp;lieutenant-governor of Michilimackinac on an estate at what is now the city of St. Clair, Michigan north of Detroit.</p> <p>Point du Sable is first recorded as living at the mouth of the &nbsp;Chicago River in a trader's journal of early 1790. &nbsp;By then he had &nbsp;established an extensive and prosperous trading settlement in what later &nbsp;became the City of Chicago. He sold his Chicago River property in 1800 &nbsp;and moved to the port of St. Charles, where he was licensed to run a Missouri River ferry. Pointe du Sable's successful role in developing the Chicago River settlement was little recognized until the mid-20th century.</p>