First Settlement

It’s hard to imagine Chicago, the third most-populated city in the United States today, as ever being an open, swampy plain. But the area near the southern tip of Lake Michigan was once rich with wildlife, fish, and fertile soil. Different Native American groups, including the Illinois, Kickapoo, Miami, Ojibwa, Ottawa, Potawatomi, and Shawnee, once lived there. When the first French fur trappers and settlers arrived in presentday Canada and reached the western Great Lakes in the 1600s, they established a fur trade with the native communities there.

- Andrew Matthews

In 1673, Jacques Marquette, a French missionary, and Louis Joliet, a French fur trader, led a small expedition to learn more about the Mississippi River. They became the first Frenchmen to explore the interior of the continent. From the northeastern shore of Lake Michigan, they made it as far as present-day St. Louis, Missouri, before turning around.

On the journey back to Quebec, Canada, Marquette and Joliet followed a shorter route suggested by a native chief. It took them past the site of present-day Chicago. The native people called it Eschikagou or Shikaakwa, for the wild, smelly onions that grew there. To the French, it became Chigagou. Joliet noted how ideal the place was for agriculture. He also realized that the site provided access to the entire interior of the continent.

The profitable fur trade with the French around the Great Lakes had drawn the attention of the Iroquois Indians living in upstate New York. They began to move westward to seize control of it. From the mid-1640s to the late 1690s in what became known as the Beaver Wars, the raiding Iroquois wiped out or displaced entire native communities. As survivors moved westward to avoid the Iroquois, their resettlement created upheaval for the native groups already living there. The clashes among different Native Americans for control and survival, and the growing presence of European nations, sparked violent conflicts in North America. The land around present-day Chicago became one of the prizes for the victor to claim.