To the editor:
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Harold Henderson’s fine article about recent archaeological findings in Peoria (May 31) describes what must have been Louis Chatellereau’s farm. This prominent French-Canadian, who also lived at Cahokia, had an Indian slave, Pointe Sable, whom he mortgaged to the trader Gabriel Cerre, along with his other property, in 1792. This slave became the mythical Jean Baptiste Point de Sable, the black farmer at Peoria who tilled an imaginary farm he was “granted” in 1773 under a “deed” nobody has ever seen.
The contemporary documents of Point de Sable’s life are the basis for my biography of him in Early Chicago by Danckers and Meredith (River Forest, 2000). Try as I did for over a decade, I found no authentic, believable record (there are plenty of dubious ones) of his supposed life at Peoria or any other place in Illinois than Chicago.
Glenview
