Chigagou Becomes Chicago, 1750–1835

Abstract

This chapter discusses the Americans that sought excitement and potential wealth of the frontier and headed for the remote settlement of Chigagou in the late 1700s and early 1800s. It describes Chigagou as a typical North American frontier settlement that includes wealthy speculators, dirty fur trappers, and fugitives from justice that sought shelter in run-down flophouses. It also highlights the period between 1750 and 1835, in which the French, British, Anglo-American settlers, and Native Americans jockeyed for control over North America. The chapter illustrates how the little settlement of Chigagou was emblematic of the European conflicts between the French and British as it passed from French control to British authority and finally to American control within a thirty-year period. It analyzes Chigagou in the early 1800s that began to look like an Anglo-American town that is more appropriately referred to by its Europeanized name of Chicago.