Residence of John Kinzie, Esq. 150 (The first house built in Chicago.) From sketch by Mrs. Kinzie, in original edition.
Old Fort Dearborn, 1803-1812 156 From sketch by Charles H. Ourand, based upon plans drawn by Capt. J. Whistler, 1808, in possession of Chicago Historical Society.
Shaubena 198 (Chief of the Pottawattomies.) From photograph of oil portrait in possession of Chicago Historical Society.
Big Foot's Village and Lake 250 From sketch by Mrs. Kinzie, in original edition.
The Grand Chûte--Fox River 346 From sketch by Mrs. Kinzie, in original edition.
Black Hawk 354 (Head-man of the Rock River Sacs.) From oil portrait by R. M. Sully, in possession of Wisconsin Historical Society.
Fort Winnebago in 1834 353 (Indian agency buildings on hill to left.) From oil painting, based upon plans and local traditions, by Isaac A. Ridgway.
The early history of Chicago has much to do with the Kinzies and their connections. It is particularly fortunate that one of this family should have given to the world, out of the abundance of her recollections of the "early day," what has become a classic in the historical literature of the Middle West--the Northwest of a half-century ago.
Kinzie is but an abbreviated form of the old Scotch name of Mackenzie. John Mackenzie must have been among the first subjects of Great Britain to emigrate to Canada upon the downfall of the French regime; for his son John (afterwards called Kinzie) was born in Quebec, in 1763, the year of the Paris treaty. The family soon moved to Detroit, and there the elder Mackenzie died, during John's infancy.
The widow had previously been married to a Mr. Haliburton, by whom she had a daughter, a beautiful and accomplished girl, who in turn became the mother of General Fleming, Nicholas Low, and Mrs. Charles King, of New York. John Kinzie was the only issue of the second marriage. In due time, Mrs. Mackenzie married a third husband--William Forsyth, another Scotchman, who had come to New York in 1750, fought under Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham, and was twice wounded. The Forsyths moved to New York City, whither young John Kinzie was taken. When some ten or eleven years of age, while at school at Williamsburg, on Long Island, with two of his half-brothers, Kinzie, a restless, adventurous youth, ran away to his native town, Quebec. There he was, when nearly starved, picked up on the streets by a silversmith, and incidentally learned something of the craft of his benefactor. There are evidences of his being in Detroit, as a fur-trader, as early as 1795; and by the close of the century this thrifty young Scotchman is known to have had trading establishments on the Maumee, at Sandusky, and at St. Josephs, on Lake Michigan.