City already widely honors du Sable, and additional tributes are unnecessary

Jean Baptiste Point du Sable is an interesting figure in Chicago history, and he is appropriately recognized by having a bust of his likeness just north of the Michigan Avenue Bridge, near where he made his home in the 1780s. Also named in his honor is the bridge itself, a park and a museum, among other places. The Chicago Riverwalk might be a worthy addition to that list, since it was along the river that he lived.

Du Sable may have been the first nonindigenous settler in the area now known as Chicago, but he didn’t stay all that long. According to Encyclopedia Chicago, he abandoned the area as early as 1800, when he “moved to near present-day St. Charles, Missouri,” where he died in 1818. Thus, he never saw Fort Dearborn, which wasn’t built until 1803, nor was he around during the attack that decimated the settlement in 1812.

Considering that Chicago had fewer than 4,500 residents as late as three years after its incorporation as a city in 1837, du Sable’s departure over a generation earlier leaves his role in its growth and prosperity open to question. Additional honors seem unnecessary.

J.L. Stern, Highland Park