The Origin and Meaning of the Name Chicago (Indian: Chicagoua).

The name Chicago is derived from the local Indian word Chicagoua (French: Chicagou & Chiquagoux) for the native garlic plant Allium tricoccum, commonly known as ramps. This garlic (in French: ail sauvage) grew wild in abundance on the south end of Lake Michigan and on the wooded banks of the extensive Chicagoua River System, which bore the same name, Chicagoua. Father Gravier, a thorough student of the local Miami Indian language, introduced the spelling chicagoua, or chicagou, in the 1690s, attempting to express the inflection the Indians gave to the last syllable of the word. 

Allium Tricoccum - commonly known as Ramps, Leeks, Spring Onions, Chives, and Shallots are all in the Onion family. Ramps are easily recognizable by their distinctive garlic-like smell.

The French, who began arriving here in 1673, were probably confused by the Indian use of this name for several rivers. They usually wrote it as Chicagou. Gradually, other names were given to the streams composing this system: Des Plaines, Saganashkee (Sag), Calumet (Grand and Little), Hickory Creek, Guillory (for the north branch of the present Chicago River), and Chicago or Portage River (for the south branch). Students of early Chicago history need clarification, as they are unaware of these name changes. Still, when carefully interpreted, early French maps and narratives make it possible to discover who, what, where, and when. 

As a name for a place distinct from a river, Chicagou appears first in Chicagoumeman, the native name for the mouth of the present Chicago River, where Fort Dearborn was built in 1803. As a name for a place where people lived, the simple Chicagou was first used by the French about 1685 for a Jesuit mission and French army post at the site of Marquette's 1675 camp along the south branch. This interpretation and the etymology of the name Chicago derive primarily from the memoirs of Henri Joutel, the soldier-naturalist associate of René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (or: René-Robert de La Salle), on his fatal last journey, 1684-1687, to Texas. Joutel spent nearly three weeks in the Chicagou area in 1687-88, and one of his first investigations was into the origin of this name, which he had heard from La Salle and many others. His detailed description of the plant, its "ail Sauvage" taste, and its differences from the native onion and its maple forest habitat point unambiguously to Allium Tricoccum. 

English accounts tracing the name to a "wild onion" date from after 1800, when different groups of Indians, mainly Potawatomi, had displaced the original Miami. In the Potawatomi language, Chicago meant native garlic and the wild onion plants. 

The downtown Chicago or Fort Dearborn area, exposed to wind, weather, and passing enemies, differed from where the local Miami and other people lived when Frenchmen, led by Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette, S.J., began arriving in 1673. In early 1675, Marquette found a group of Illinois that had merely camped there before setting out for the Green Bay area. The local population's villages were scattered along rivers and streams in more sheltered environments. Archaeologists have identified dozens of places in the greater Chicago area where they lived; a few were vaguely recorded by the early French. 

Early French forts, camps, settlements, and one or two British army camps are also vaguely recorded. They can only be located by examining many obscure pre-1800 maps and documents.

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The following represents an attempt to piece together all available clues and put these locations and people in a time series. In so doing, it will be necessary to correct some longstanding misconceptions, such as the customary labeling of Jean Baptiste Pointe de Sable ("Pointe" is the proper French spelling, but the final 'e' is almost always dropped in documents. The 'du' of Pointe du Sable is a misnomer (a wrong or inaccurate name or designation). It's an American corruption of 'de' as pronounced in French. "Du Sable" first appears long after his death in 1818.) as Chicago's first permanent resident. 

This account, however, ends with the important figure of Pointe de Sable, because with him begins an era for which historical data is available in much greater abundance.

• Louis Jolliet, Jacques Marquette, and five others; 1673 camp at the western end of portage des chênes, marked by the Chicago Portage Historical site. Marquette's party also camped here in March 1675. 

• Louis Jolliet and associates, 1673-1675; two 1674 maps prepared under Jolliet's direction allude to the explorations made during this period. Jolliet's detailed rendering of the Chicago area's river system and the lower St. Joseph River indicates intimate knowledge of the terrain. During this period, there were probably two building sites on the west bank of the Des Plaines (then Chicagou). One was perhaps at the mouth of the Tukoquenone (Du Page) River, and the other was opposite the mouth of Hickory Creek at Mont Jolliet in present Joliet. This distinctive alluvial mound, which the Indians called Missouratenoui (the place where pirogues were dragged or portaged), was a prominent landmark for native and French travelers, as it was at the crossing of the major east-west Sauk trail. In early 1675, Marquette met two of Jolliet's associates living and trading in this area: Pierre Moreau (La Taupine) and Jean Roussel or Rousseliere, the unnamed "surgeon" in Marquette's journal. 

• Jacques Marquette, S.J.; 1674-75. He and his two companions, the experienced voyageurs Jacques Largillier and Pierre Porteret, camped briefly near the mouth of the Chicago River and, in mid-January, moved to a site on the south branch, probably selected as a result of 1673-74 explorations in the employ of La Salle, in which Largillier may have taken place. 

• Claude Allouez, S.J.; 1677. He visited for several days at a native village along the Des Plaines en route to the great Kaskaskia village opposite Starved Rock. 

• La Salles employees; 1677-79. Two trading camps, probably both on Hickory Creek, perhaps near New Lenox. The surgeon Jean Roussel, who worked for La Salle in 1669 and again in 1677-80, may have been in both groups because he knew the area from his 1673-75 experience. Assuming the same for Michel Accault (Aco) would explain the latter's detailed knowledge of native traders and their territories and languages as early as 1679-80. The 1677 trip produced buffalo pelts, and La Salle shot dozens of Buffalo in the winter. In 1678, the king gave La Salle control over Illinois and the right to trade in Buffalo, abundant southward from Mont Jolliet and Hickory Creek. The 1678-79 trip produced a large number of beaver pelts that were taken to present Door County, Wisconsin, and loaded on the Griffon, which soon sank with great loss to La Salles creditors. La Salle seems to have traveled along Hickory Creek twice in 1680 on a route he had not previously seen. On his second trip, he found a trace of a bit of sawed wood, an earlier European presence. 

• La Salle and party, January 1682. Camp along the west bank of the Des Plaines, en route to the mouth of the Mississippi River, probably at Mont Jolliet, opposite the mouth of what the chaplain, Father Zénobe Membré, called the Chicagou (Hickory Creek). After leaving the St. Joseph River, they were waiting for a party of hunters who had separated from the main group. [Hickory Creek flows west from Skunk Grove in eastern Frankfort Township. Chicagoua is the Miami and Illinois word for a skunk.] 

• La Salle's fort, 1683. Probably at the New Lenox site. In 1994, a team led by archaeologist Rochelle Lurie unearthed a rectangular feature of apparently European origin amid an extensive Indian settlement. La Salle, in a letter from here (at the "portage de Chicagoua"), described it as being 30 leagues, about 72 miles, from his newly completed Fort St. Louis on Starved Rock and near a trail (Sauk) from the east. The river distance measured on the 1822 U.S. Government surveys is about 32 or 33 leagues. The west end of the portage des chênes, the only route seriously studied by historians in three centuries, was about ten leagues farther to the north, a route La Salle disliked. 

• Jesuit mission and French army post, c.1685-86. Probably on the site of Marquette's 1675 camp, about where Damen Avenue crosses the south branch of the Chicago River. This was referred to by Joutel, who described the entire area and the maple forest where he found the native garlic, but not the mission and post, which had probably been mostly destroyed by the Iroquois in July 1686. This site is perhaps the same one farmed from 1809-1812 by James Leigh (often erroneously called Charles Lee), a retired sergeant of the Fort Dearborn garrison. In an 1811 letter to his commander-in-chief, Col. Jacob Kingsbury, Leigh mentioned the maple-basswood forest here, a typical habitat of the native garlic, Allium tricoccum. 

• French fort, commanded by Lt. Nicolas d'Ailleboust, sieur de Mantet, 1693-96. Probably at the mouth of the Grand Calumet River, then near present Gary, Indiana. The river is marked R. de Chicagou on the "Louvigny" map, which Mantet helped prepare in 1697. Mantet had been ordered to the region to quell Indian unrest in the St. Joseph River area. According to royal orders, he and the garrison evacuated this post in May or June 1696. This fort, which was erroneously placed in the Fort Dearborn area by the Treaty of Greenville, 1795, maybe the same as the Petit Fort or "Little Fort" of various British and American accounts of 1779-c.1803 and the mythical progenitor of the later settlement at Waukegan. 

• Jesuit Mission of the Guardian Angel, 1696-c.1702. Site of the Merchandise Mart. Headed by Father Pierre-François Pinet. Two large Miami villages were nearby. 

• The trading post of Henri de Tonti, Accault and La Forêt, managed by Pierre de Liette, Tonti's cousin, 1697-c.1702. Near the site of today's Tribune Tower. It was probably discontinued by the establishment of Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit. 

• Trading post owned by Simon Guillory of Michilimackinac, manager not known; c.1716-[?]. Opposite Merchandise Mart on the west bank of the north branch of the Chicago River, which was still called Guillory River in 1824 and 1830. Gurdon Hubbard described the site as it appeared in 1818, sometime after it had been vacated by French traders forced out of business by the American Fur Company. Guillory's father was also a trader in the Great Lakes as early as 1683. 

• British trading post, 1782-83. Probably that of Jean Baptiste Gaffé, somewhere along the Chicago River. This may have been where Mme Rocheblave, wife of a British commandant, took refuge with their children on her way to Quebec after he was arrested at Fort de Chartres and imprisoned at Williamsburg and New York. Her sister was the widow of Presque Pagé, a prominent Kaskaskia merchant and mill owner whose family name became attached to the Du Page River and the village, now called Channahon at its mouth. 

• Cabin of Jean Baptiste Pointe de Sable, c.1784-1800. Near the site of the Tribune Tower, later 'owned' by John Kinzie.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.