In the eighteenth century the greedy kings of Europe were using America as a chessboard in the game of power. Only the bravest settlers dared oppose them, and Jean Baptiste was one of these. On the disputed wilderness he built a trading post and founded the city of Chicago.

The wilderness was violent, but Jean Baptiste had known violence from his earliest years in the West Indies. His father was a pirate, mate of The Black Sea Gull which plundered Caribbean ports and harried Spanish galleons. When Jean was eleven the Spaniard raided Saint Domingue, murdered his mother and destroyed his home. He wanted to go to sea but his father sent him to France to study—brief years of peace before Jean plunged into the great adventure of the New World.

It was a world of riches, furs and wood for the taking, so Jean decided to become a trader. Proudly he set sail in his own ship. But the vessel split in a hurricane off the Louisiana coast, and when Jean finally reached New Orleans he was penniless, without friends or credentials. He feared that at any moment he might be sold into slavery, for he had no way of proving that he was a free Negro. And what chance had a black man if the arrogant Spanish won New Orleans from the French?

Dreaming of freedom to trade, Jean Baptiste turned to the prairies that "stretched like a buffalo hide." Someday, somewhere, he would find his own land and carve his own niche in America. Meanwhile he traded furs along the Mississippi Valley. But hostile Indians captured him and brought him before the great Chief Pontiac on suspicion of espionage for the British.

That meeting between red man and black shifted the course of history. Because of a strange coincidence, Jean earned the Chief's trust and respect. Their friendship endured even beyond death, for as the murdered Pontiac lay dying, killed at the instigation of the British, he gave Jean his peace belt. "Take this to the Ottawas in Canada, and tell them not to avenge my death. Let no more blood be spilt upon the land . . ."

Jean Baptiste hurried to Canada to deliver the Chief's message. For two years he traveled by canoe and horseback to councils with Pontiac's former allies, pleading for peace. But the peace that prevailed was uneasy. British and Spanish were tightening their grip on Indian lands. No man could keep these forces from exploding into war.

In war a man dreams of a wife and a home, and Jean Baptiste had neither until he met the lovely Indian, Kittihawa, and joined her tribe in order to marry her. And he found his home at last on a river near the Great Lakes. At Eschicagou he built a lodge for hunters and trappers. Fields were planted, marshes drained, barns and stables built. Indians brought furs, bypassing the outraged British who wanted their trade. Eschicagou was small, helpless. But as it rose from the plains another city flung a challenge across the seas. In Philadelphia, grim-faced men signed their names to the Declaration of Independence.

It was then, to the sound of drumbeats, that Jean Baptiste heard the settlers speak a strange new word — "American". Men of different blood and breed hurled their combined might against the British. The Great Lakes region became an arsenal.

Jean Baptiste saw his town destroyed, and rebuilt if from blackened ruins. He envisioned it as it would be — noisy with the rattle of stagecoaches over cobbled streets. Today Chicago towers toward the stars on the firm foundation of one man's faith.

Once again Shirley Graham's skill as a biographer brings to life the fascinating story of a man whose place in history is too little known.

From the dust jacket