The Man Who Owned Chicago

Destination Freedom. Destination Freedom. Dramatization of the great democratic traditions of the Negro people is brought to you by Station WMAQ as a part of the pageant of history and of America's own destination freedom. The Indians used to say with great simplicity that the first white settler in Chicago was a Negro.

His name was Jean-Baptiste Point Nussap, the Daniel Boone of Illinois. At the close of the 18th century, he had hacked out of the wild windy plains at the foot of Lake Michigan, a fabulous trading post, and a settlement that stood on the sites now studded with skyscrapers and crossed by boulevards.

For an account of this mysterious frontiersman, Destination Freedom brings you its chapter entitled, The Man Who Owns Chicago. Two hundred years is a long time for looking here. It is a longer time to look back.

My name is now an unnoticeable one among the giants that have grown up in your city. My name is Dussef, but for two decades of those two hundred years, mine was the only name known in Chicago.

I plowed on ground where the merchandise marked Nastan. My stable stood where they built Tributea. I had a cornfield cleared where they put the city hall. They called me the man who owned Chicago. They wonder if my spirit haunts the streets well I once played it first They wonder what would happen if I could come back to extinct my claims to the city

and Sometimes I wonder Toa with the idea of stepping from behind my 200 years and down the bridges they have built spanning my lots Commit suicide in the lake no doesn't front of my car I get out of the street.