In 1812, Chicago was not a city, but rather a frontier settlement occupied mostly by French-Canadian and American traders as well as soldiers and Native Americans. It was the home of Fort Dearborn, the site of the famous battle that would take place that same year.
But Fort Dearborn’s history was bloodied even before it became known for the battle that bears its name. Just two months earlier — on June 17 — it was the site of Chicago’s first documented slaying — and some say its first murder.
The suspect in the slaying was John Kinzie. In history, he is sometimes referred to as “Chicago’s first citizen,” but Haiti-born Jean Baptiste Point du Sable is widely considered to own that title today. (Du Sable built a cabin just north of the Chicago River near Lake Michigan — approximately where the Tribune Tower is today — in 1779, where he established a trading post. That same cabin was later purchased by Kinzie in 1804.)
The deceased was Jean La Lime, a French trader who also served as an interpreter among the settlement’s inhabitants and the Native Americans. La Lime first purchased du Sable’s cabin and later sold it to Kinzie.
In 1812, Kinzie and La Lime were neighbors, but historical accounts do not portray their relationship as neighborly. There was “bad blood” between them, according to a Chicago Daily Tribune article from 1942.
“They had some long association with each other,” Russell Lewis, chief historian at the Chicago History Museum, said. “It was a very small neighborhood … and people were competitive. John Kinzie was not known as a particularly generous or affable person.”
While Kinzie’s name triumphed over La Lime’s in Chicago lore, historical portraits of him aren’t all flattering. A Chicago Tribune article from 1966 paints Kinzie as an “aggressive” trader who clashed with some American soldiers stationed at Fort Dearborn. Ann Durkin Keating, a history professor at North Central College in Naperville, describes Kinzie as a “volatile and violent character.”
Tensions between Kinzie and La Lime came to a head on June 17, 1812, when the two men met outside Fort Dearborn, La Lime armed with a pistol and Kinzie with a butcher’s knife. Keating describes the murder that ensued as “premeditated” in her book “Rising Up from Indian Country: The Battle of Fort Dearborn and the Birth of Chicago.”
A witness account of what followed appears in Keating’s book: “We saw the men come out together; we heard the pistol go off, and saw the smoke. Then they fell down together. I don’t know as Lalime (sic) got up at all but Kinzie got home pretty quick. Blood was running from his shoulder where Lalime (sic) shot him.”
The reasons for the fatal dispute are unknown. Kinzie fled the area afterward and didn’t return until authorities ruled the slaying was in self defense. Historians do not know whether Kinzie attacked La Lime first or if it were the other way around.
“The fact that Kinzie, of course, after La Lime was killed, ran away and became a fugitive, that’s open to lots of different kinds of interpretation,” Lewis said. “He was innocent if it was self defense, so why did he run away?”
Whether Kinzie really did murder La Lime in self defense — and it’s suggested that his gunshot wound is evidence that he might have — another possible reason he fled is because of his loyalties. Chicago in 1812 was a frontier settlement with people from all over the world — France, Canada, Great Britain and possibly Spain, to name a few — as well as the Native Americans who already lived there. Kinzie may have stood out in this melting pot for his pro-British and anti-American stance, Lewis said. This may have made him unpopular with some of the settlement’s inhabitants, possibly leading Kinzie to believe he wouldn’t get a fair trial.
After recovering from the gunshot wound from La Lime, Kinzie narrowly escaped death again at the Battle of Fort Dearborn on Aug. 15 that year. He died in Chicago in 1828.
Today, Kinzie’s remains are buried at the historic Graceland Cemetery in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood. La Lime’s body was rumored to be buried near Kinzie’s cabin. In 1891 — 79 years after the slaying — a partial skeleton thought to belong to La Lime was excavated at Illinois Street and Cass Street (now Wabash Avenue) and given to the Chicago Historical Society, which still possesses the preserved skeleton. The remains have never been confirmed to belong to La Lime, whose legacy remains nearly as anonymous as his skeleton.
coconnolly@chicagotribune.com
Twitter @ColleenMConn
