There Were 600 Fires in Chicago the Year Before the Great Fire of 1871

From the August 29, 2021, Chicago Tribune "600 fires sprang up in Chicago the year before the Great Fire of 1871.  On the night before came this 'terrible' prediction" by Rick Kogan.

There is no way of knowing what was on people's minds in the hot and arid weeks before a certain cow is said to have kicked over a lantern and started the Great Chicago Fire in 1871. 

But, 150 years before that Jean Babtiste Point du Sable had not yet been born and only a few white men had ever even walked on the land that would eventually become Chicago.  The only fires here were those made by the Potawatomi, Sauk, Illinois, Algonquins, Iroquois and the Native American tribes that had been in the area for centuries.

As a matter of fact, for much of the 18th century, what would become Chicago was a place of warring tribes.  DuSable and his Potawatomi wife Kitihawa built their cabin on the banks of the Chicago River in the 1770s and a few other white settlers followed.

Most settled on the riverbanks near Fort Dearborn, built in the fall of 1803 and soon afterwards called "the best garrison in the country."

--CootSable