John Kinzie was a fur trader from Quebec who first operated in Detroit and what became the Northwest Territory of the United States. A partner of William Burnett from Canada, about 1802-1803 Kinzie moved with his wife and child to Chicago, where they were among the first permanent white non-indigenous settlers. Kinzie Street (400N) in Chicago is named for him. Their daughter Ellen Marion Kinzie, born in 1805, was not the first child of European descent born in the settlement because the first permanent non-indigenous settler, Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable, was partially of European descent, specifically French from his father's side, while his mother was a descendant of Africa; his children, Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable, Jr. and Suzanne, were born before her in 1776 and 1778, respectively.

Jean Baptiste Point du Sable is regarded as the first permanent non-native settler of what would later become Chicago, Illinois. Recognized as the city's founder, the site where he settled near the mouth of the Chicago River around the 1780s is memorialized as a National Historic Landmark, now located in Pioneer Court.