chicago

chicago: Prehistory and Early Years

The name Chicago comes from a Miami Indian word for the wild leeks that grew on the bank of the short Chicago River. Over the centuries the Miami, Sauk, Fox and Potawatomi tribes all lived in the area. The 1673 Marquette and Jolliet expedition crossed the Great Portage between the Chicago River and the Illinois, 10 miles of flat, often waterlogged ground separating the two great water transit systems of North America, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley.

Nationwide social upheavals surrounding World War I brought many African-American migrants to Chicago from the South. They found new opportunities and a vibrant cultural community that soon gave birth to Chicago’s versions of blues and jazz. Tensions arose between the newcomers and Chicago’s established Irish, Polish and German ethnic groups, leading to a string of bombings of African-American homes between 1917 and 1921, as well as an eight-day race riot in 1919.
By the 1930s Chicago’s population reached 3 million. Gangsters Al Capone and John Dillinger grabbed headlines, but the real power lay with the city’s political “machine,” a system of patronage that controlled city politics for the better part of a century.