O NE hundred and fifty-two years ago, in 1803, the quiet of a virgin wild onion place, the she-kag-ong of the Ojibwa Indians, at the mouth of a small stream on the southwest shore of Lake Michigan, was disturbed by the noise of ax and hammer as Fort Dearborn, a stockade of logs, was erected.' Fort Dearborn, however, was destroyed by the Indians in 1812. Its garrison was massacred, and permanent white settlement did not come to the wild onion place for another decade. In the 1820's a few comfortless wooden shacks were built in haphazard array around one or two frontier stores. Mud was knee-deep in the spring and autumn. Sweltering heat, dust, and insects characterized the summer; biting subzero winds and blizzards came with the winter. It is difficult to understand why Chicago's several dozen pioneer residents considered their prospects so promising. But apparently optimism prevailed. In 1818, the State of Illinois was established. In 1831, Cook County was organized, and Chicago, by that time a trading settlement of some 200 inhabitants, became the local seat of justice. Two years later Chicago's 350 citizens called a meeting to consider incorporating their settlement as a civil town. Only 13 voters attended, but they cast a favorable vote and elected five commissioners. On August 12, 1833, Chicago became an incorporated town, with jurisdiction over 267 acres. Four years later Chicago acquired the status of a city, and the census of 1840 recorded a population of 4470. Scandinavian pioneers moved westward, passing through Chicago by the thousands. Many of them decided to remain, some to work in the railway shops, stockyards, lumber and flour mills, plow works, and other booming industries, others to find employment in the flourishing retail