An 8.5-foot bronze bust depicting Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable, the man widely recognized as the founder of Chicago, now towers outside the St. Charles County Historical Society on historic Main Street in St. Charles, Missouri. The sculpture, sized at roughly 10 times the scale of a typical human head, gives passersby an unexpected reason to stop and look twice on a stretch of street better known for its brick storefronts than monumental art.
The piece, titled Explorer, was created by Illinois-based sculptor Erik Blome, who spent from 2018 to 2023 building the silicon bronze bust that weighs more than one ton, according to FOX 2. Blome personally funded the roughly $80,000 project himself, adapting the design from a life-size bronze bust he made in 2009 for the DuSable Bridge on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, according to the Shaw Local. That original Chicago bust was commissioned by a Haitian-born donor, tying the artist's later, uncommissioned traveling piece back to the same Great Lakes city where DuSable made his name.
Explorer is no stranger to the road. Before arriving in Missouri, the sculpture spent time outside the Evanston Public Library in Illinois in late 2023 and near Fort Michilimackinac in Mackinaw City, Michigan, as reported by The Daily Northwestern. The artist designed the piece to tour venues connected to DuSable's life and his role in Great Lakes trade history, giving each stop its own layer of biographical resonance.
Why DuSable Ended Up in St. Charles
DuSable is recognized as the founder of Chicago and the first permanent settler of non-Indigenous background in the area that became the city, spending two decades building the settlement, per FOX 2. He relocated to St. Charles in 1810, according to the outlet's reporting. Amy Haake, the archivist for the St. Charles County Historical Society, said DuSable moved to St. Charles that year to be close to his family, and she described him as thought to be the first Chicagoan, noting he lived in the city for 20 years.
DuSable's move to Missouri followed the sale of his Chicago River trading post for $1,200 in May 1800, after which he was licensed by the colonial governor to operate a ferry across the Missouri River, according to BlackPast.org. St. Charles was part of Spanish-administered Upper Louisiana at the time of his arrival. Despite having run a prosperous trading post in Illinois, DuSable spent his final years in relative poverty, and in 1813 he deeded his St. Charles property to his neighbor, Eulalie Barada, in exchange for food, care, repairs to the house, and a Catholic burial, according to the Historical Recognition of Jean-Baptiste Pointe DuSable.
DuSable died on August 28, 1818, at age 73 and was buried in St. Charles Borromeo Cemetery, where a granite marker was placed by the Illinois Sesquicentennial Commission in 1968 after 19th-century cemetery relocations left his exact burial plot uncertain, as reported by the Amsterdam News. The original parish cemetery had been relocated twice, in 1828 and 1854, as the town of St. Charles expanded.
A Landmark With No True Likeness
The historical society itself, at 101 South Main Street, is housed in the Old Market House, a structure that FOX 2 dates to the 1880s. The historical society holds genealogical records and other historical materials pertaining to St. Charles County, and Haake said the newly arrived sculpture helps visitors visualize that history, serving as a prominent landmark that invites curiosity from people traveling through the area.
One detail complicates any claim to accuracy in the sculpture's face: no contemporary portraits of DuSable survive from his lifetime. Artists have long had to rely on written accounts instead, including an 1813 British officer's footnote describing him as a “handsome Negro,” according to Sixty Inches From Center. That means Blome's towering bronze, like every other sketch or statue made of DuSable since, is a creative interpretation grounded in sparse historical footnotes rather than a confirmed likeness.
DuSable's Wider Story
DuSable was born in Saint-Domingue, present-day Haiti, to a French father and an African mother, and in the late 1770s he married Kitihawa, a Potawatomi woman, in a traditional Potawatomi ceremony; they married in a Catholic ceremony on October 27, 1788, per BlackPast.org's account. BlackPast.org's account describes the marriage alongside DuSable's trading network across the Great Lakes region. During the American Revolutionary War, British forces arrested DuSable in present-day Michigan City, Indiana, briefly detaining him at Fort Michilimackinac, according to the same source.
That imprisonment connects directly to one of Explorer's earlier tour stops near Mackinaw City, Michigan, adding another layer to the sculpture's cross-state itinerary. The bust is set to remain outside the St. Charles County Historical Society for a minimum of two years before moving on to its next destination, per FOX 2's reporting, continuing a journey that has already carried DuSable's likeness from Chicago's riverfront to the Great Lakes and now to the Missouri River town where he spent approximately eight years.
