Chicago and its suburbs have a historical population of Italian Americans. As of 2000, about 500,000 in the Chicago area identified themselves as being Italian descent. History The first Italian to come to what would become Chicago was Enrico (Henri) Tonti, who was from Gaeta in Lazio region of central Italy. He was a soldier in service of the French. In the Fall of 1680, Tonti was in the la Salle Expedition and 2nd in command of the company. He and Father Membré, passed through the Chicago portage from the Illinois valley to go to Green Bay (having reached the Illinois River with La Salle by way of the Kankakee portage). On Jan. 7, 1682, Tonti met La Salle at Chicago, and together with a group of 21 additional Frenchmen and 30 Indians they used the portage on their way to the Mississippi, the mouth of which they reached on April 9, 1682. In 1697, Henri Tonti, Michel Accault, and François de la Forêt received permission from Governor Frontenac to establish a fortified trading post at Chicagou managed by Pierre de Liette, Tonti's cousin, a Franco-Italian, which lasted until c.1705. De Liette kept a journal of his experiences living with the Illinois natives for those years he lived with them at the Chicago trading post. De Liette divided his time from 1691 to 1705 between the Miami at Chicago and the Illinois at Fort St. Louis de Pimiteoui, Peoria, which he had helped build. In Chicago, he ran a trading post in partnership with François Daupin de la Forêt, Michel Accault, and Henri de Tonti [located probably near today's Tribune Tower] which he had to close, leaving in 1705 after the king revoked his trading license; continued as French commander and trader in the Illinois country until 1720. From Liette's memoirs: "Most beautiful, you begin to see its fertility at Chicago, unwooded prairies, requiring only to be turned up by the plow, most temperate climate." In the 1850s, Italians settled in Chicago. Originally, most were Genoese. The first generation worked primarily as merchants, restaurateurs, and fruit sellers. Some worked in the plaster industry. The plaster workers originated from Lucca. A second wave of immigration, this time from rural areas in southern and central Italy, arrived between 1880 and 1914. As of 2014, most Italian Americans in Chicago were descended from this immigration wave, which consisted mainly of young men, mostly