Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2020

Augustin Ravoux was born Jan. 11, 1815, in Auvergne, France. One of seven seminarians recruited to America, he almost drowned in the Mississippi River on a trip to Dubuque and nearly died of thirst crossing the prairies to Ft. Pierre. After he was ordained in Dubuque, Iowa in January 1840, he visited outposts in the northern part of the diocese in Minnesota Territory and Dakota Territory to see if a mission for the Indians might be established. Fr. Ravoux traveled the Mississippi River at the juncture of the Rivière Saint-Pierre (St. Peter’s River) and found Catholic families in Mendota (Iowa Territory) and across the valley at Fort Snelling (Wisconsin Territory).

Fr. Ravoux spent winter 1842-1843 with the Faribault family at La Petite Prairie, near Iŋyaŋ Çeyaka (Village at the Barrier of Stone) or Little Rapids or Carver Rapids. It was called Little Rapids and was a fur post just south of present-day Carver along the Minnesota River. Jean-Baptiste arrived at the Little Rapids post in 1803. He met his wife, Pelagie Kinnie Hainse Faribault, here. In 1808 they moved to Prairie du Chien but returned in the 1830s and operated the post with the help of his sons Alexander, David, and Oliver.

During 1842-1843, Fr. Ravoux learned the Dakota language from David, Oliver, and Alexander Faribault. Ravoux said learning Dakota was much harder than learning Latin and Greek.

Fr. Ravoux wrote in 1842: “A few days later, I was induced by the Faribault families, but most especially by that old and respectable gentleman, Jean-Baptiste Faribault, to spend the winter with him and two of his sons, Oliver and David, both married, at Caska (Little Prairie). He had a trading post there for the Indians of Shakopee and also for the Sioux of another village at Carver (Little Rapids). I was most pleased to be with them, for they loved the Indians and were deeply interested in the success of my mission. They spoke equally well the French, English, and Sioux languages. They were good interpreters and very useful to me in translating my book into the Sioux language.”

Fr. Ravoux wrote a devotional work, Katolik Wocekiye Wowapi Kin, or The Path to the House of God. The book was translated from French to Dakota by Alexander, Oliver, and David Faribault.

Jean-Baptiste urged the priest to establish a permanent Roman Catholic mission at the site. He built a small log cabin near the Faribault compound at Little Prairie.

The Catholic mission “Sioux Mission of St. Francois Xavier” was constructed in June 1843 and operated until the spring of 1844. The dimensions of the chapel were 15×30 feet. Presumably, it was of log construction, like the Faribault Trading Post. It was probably built in the style of la maison en pièce sur piècela, or a cabin built of hewn logs, laid horizontally.

On Feb. 11, 1844, Oliver married Wakan Yaŋke Wiŋ in a religious ceremony (after the 1837 civil/Indian ceremony) at the St. Francois Xavier Sioux Mission. Wakan Yaŋke Wiŋ spoke Dakota and French, and a bit of English. Oliver and Wakan Yaŋke Wiŋ moved to Tínṫa Otuŋwe (which the French and Métis people called Prairie des Français).

So, when Oliver and Waken Yaŋke Wiŋ moved here, the mission moved here also.

When Oliver and Wakan Yaŋke Wiŋ moved to Prairie des Français, Fr. Ravoux also moved the chapel there. It was probably located close to the Faribault Trading Post, near the Springs later called Faribault Springs. The Dakota Indians saw the European immigration as a threat, and so the Dakota threatened to burn the chapel down within the year.

As a result, Fr. Ravoux decided to dismantle the chapel and sell it to the German Catholics in Wabashah in 1844.

Fr. Ravoux departed in the spring of 1844, never to return to the area later called Shakopee.

The chapel was placed on a raft and floated down the Rivière Saint-Pierre. It was set up where Main Street was terminated in Wabashaw in 1844 (changed to Wabasha in 1868). It was used a little for religious services, then was closed and used for newspaper publishing and schooling. Today, traces of the old church are obliterated.

Fr. Augustin Ravoux died Jan. 17, 1906, at age 91 in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Daughter of Oliver Faribault and Wakan Yanke
1847-May 23, 1924
Compiled by David R. Schleper

Sarah-Iréne Faribault was one of the four girls who grew up at the Faribault Cabin and Trading Post on the Prairie des Français (French Prairie) on the Rivière Saint-Pierre (St. Peter’s River). She was the seventh of nine children of Oliver Faribault and Wakan Yanke, or the Woman Who Sits at the High Place, and was born in 1847. The area later became part of the east part of Shakopee, Minnesota, near Faribault Springs.

Sarah remembered growing up at the Faribault Trading Post. “My father, Oliver Faribault, built a house which was his home and trading post near ‘Little Six’ or Shakopee’s village in 1844.[1] It was a fine point for a trading post, as three Indian villages were near; Good Roads, Black Dog’s and Shakopee’s.[2] He was a very successful trader. I can well remember the great packs of furs.”[3]

“We used to play all around the country near. I could shoot an arrow as well as a boy. The hunting was fine.”[4]

“We used often to go to the sacred stone of the Indians and I have often seen the Sioux[5] warriors around it. It was on the prairie below town. There was room for one to lie down by it and the rest would dance or sit in council around it. They always went to it before going into battle.”

“They left gifts which the white people stole. I can remember taking some little thing from it myself. I passed a party of Indians with it in my hand.” Sarah remembered that one Dakota woman saw what Sarah had, and she became very angry. “She made me take it back. She seemed to feel as we would if our church had been violated.”[6]

“One morning in the summer of ’58 we heard firing on the river.[7] Most of the Sioux[8] had gone to get their annuities but a few who were late were camped near Murphy’s.[9] These had been attacked by a large band of the Chippewa.[10] The fighting went on for hours, but the Chippewa were repulsed. That was the last battle between the Sioux and the Chippewa near here.”[11]

According to Sarah, “Little Crow was often at our house and was much loved by us children. He used to bring us candy and maple sugar.”[12] Little Crow or Thaóyate Dúta (ca. 1810 – July 3, 1863) was a chief of the Mdewakanton Dakota people. His given name translates as “His Red Nation,” but he was known as Little Crow because of his grandfather’s name, Čhetáŋ Wakhúwa Máni, (literally, “Hawk That Chases/Hunts Walking”) which was mistranslated by the whites to Little Crow.[13] Thaóyate Dúta would stop on his way from St. Paul and usually camped with his attendants on the vacant prairie opposite the Faribault Trading Post in the area later called Shakopee. By 1840, Oliver was closely allied with the Dakota Chief Ŝakpe II, and maintained kinship ties with other Dakota families as well. According to Sarah, “My father (Oliver Faribault) was fond of him too, and said he was always honest.”

Sarah understand how the Dakota Indians feel, not just because she was part Dakota, but also because she lived around the 600 people at Tiŋta-otoŋwe. “The Indians did not understand the white man’s ways. When the white man had a big storehouse full of goods belonging to the Indians and the Indian was cold and hungry, he could not see why he could not have what was there, belonging to him, if it would keep him warm and feed him. He could not see why he should wait until the government told him it was time for him to eat and be warm, when the time they had told him before was long past. It was the deferred payments that caused the outbreak, I have often heard from the Indians.”[14]

“I have often seen Indians buried on platforms elevated about eight feet on slender poles. They used to put offerings in the trees to the Great Spirit and to keep the evil spirits away. I remember that one of these looked like a gaily colored umbrella at a distance. I never dared go near.”[15]

Sarah never married. She lived with the family, and then resided at the E.L. Welch family, first in Henderson, and then in St. Paul for almost 22 years. She also had a long association with the D.L. How household as a trusted, faithful friend and nurse.[16] She died in 1924 at age 74. She was interred in the How family lot in Valley Cemetery in eastern Shakopee.[17]

^[1] The village is Tiŋta-otoŋwe, translated to prairie village. Ŝakpe II (ca. 1794-1862) and Ŝakpedan or Little Six (1811-1865) were head men there.

^[2] The village of Good Roads was near the mouth of the Nine Mile Creek was Titaŋka Taŋnina, the village of Penichon. It was also called the old village, and it was probably the first village of the Dakota on the river, according to Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota by Gwen Westerman and Bruce White, Minnesota Historical Society, page 126. The chief was Tacaŋku Waste, or His Good Road. The village of Black Dog’s was called Ohanska, Long Avenue Village or Black Dog’s village. Village chiefs included Waŋbdí Tháŋka (Wa-kin-yan-tan-ka) or Big Eagle, Sunka Sapa (Black Dog), and Maza Hota (Gray Iron) according to the Dakota Presence in the River Valley, 2002, by Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community.  Shakopee’s village is Tiŋta-otoŋwe, with chiefs Ŝakpe II and Ŝakpedan.

^[3] Morris, Lucy Leavenworth Wilder, editor (1914). Miss Sara Faribault in Old Rail Fence Corners: The A.B.C.’s of Minnesota History (Second Edition). Austin, MN: F.H. McCulloch Printing, p. 233.

^[4] Morris, Lucy Leavenworth Wilder, editor (1914). Miss Sara Faribault in Old Rail Fence Corners: The A.B.C.’s of Minnesota History (Second Edition). Austin, MN: F.H. McCulloch Printing, p. 233.

^[5] The people are Eastern Dakota Mdewakaŋtoŋwan, pronounced Mid-ah-wah-kah-ton, meaning “The Spirit Lake People” band.

^[6] Morris, Lucy Leavenworth Wilder, editor (1914). Miss Sara Faribault in Old Rail Fence Corners: The A.B.C.’s of Minnesota History (Second Edition). Austin, MN: F.H. McCulloch Printing, p. 233.

^[7] In May 27, 1858, between 150 and 200 Ojibwe warriors entered the Minnesota River valley near Shakopee hoping to ambush a nearby group of Dakota. Ojibwe warriors fired gunshots and kill a Dakota man fishing in the river around 5:00 am, starting the Battle of Shakopee, which was on the north side of the river in Chanhassen. It lasted for five hours, until the Ojibwe retreated and moved north toward Lake Minnetonka. From Reicher, Matt. “Battle of Shakopee, 1858.” MNopedia, Minnesota Historical Society. http://www.mnopedia.org/event/battle-shakopee-1858 (accessed Aug. 2, 2017).

^[8] The correct name of Sioux is the Mdewakantonwan (Bdewékhaŋthuŋwaŋ Spirit Lake Village of the Eastern Dakota who lived in Tiŋta-otoŋwe.

^[9] In 1853 Murphy settled in Eagle Creek Township just east of early Shakopee, where he built a large two-story house and hotel. It became a mecca for travelers, with good food, drink, merry dancing. Richard G Murphy had the exclusive right for 15 years to operate a ferry across the Minnesota at a point known as Murphy’s Ferry in 1853. Murphy unfailingly collected his fare in mid-steam, even during the Battle of Shakopee, which was fought less than a hundred yards from his home.

[10] The correct name of the Chippewa is the Ojibwe, an Anishinaabeg group of indigenous peoples in North America. They live in Canada and the United States. The Ojibwe people traditionally have spoken the Ojibwe language, a branch of the Algonquian language family.

^[11] Morris, Lucy Leavenworth Wilder, editor (1914). “Miss Sara Faribault” in Old Rail Fence Corners: The A.B.C.’s of Minnesota History (Second Edition). Austin, MN: F.H. McCulloch Printing, p. 233.

^[12] Morris, Lucy Leavenworth Wilder, editor (1914). “Miss Sara Faribault” in Old Rail Fence Corners: The A.B.C.’s of Minnesota History (Second Edition). Austin, MN: F.H. McCulloch Printing, p. 233.

^[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Crow

^[14] Morris, Lucy Leavenworth Wilder, editor (1914). “Miss Sara Faribault” in Old Rail Fence Corners: The A.B.C.’s of Minnesota History (Second Edition). Austin, MN: F.H. McCulloch Printing, p. 233.

^[15] Morris, Lucy Leavenworth Wilder, editor (1914). “Miss Sara Faribault” in Old Rail Fence Corners: The A.B.C.’s of Minnesota History (Second Edition). Austin, MN: F.H. McCulloch Printing, p. 233.

^[16] David Lennox How (1835-1893) was involved in several projects in Shakopee, including setting up a drug store, and a mill in Jordan, Chaska, and Shakopee. He married Mary Sherrard in 1862. They had one child, Jennie. This information from The Shakopee Story by Julius Coller II, 1960.

^[17] Billion Graves site at https://billiongraves.com/grave/Sarah-Faribault/1526925

May 15, 1815 – Oct. 4, 1850
In Prairie des Français (later called Shakopee) 1839-1850
Compiled and Written by David R. Schleper

Oliver Faribault was born at Prairie du Chien, now in Wisconsin, on May 15, 1815.[1] His father was Jean-Baptiste Faribault, a well-known French-Canadian fur trader with the Northwest and American Fur Companies. His mother was Elizabeth Pelagie Kinzie Haines. (Her name is spelled differently in various documents.) Pelagie was the daughter of a French voyageur and Mdewakanton mother, so Oliver was at least ¼ Dakota.

Oliver’s older siblings were Alexander and Lucie-Anne. His younger siblings were David-Frederick (David), Emilie (Emily), Marie-Louise (Mary Louise), Philippe (Philip) and Frederick-Daniel (Daniel). Among them, only Philip didn’t grow up to adulthood.[2]

In 1804-1805, not far upstream on the Rivière Saint-Pierre (Minnesota River) from present day Carver, the Little Rapids trading post was established. It was first operated by Jean-Baptiste Faribault of the Machilimackinac Fur Company and the Northwest Fur Company and visited by fur traders, Dakota Indians, and Christian missionaries over the next 45 years. The early map indicated that this Indian village was associated with Dakota leader Mazomani.[3]

Jean-Baptiste lived among the Wahpeton community for a few months each year with his Dakota wife, Pelagie. The villagers brought their tanned furs, and their maple sugar to the Trading Post. Faribault would give them glass beads, silver ornaments, tin kettles, iron knives, awl tips, axes, hatchets, and hoes for their summer work. Faribault was there for many years, and he probably enjoyed amicable relations with the community. According to Janet D. Spector, “Faribault probably strengthened his connection to Little Rapids by his marriage to Pelagie Hanse, the twenty-two-year-old widow of a former superintendent of Indian affairs and the mixed-heritage daughter of trader Francois Kinzie.”[4] She and Faribault had several children, including Oliver, and through her, Jean-Baptiste would acquire knowledge about Dakota language and culture, further enhancing his role as cultural middleman at Little Rapids. Oliver spent time at Little Rapids trading post learning the procedures of the fur trade.

In 1819, the Faribault family settled on Pike Island near a new fort, Fort Snelling, at the mouth of the Rivière Saint-Pierre. They were invited to do this by Colonel Henry Leavenworth, who knew that Jean-Baptiste understood the Dakota who lived in the area and could help develop the fur trade in Minnesota. The Dakota were also more likely to trust people who were related to members of their tribe. The family built a log house and farmed. Oliver and his siblings also helped their father with his fur trade business.

In 1826, the family moved off the island and built a home on the river bank in what was to become Mendota, Minnesota and traded with the Dakota.

Although Oliver was friends with the Dakota, and was part Dakota, pioneer life on the frontier was dangerous. When he was only 14 years old, Oliver had to defend his father’s life when Jean-Baptiste was attacked by a Dakota:

“On one occasion for a trivial matter an Indian plunged a knife into [Jean-Baptiste] Faribault’s back, but his vigorous constitution and temperate habits carried him through. The Indian, however, was summarily shot by one of Faribault’s son, Oliver, a boy of fourteen.”[5]

Jean-Baptiste also purchased a female slave, even though slavery had been outlawed in the region for well over a decade by the Missouri Compromise of early 1800s. That slave had a child, Joseph Godfrey, who was enslaved, and who ended up in Shakopee, as a slave to Oliver and Wakan Yanke. Joseph Godfrey escaped from the Faribault Trading Post around 1848.[6]

Working for the American Fur Company, Oliver was busy doing almost every job that could be done on the new frontier. He was a trader, a clerk for the Fur Company, and, along with his brothers, earned money as whiskey smugglers in the 1830s. Fur traders could do this well because they always traveled from one place to another.

Oliver married Wakan Yanke, or Harriet Menary, in a civil or Indian ceremony in 1837. Wakan Yanke was a close relative of Chief Ŝakpe II.

Oliver was at Prairie des Français on a semi-permanent basis starting in 1839, as he was appointed government farmer to the Dakota Indians at Tiŋta-otoŋwe, according to Taliaferro Journal, June 11, 1839.[7] This was probably the year that Tiŋta-otoŋwe moved from the north to the south side of the Watpá Mnísota, also called the Rivière Saint-Pierre. His personal history, his occupations as a farmer and trader, and his dwelling location were not part of the history of the Minnesota valley area. According to a report, he had nine oxen, four cows, three horses, one bull, one cart, one wagon, two yokes, and bows, two single plows and two double plows.[8]

According to Rev. Samuel Pond, the assigned farmers for many of the villages were not very good, and were soon replaced. This might be the case for Oliver. “The first farmer for the Shakopee band got along several years without doing anything for the Indians except that now and then he gave a present to the chief. He used their wagons and carts for his own business, and let their cattle starve to death, and some of the other farmers did not do much better.”[9]

By 1842, Oliver was back at Little Prairie.[10]

On Feb. 11, 1844, Oliver married Wakan Yanke at the St. Francois Xavier Sioux Mission, located at Little Prairie on the St. Pierre River.[11]

In 1844 Oliver moved to Prairie des Français with Wakan Yanke, or Woman Who Sits at the High Place.[12] They lived among the large circle of Wakan Yanke’s Dakota relatives. The Faribault trading post and cabin was surrounded by tipi and tipi tanka, or lodges. Oliver and Wakan Yanke had nine children, and in Prairie des Français (Tiŋta-otoŋwe), the four daughters who lived there included Josephine, Pelagie (Eliza), Sarah-Irene, and Henriette Luce (Harriet).[13]

Pelagie Eliza Faribault Manaige remembers her father conducting a trading post for a few years, and building a warehouse in which he stored furs purchased from the Dakotas. She only faintly remembered her father, as he died in the fall of 1850 of quinsy, when Eliza was 4 ½ years old. Eliza remembered the gaudy trinkets that were available to the Dakota Indians.[14]

Faribault had a horse and a cow. The horse and cow lived in a small cow shed just south of the log cabin in Prairie des Français. Father Augustin Ravoux, who for a short time built a chapel near the Springs, refers to borrowing Oliver’s horse. And Rev. Samuel W. Pond once hid his own cow. That caused Faribault’s cow to be killed by a Dakota Indian. Family oral tradition also tells of storing furs in the shed, and of a mixed-blood employee of Faribault’s who guarded the furs kept there.[15]

When Oliver lived in the Faribault Trading Post in 1844, it was in the last decade of the fur trade in the Minnesota Valley before the onslaught of settlers who irrevocably changed the history of the area forever. Rather than being a primitive fur trader in buckskins, beads, and feathers, Oliver was a gentleman who wore silk and sateen sometimes, and a man who provided for his family with the best that was available to him in the 1840s.[16]

Ledgers by Henry Sibley at the Mendota trading headquarters show Oliver’s purchases of food, fabric, clothing, as well as agricultural pursuits, lumber purchases, furnishings for his home, repair done by the fur company’s blacksmith, purchases for his hired men and for Joseph Godfrey, who was enslaved.[17]

Oliver Faribault died Oct. 4, 1850.[18] He contracted quinsy while digging out Faribault Springs. Quinsy is an abscess between the back of the tonsil and the wall of the throat. Quinsy is now rare because most people get effective treatment for tonsillitis early enough to prevent it, but in 1850 quinsy often led to death.

Oliver is buried at Calvary Cemetery, in Faribault, Rice County, Minnesota.[19]

^[1] Find A Grave Memorial #49026654 on Oliver Faribault by Cindy K. Coffin, March 2, 2010.

^[2] Interview of Patricia Jeanine Menaige Cates by David R. Schleper (2016) in Prior Lake, MN.

^[3] Spector, Janet D. (1993). What This Awl Means: Feminist Archaeology at a Wahpeton Dakota Village.  St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press.

^[4] Spector, Janet D. (1993). What This Awl Means: Feminist Archaeology at a Wahpeton Dakota Village.  St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press.

^[5] Curtiss-Wedge, Franklyn (1910). History of Rice and Steele Counties, Minnesota. Chicago, IL: H.C. Cooper, Jr. & Company, p. 84.

^[6] Bachmann, Walt (2013). Northern Slave, Black Dakota: The Life and Times of Joseph Godfrey. Bloomington, MN: Pond-Dakota Press.

^[7] Williams, Richard (2000). Oliver Faribault and Early Settlement at Faribault Springs. HSP Journal: The Journal of La Compagnie des Hivernants de la Rivière Saint-Pierre, p. 11.

^[8] Williams, Richard (2000). Oliver Faribault and Early Settlement at Faribault Springs. HSP Journal: The Journal of La Compagnie des Hivernants de la Rivière Saint-Pierre, p. 12.

^[9] Pond, Samuel William Jr., 1893). Two Volunteer Missionaries Among the Dakotas: Or The Story Of The Labors Of Samuel W. And Gideon H. Pond. Boston: Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society.

^[10] Williams, Richard (2000). Oliver Faribault and Early Settlement at Faribault Springs. HSP Journal: The Journal of La Compagnie des Hivernants de la Rivière Saint-Pierre, p. 12.

^[11] Find A Grave Memorial # 49026654 on Oliver Faribault by Cindy K. Coffin, March 2, 2010.

^[12] Hinds, William (1891). A Sketch of Shakopee, Minnesota: Historical and Industrial. Shakopee, MN and Reprinted by the Shakopee Heritage Society, pp. 9-10.

^[13] Interview of Patricia Jeanine Menaige Cates by David R. Schleper (2016) in Prior Lake, MN.

^[14] Winter, Marian B. (2003). A Visit with a Great-Granddaughter of Oliver Faribault. La Compagnie des Hivernants de la Rivière Saint-Pierre (HSP) Journal. From a working scrapbook 3061B in 1930s, and in the Sibley House Museum and the Minnesota Historical Society collections.

^[15] Minnesota History Quarterly, Fall 2015. 64:7

^[16] Williams, Richard (2000). An Analysis of the Purchases of Oliver Faribault, 1842-1846. HSP Journal: The Journal of La Compagnie des Hivernants de la Rivière Saint-Pierre, p. 5-8.

^[17] Williams, Richard (2000). An Analysis of the Purchases of Oliver Faribault, 1842-1846. HSP Journal: The Journal of La Compagnie des Hivernants de la Rivière Saint-Pierre, p. 5-8.

^[18] The Shakopee Argus, Nov. 11, 1880, p. 4, col. 1, obituary.

^[19] Find A Grave Memorial # 49026654 on Oliver Faribault by Cindy K. Coffin, March 2, 2010.

In Prairie des Français on the Rivière Saint-Pierre 1844-1880
by David R. Schleper

Wakan Yanke, or the Woman Who Sits at the High Place, was born in the Minnesota Valley area around 1817 among the large circle of her Dakota relatives. According to some researchers, Wakan Yanke was the daughter of Colonel Menary, a soldier at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and a “Sioux Indian girl.” Wakan Yanke was a close relative of Chief Ŝakpe II.

According to Patricia Jeanine Arnold Cates, the great great granddaughter of Wakan Yanke, her relative might be a full Dakota Indian.

Wakan Yanke grew up as a Mdewakaŋtoŋwaŋ, or an Eastern Dakota member of the Spirit Lake People. She lived along the Watpá Mnísota (or Minnesota River) Valley. Wakan Yanke played with others, helped her family, and sometimes went hunting or fishing. She played with dolls and toys, and she sometimes played Ta-ka-psi-ca-pi, meaning “ball game” and now called lacrosse.

Wakan Yanke, wore long deerskin or elk skin dresses and moccasins on her feet. She also wore buffalo-hide robes in bad weather. Over time, Wakan Yanke learned how to sew clothing using material from the fort.

Dakota women, like Wakan Yanke, were in charge of the home. Besides cooking and cleaning, she helped build her family’s house and dragged the heavy posts with her whenever the tribe moved. Later, when she was married, Wakan Yanke became in charge of the log cabin built in Tiŋta-otoŋwe near the springs at Prairie des Français on the Rivière Saint-Pierre. Houses belonged to the women in the Dakota tribes. Wakan Yanke also took part in storytelling, artwork and music, and traditional medicine.

In 1837, she married Oliver Faribault in a civil/Indian ceremony.

Many traders and voyageurs, like Oliver, married into American Indian communities and utilized kinship networks, often trading exclusively within their particular community. “As a result, large communities of individuals of diverse heritage developed, often called ‘mixed-bloods’ or Métis during the period, and many of these individuals maintained ties to both the fur trade and American Indian communities.” Oliver was at least ¼ Dakota, and Wakan Yanke was either full Dakota or half Dakota.

As part of the settlement in an 1837 treaty, each Mdewakanton Dakota village was to receive an assigned farmer to teach them the benefits and techniques of “modern agriculture.” Oliver was assigned to Tiŋta-otoŋwe in the spring of 1839. Wakan Yanke probably stayed at Little Rapids.

Lawrence Taliaferro was a United States Army officer and an Indian agent at Fort Snelling. In Taliaferro Journal, June 11, 1839, he wrote:

“Under terms of the treaty of 1837, each Mdewakanton village was to receive an assigned farmer to teach them modern farming. Oliver’s close relationship with Ŝakpedan, also known as Little Six, led to his being assigned to that position in the spring of 1839.”

In Taliaferro Journal, June 17, 1839, and Aug. 13, 1839:

“Taliaferro recorded that Oliver had nine oxen, four cows, three horses, one bull, one cart, one wagon, two yokes, and bows, two single plows and two double plows.”

It was during this period that Tiŋta-otoŋwe moved from the left bank to the right bank of the Minnesota River. Exact year of the village removal has not been determined.

On Feb. 11, 1844, Oliver married Wakan Yanke, also called Henriette Menegre or Menary, in a religious ceremony (after the 1837 civil/Indian ceremony) at the St. Francois Xavier Sioux Mission, located at Little Prairie on the Rivière Saint-Pierre (St. Peter’s River.) Wakan Yanke spoke Dakota and French, and a bit of English.

Together, they had nine children:

• Gabriel Olivier Faribault (1838-Dec. 1859)
• Olivier Emile (born about 1840)
• Angelique (birthdate unknown)
• Mary Josephine Jessie (born 1842)
• Jane Luce (born 1843)
• Pelagie Eliza (Aug. 27, 1845-Dec. 1, 1937)
• Sarah-Iréne (born 1847-May 23, 1924)
• Henriette Luce (born 1848)
• Lauren Philippe (born 1850)

Gabriel Olivier Faribault, who was born in 1838, probably was with Pelagie’s siblings, as is often done with young Dakota boys, in order to learn the Dakota way of living. He died in December of 1859. Oliver Emile, Angelique, Henriette Luce, and Lauren Philippe all died in infancy or early childhood.

In 1844, Wakan Yanke and Oliver built and established a trading post near three springs, later called Faribault Springs, in the midst of Tiŋta-otoŋwe, a Dakota summer planting village in what was later the east part of Shakopee. The cabin and adjacent warehouse were built on the west side of Faribault Springs, using tamarack logs which were obtained from a swamp nearby.

Oliver Faribault was in his early thirties and Wakan Yanke was about 27 years old when they moved into the area. Mary Josephine Jessie, their daughter, was two years old, and Wakan Yanke was also pregnant with another daughter, Pelagie, who was born in 1845.

Wakan Yanke spent her time as a mother and wife. She took care of Mary Josephine Jessie and Pelagie Eliza, along with Sarah-Iréne and Henriette Luce. Her last child, Lauren Phillippe, died in infancy in 1850. According to purchases in 1845-1846, the log cabin included a cook stove, and from 1842-1845 kitchen utensils included a pitcher, a coffee pot, a wrought iron tea kettle, four tin pans, three tin dishes, a set of blue cups and saucers, a dozen plates, six blue plates, four blue bowls, and a broom.

Oliver died on Oct. 12, 1850, after contracting quinsy while digging out Faribault Springs. Quinsy is an abscess between the back of the tonsil and the wall of the throat. Quinsy is now rare because most people get effective treatment for tonsillitis early enough to prevent it, but in 1850 quinsy often led to death.

The girls were still very young when their father died. Their mother, Wakan-Yanke (Harriet), remained in the home and raised the four girls, Josephine, Pelagie, Sarah, and Harriet. Wakan Yanke preempted a quarter of the land in 1856, but gradually was forced to sell small parcels of it.

Wakan Yanke, also known as Harriet Menegre/Menary Faribault, died of typhoid fever on Nov. 7, 1880. According to the Shakopee Argus, she had been unwell for weeks, but during the past ten days she was apparently improving.

The obituary noted the following:

“Mrs. Harriet Faribault died at her residence in East Shakopee, Monday last. She had been unwell for weeks, but during the past ten days was apparently improving. Except to old settlers she was unknown, of late years never leaving her residence. She was a full-blooded Sioux, but married David Faribault, a Frenchman. He died at Shakopee in 1853. Since then she has lived just at the outside of the city with her daughters. She was probably born at or near this place before visited by white man.”

A few notes about the obituary include that Wakan Yanke was full-blooded Dakota (which is probably true). She did not marry David Faribault, but Oliver Faribault, who was a brother of David. Oliver (and David) were ¼ Dakota, and were also French Canadians who were born in Prairie du Chien, now in Wisconsin. Oliver died Oct. 12, 1850 (not 1853). And the Faribault Post was inside the limits of Shakopee, on the east side just west of Memorial Park.

Eventually, the logs of the original house built by Oliver and Wakan Yanke were covered with wood frame siding. The house was lived in by the Faribault family until the 1949 and was moved to Murphy’s Landing in 1969. Now a historic site, the house is used to interpret the fur trading era at The Landing in Shakopee.

Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2020

It was the beginning of November 1847. Cordelia Eggleston Pond, along with her husband, Samuel W. Pond and their children, Jennette, age five, Rebecca, age three, and baby Elnathan, just a month old, arrived at Tínṫa Otuŋwe, which Samuel called Prairieville.

They moved into the mission house, which had been built on a gently rising ground, about a half mile south of the Rivière Saint-Pierre (St. Peter’s River) over the last few months. According to Samuel Pond, Jr., the mission house was “about half a mile south of the Minnesota River.”

What was Cordelia Eggleston Pond thinking as she looked at the Faribault Trading Post, the Dakota village of 600 people, and the mission house, right in the middle of it all? There were no white families except for Hazen P. Mooers and for the missionaries who lived 14 miles away at Oak Grove. Around her were 600 men, women, and children of the Eastern Dakota Mdewakaŋtoŋwaŋ, or the Spirit Lake People. As a missionary, Cordelia focused on caring for her children, keeping house, and feeding the family, along with ministering to the Dakota.

Cordelia Eggleston was born Nov. 22, 1815, in the small community of Stafford, just outside of Batavia, New York. Cordelia’s father, Esquire Ebenezer Eggleston, died eight weeks earlier. Her mother was Anna Kingsley Eggleston, who was left a widow with eight children. When Cordelia left home in 1837, she unlikely saw her mother again, as she died in 1843.

Cordelia’s older sister, Julia, married Rev. Jedediah Stevens, and eventually their mission station was at Lake Harriet Mission. Cordelia decided to join them there.

According to Samuel Pond, Jr., “…a sister of Mrs. Stevens, Miss Cordelia Eggleston, then a young lady of twenty-two, had joined the Lake Harriet Mission in the capacity of teacher. She was a great favorite with her sister, Mrs. Stevens, who had long and diligently laid her plan to have her younger sister associated with her at her work in the Indian country, and was much elated with her success.”

“The lady commended herself to all by her amiable character, modest demeanor, and personal attractions….

“During the spring and summer following Mr. Pond’s return to Bde Maka Ska, he saw much of this young teacher and the acquaintance resulted in a marriage engagement after a brief courtship in the beautiful groves bordering the lovely lake,” said Samuel Pond Jr.

On Nov. 22, 1838, Samuel W. Pond married Cordelia Eggleston near the Mission Boarding School near Bde Maka Ska. It was attended by anyone of importance in the territory, including U.S. Army doctor John Emerson, owner of Dred Scott (who was living at Fort Snelling), political, civil, and military, and groomsman, Henry H. Sibley, and Rev. J.D. Stevens, whose wife was a sister of the bride.

In 1847 the family moved to Prairieville. Cordelia and Samuel had four children, Jennette, Rebecca, Elnathan, and Samuel Jr. According to Samuel, “… though we have endeavored to have as little property exposed as possible we are obliged to be continually on the watch. My wife had been only a mile from home in three years, and when the Indians are here, I seldom go out of sight of the house unless I am obliged to do so.”

According to Samuel, “…the young mother (Cordelia), never very strong, gradually failed in health from that time. The oldest girl, Jennette, now eight years of age, was a great comfort and help to her mother, whom she was said to resemble closely in both character and person. She was morbidly conscientious and must have been rather precocious, since she had finished reading the Bible through by course before she was six years of age.”

In the fall of 1851, Samuel obtained from the Board a year’s leave of absence and prepared to visit New England. The journey was a fatiguing one, as much of it was by stage. In Connecticut, kind friends “took charge of the four children, for their mother was rapidly failing, and by the first of February it was evident that the end was near.”

The dying mother, Cordelia, expressed a desire to see all her children once more, knowing that it would be the last time in this world. “To the older ones she gave words of counsel which were carefully heeded and diligently followed. Jennette Clarissa never forgot her mother’s parting words. Mr. Edward Pond went over the icy hill and brought Elnathan Judson from his aunt Jennette’s, to receive his mother’s last kiss and listen to her dying words. She told him to be a good boy and love God. To the youngest, she said, ‘Poor boy! He will not remember his mother!’ and kissed him farewell.”

Before the dawn of the sixth day, Cordelia passed away at the age of 36 years, fourteen of them spent in continuous service of the Dakotas. The tombstone of Cordelia Eggleston Pond is at the Old Judea Cemetery, Washington, Litchfield County, Connecticut.

Samuel, widowed at age 43, was left with four young children. He remarried an old school friend, Rebecca Susan Smith, in Connecticut about two months after Cordelia’s death. They returned to the mission in Shakopee, where Rebecca, Samuel’s second wife, died on July 9, 1891. Samuel joined her in death on Dec. 12, 1891, at the age of 83.

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April 10, 1808 – Dec. 12, 1891
In Prairieville/Sha K’Pay/Shakopee 1847-1909
by David R. Schleper

Samuel Pond and his brother, Gideon, arrived in 1834 in the area later called Minnesota. He was a missionary, language translator, agricultural instructor, carpenter, farmer, and ongoing advocate for fair treatment of American Indians.

As Samuel got off the steamboat, he asked someone how to say, “What is this?” in Dakota.^[1] As he wrote this down, he walked over to a Dakota and asked, “Ka taku he,” pointing to a horse that was near the steamboat landing.^[2] (This would sound like “gay-dah-koo-hey.”)

“Hé šúŋkawakȟaŋ héčha,” the man responded.

And Samuel Pond quickly wrote down the word for horse, šúŋkawakȟaŋ. And Samuel continued, doing this for years, eventually creating the Pond-Dakota alphabet, which is still used today.

Shortly after, Samuel and his brother began teaching Euro-American farming to Dakota people near Bde Maka Ska (Be-DAY Mah-Kah Ska) in present-day Minneapolis.^[3] The brothers continued to work on the Dakota dictionary. Samuel noted, “The language was a game I went to hunt, and I was as eager in the pursuit of that as the Indians were in pursuit of the deer.”

After a brief engagement, Samuel W. Pond married Cordelia Eggleston on Nov. 22, 1838.

In 1847, after accepting the invitation from Ŝakpe II to locate in Tiŋta-otoŋwe, Rev. Samuel W. Pond began preparing for the building on the mission house. Materials were purchased at Point Douglas in Wisconsin. The timbers were framed and the materials were prepared at Fort Snelling, and then, as the ice melted, the timbers were loaded on a barge and brought up the St. Peter’s (Minnesota) River to the location at Tiŋta-otoŋwe, which Samuel W. Pond called Prairieville.

The Mission House was built in the middle of Ŝakpe II’s village of Tiŋta-otoŋwe, where approximately 600 Dakota lived in tipi tanka (or bark lodges). It was a busy place, and Pond decided to surround the Mission House and front garden with a fence of tall stakes to prevent the Dakota from claiming a portion of the crops that Pond’s family planted.

In November of 1847, after working on the Mission House during the spring and summer, Samuel, Cordelia, and their three children moved into their new home. Jeanette was five years old; Rebecca was three, and baby Elnathan was scarcely a month old when they moved in. (Samuel, Jr. was born a few years later.) Elnathan remembered in 1925, “There were no white children excepting my brother, my two sisters, and myself….I recall that white men were a rare sight, and our childish eyes grew round with wonder when we saw one!”

Samuel W. Pond described the site: “The mission house at Shakopee was pleasantly located on gently rising ground, about half a mile south of the Minnesota River. At a distance of twenty rods or so to the West was the house of Oliver Faribault. Between these two dwellings was a ravine through which ran a never failing spring of clear cold water…” Tiŋta-otoŋwe, the village of the Dakotas, was south of the mission house and was nearby. The Mission House was “…sufficiently commodious, carefully and comfortable built, although inexpensive in all its appointments. The walls were carefully filled with moistened clay, making them probably bullet-proof and rendering the house very warm.”

Samuel and his brother Gideon both resigned from the Dakota Mission after the Treaties of 1851 removed all of the Dakota people to the Upper and Lower Sioux Agency reservations in western Minnesota.

Samuel became the founding pastor of the first Presbyterian Church in the rapidly growing city of Shakopee, Minnesota. He served as pastor for thirteen years. Samuel died on Dec. 12, 1891, at the age of 83.

The wood frame Pond Mission House was razed in 1907. The foundation is still there, across the road from Memorial Park in East Shakopee. A historic marker tells about the Mission House and Reverend Samuel W. Pond.

^[1] This is an imaginary response, based on the true story of Samuel W. Pond in Pond, Samuel William (1893). Two volunteer missionaries among the Dakotas: or, The story of the labors of Samuel W. and Gideon H. Pond. Boston, MA: Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society.

^[2] The he is a question mark. The Dakota do not have periods and marks like in English. So any time someone ends a sentence in he, the person are either being asked a question or someone is be asking a question.

^[3] Bde Maka Ska (Be-DAY Mah-Kah Ska) used to be called Lake Calhoun, after John C. Calhoun, a proponent of slavery. He was infamously known for calling slavery “a positive good.” The name of the lake was changed back to the Dakota name of Bde Maka Ska in 2017.

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• Samuel W. Pond, Jr. and Cordelia Eggleston Pond and Family (1847)

By David Schleper

According to Daniel M. Storer’s diary:

“The night watchman got shot at in the night. He saw a couple of fellows in an alley, and he called to them to halt, and they shot at him and ran. The ball went through his hat.”

(From The Diary of Daniel M. Storer from 1849 to 1905: A Pioneer Builder and Merchant in Shakopee, Minnesota by Shakopee Heritage Society, 2003, p. 197.)

By David Schleper

Professor Thomas Tristram and his bride, Theresa, came to town in the late summer of 1878. He had been in Bloomington, and moved to work in Shakopee. He was one of the most popular teachers in the public school during the year, and was re-employed for the coming year of 1879. The professor and his new pretty wife, Theresa Pearle Tristram, were very popular socially and much sought after.

But then the rumors started. “I told you so!” said one person in Shakopee. “I knew something was wrong!” said another.

And immediately, the professor left town and returned to Ireland.

The Argus newspaper on August 7, 1879 started to investigate. The Argus noted that Reverend William R. Powell had received a letter from Annie Tristram, who claimed that she was the professor’s wife. The letter noted that she had not heard from the professor since 1876 and expressed concern as “he was one of the kindest of husbands…”

Thomas Tristram was born in Ireland in 1843. At the age of 17, he married a lady six years his senior, Annie. Thomas claimed that he had been drunk before the ceremony and kept intoxicated during the service. (Good excuse!) He also claimed that his wife was unchaste before the wedding, and since then had been repeatedly broken her marriage vows. They had four children.

Thomas was not happy, and he escaped by immigrating to the United States…without his wife or his four children.

In the United States, he enlisted as a private in the army for five years at Fort Snelling. While in St. Paul, he met Theresa Pearle and after two years of engagement, they were married in Minneapolis on September 16, 1876.

About two weeks ago, Reverend William R. Powell received a letter from Dr. Knickerbacker of Minneapolis. He included a letter that was sent from Ireland by Annie Tristram, who explained that she had been waiting patiently and trusting in God. She explained that she had been waiting the last three years, taking care of the children, and had been struggling. She heard that Thomas Tristram was in Shakopee, and she needed to find out more.

Upon being confronted with the letter, Thomas Tristram confessed, and then quietly and rapidly left to rejoin his wife in Ireland.

The second wife, Theresa Pearle Tristram, was left to pick up the pieces. According to the Argus, Theresa was “terribly wronged, yet she trusts the man who so wronged her. She has forgiven him…” and refused to prosecute.

Thomas Tristram was a villain, a rascal, and a man deserving to spend his remaining years in prison. In the newspaper, the Argus noted that frail, pretty and innocent Theresa, with her broken heart, was thrown upon the cold, heartless world.

(Some information from Argus, August 7, 1879; and The Shakopee Story by Julius A. Coller © 1960 by North Star Pictures, Inc.)

By David Schleper

In September, three men, clad in linen dusters, drew up their beautiful horses in front of John Dean’s blacksmith shop to have them shod.

As the story goes, according to The Shakopee Story by Julius Coller II, the horses were shod backwards; such a request would not have greatly surprised Dean or his helper, who took the men for dudes from Lake Minnetonka. (Lake Minnetonka was a favorite resort for the wealthy and near wealthy Easterners.)

When leaving, the leader tipped the blacksmith very liberally. Because of this, John Dean generally believed that this man was Jesse James.

In any event, it was quite certain that the men were members of the James-Younger gang who a few days later attempted to rob the First National Bank of Northfield. In the street battle, the gang was driven from the town after murdering Joseph Heywood, the acting cashier of the bank.

Luckily, they did not attack the people of Shakopee!

(Some information from The Shakopee Story by Julius Coller, II, copyright 1960.)

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Compiled and written by David R. Schleper, 2022

David Lennox How was born in Elbridge, New York on Aug. 23, 1835. When he was twenty years old, David decided to strike out on his own. After two years in Adrian, Michigan, he headed down the Minnesota River to Shakopee in the new state of Minnesota.

On the Antelope, the slender town smokestacks belched smoke. On the decks were a mixture of cargo and passengers, including Indian traders and settlers-colonists. David, age 22, was writing in his diary. “The scenery,” he wrote, “is very beautiful and the foliage more forward than in Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, or Indiana,” noted in The Shakopee Storyby Julius Coller II, pages 619-628.

In 1858, David entered a partnership with Dr. Josiah Schroeder Weiser, owning a drugstore in Shakopee. The old drugstore later became Strunk’s Drug Store. David also worked on several projects, including a Jordan flouring mill, a mill in Chaska, and a large mill in Shakopee.

At age 27, David Lennox How married 18-year-old Mary Margaret Robeson Sherrerd in 1862. Mary was born Feb. 13, 1844 in New Jersey. Her parents were William Maxwell Sherrerd (1805-1868) and Sarah Leeds Sally Bartow (1819-1896). William ran the American Hotel in Shakopee. David and Mary moved into the commodious Sherrerd brick residence on Holmes and Second Street, which is now torn down and is currently the Deco apartments. It was then called the Hows’ residence, and the couple had one child, Jennie Sherrerd How (1864-1935). Mary was pretty, talented, and entertaining. David was always the center of social activities with grace, magnetism, and ready wit. David and Mary were popular at parties and dances.

In 1872, a fire broke out, and J.G. Butterfield lost a drafting set. In one hour, $350 was raised to buy him a new set. The money was given to Butterfield, after a nice speech from David.

On the morning of Sept. 21, 1873, Mary went to visit a friend. When Mr. How telephoned to find out when she would be back, she was not there. Meanwhile, J.G. told his friends in Shakopee that he was going to Vermont, but he didn’t. He wrote his wife a letter saying they would never see each other again. Mary left her husband and child, and J.G. left his wife and five children.

Mr. Butterfield and Mrs. How left the state separately but met in Chicago. Then the new couple went to New York, St. Thomas, Panama, California, and back to Chicago. The people in Shakopee had a field day discussing what may have happened.

After three months, and ten thousand miles by rail and ocean steamer, Mary arrived back in Shakopee. So did J.G. Mary returned to David, and J.G. left Shakopee with his wife and family.

As far as it is known, neither Mary nor David offered any information or explanation. They took up their lives. Parties started up again, and their child, Jennie, married Ernest Lionel Welch (1863-1934) on Dec. 2, 1885 at the Hows’ house.

On Dec. 21, 1893, twenty years later, Mr. How ate breakfast and went upstairs. Moments later a shot was heard. The family rushed upstairs. David was sitting in the chair, grasping a revolver. The discharge from the 38-caliber weapon entered the right temple. He was dead.

David had several business enterprises and may have been overwhelmed and overdrawn on his accounts. The community was shocked. The funeral took place at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church on Sunday, Dec. 24, 1893, and he was buried at Valley Cemetery in Shakopee.

Mary ended up in the cities, and on Feb. 9, 1899, she married Alonzo Phillips (1843-1932), son of John Wesley Phillips and Catherine Enslen. Mary died on Dec. 5, 1928 in St. Paul. Mary was buried in St. Paul. David had a plot at Valley Cemetery for her, but she did not get buried in Shakopee. Eventually, the plot was given to Sarah-Irène Faribault (1853–1924), a nurse and domestic servant at the Hows’ home, and her remains was interred in the plot reserved for Mary Robeson Sherrerd How Phillips.

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