{"id":2686,"date":"2025-11-24T21:40:54","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T21:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medhieval.com\/classes\/deepmapping\/?page_id=2686"},"modified":"2025-11-26T20:12:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T20:12:11","slug":"alexander-faribaults-family-history","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/medhieval.com\/classes\/deepmapping\/virtual-alexander-faribault-house\/generations-of-alexander-faribault-house-and-family\/alexander-faribaults-family-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexander Faribault’s Family History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Alexander Faribault<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Alexander Faribault was born on June 22, 1806, in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.1<\/sup> He first made his name following in his father\u2019s footsteps as a fur trader. Working for the American Fur Company, some of Faribault\u2019s first trading posts were in St. Peter and on Lake Elysian. However, in 1826, Alexander and a friend and fellow fur-trader, Joseph Dashner, took a trip through the Cannon Valley, including the site of the present-day town Faribault. According to an 1877 article in the Faribault Republican, from the first time that Alexander saw the valley where the Straight River and the Cannon intersect, he became set on living there permanently in the future.2<\/sup><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

By 1828, Alexander Faribault was working as a clerk, still for the American Fur Company, out of a trading post on the Cannon River. There, he made $450 a year, but over the next few years, the singular post on the Cannon River expanded to three or four posts near Wahpekute villages.3<\/sup> According to Franklyn Curtiss Wedge\u2019s 1910 History of Rice and Steele Counties, Faribault \u201cpersuaded\u201d some of the Wahpekute to move to Faribault where he wanted to build a new post.4<\/sup> He would continue as a fur trader for many years, but by 1844, Alexander began a farm in what is now Faribault. This farm had wheat, barley, turnips, rutabagas, 20 horses, 40 cattle, and 300 chickens.5<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Alexander was squatting on the land, which belonged to the Dakota. By the 1830s, Faribault was close friends with H.H. Sibley, future governor of Minnesota, who brought him along as an interpreter for multiple treaties with the Dakota.6<\/sup> The Treaty at Mendota in 1851, for which Alexander Faribault served as an interpreter, would legalize Alexander\u2019s ability to farm in the Cannon Valley. Additionally, Faribault received $42,000 from \u201cTraders\u2019 Papers,\u201d in which Wahpekute leaders agreed to pay off debts they owed to fur traders.7<\/sup> Alexander Faribault\u2019s fur trading practices, as was common for the American Fur Company, would\u2019ve involved a system in which he would sell goods to Dakota citizens on a credit system, with the expectation that they would pay him back with furs later on in the year. According to Richard Steimann\u2019s 1971 research on the Wahpekute band of the Dakota, white traders paid Dakota hunters unfairly low amounts for their furs, but with the expectation that some debts would never be paid back.8<\/sup> Ultimately, sources disagree on the legitimacy of the \u201cTraders\u2019 Papers,\u201d as they were separate to the Dakota\u2019s treaty with the US government. Some say the Wahpekute leaders were either bribed or tricked into signing these papers.9<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s true that Alexander Faribault had many friends amongst the Dakota. In 1836, he wrote a letter to H.H. Sibley, asking for him to give \u201cThe Black Eagle,\u201d (a Dakota leader, possibly confused with Wambditanka or \u201cBig Eagle\u201d) food after a conflict between the Oceti Sakowin (Sioux Nations) and Meskwaki (Foxes) broke out.10<\/sup> After the 1851 treaty, many Dakota people continued living in the town Faribault, on land that now was legally owned by Alexander. Even after the expulsion of the Dakota in 1863, Alexander steadfastly defended the five Dakota families that were living by his second Faribault house.11<\/sup> Still, Alexander Faribault was no doubt an active participant in systems of exploitation, including the fur-trade, which underpaid Dakota hunters for their labor, as well as the treaty process, which forced Dakota bands off of their land, including land that Faribault himself was illegally squatting on. Furthermore, according to Steimann, during the US-Dakota war in 1862, Alexander organized a \u201cvolunteer cavalry\u201d in Faribault to \u201cprotect\u201d the townspeople.12<\/sup> The five families who were living on Alexander\u2019s land after the Dakota Expulsion Act were allowed to do so as they were seen as allies to the settlers.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n