Jean-Baptiste Faribault

Who was Jean-Baptiste Faribault?

Jean-Baptiste Faribault was a trader with the Indians and early settler in Minnesota.

His father, Barthélemy Faribault, a lawyer of Paris, France, settled in Canada towards the middle of the 18th century and served as military secretary to the French army in Canada. After the occupation of the country by the English, he retired to private life in Berthier and he held the office of notary public.

Faribault was born in Berthier, Lower Canada, and received a good school education; after several years of mercantile employment in Quebec, he entered the fur trade, most probably in the employ of Parker, Gerrard, and Ogilvy. In May 1798, he went with others to the island of Michilimackinac or Mackinac, one of the depots of this company. For over ten years, he traded with the Pottowatomic Natives at Kankakee, with the Dakota or the Sioux, Natives at Redwood, on the Des Moines river, and at Little Rapids, on the Minnesota River just upstream of present-day Carver, Minnesota, on behalf of the Northwest Fur Company.

During his residence at Little Rapids, in 1805, he was married to Elizabeth Pelagie Ainse, a half-Dakota daughter of Joseph-Louis Ainse, a British superintendent at Mackinac. In 1809, he settled in the small village of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, and commenced trading, on his own account, with the Indians of the Winnebago, Fox, and Sioux tribes. In addition to that, he conducted an exchange of lead with Julien Dubuque, at the point now occupied by the city of that name.