A trader with the Indians and early
settler in Minnesota, U.S.A.; b. 19 October, 1774, at Berthier,
Lower Canada; d. at Faribault, Minnesota, 20 August, 1860. His
father Barthélemy Faribault, a lawyer of Paris, France,
settled in Canada towards the middle of the eighteenth 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. Young
Jean-Baptiste received a good school education, and after several
years of mercantile employment at Quebec, entered the service of
the Northwest Fur Company. 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
Indians at Kankakee, with the Dakota or the Sioux, Indians at
Redwood, on the Des Moines river, and at Little Rapids, on the St.
Peter or Minnesota river. During his residence at Little Rapids,
in 1805, he was married to Pelagia Hanse, a half-breed daughter of
Major Hanse. In 1809, he settled in the small village of Prairie
du Chien, Wisconsin, and commenced trading, on his own account,
with the Indian tribes of the Winnebagoes, Foxes, and Sioux. In
addition to that he conducted an exchange of lead with Julien
Dubuque, at the point now occupied by the city of that name.
During the war with England (1812-14) Faribault refused to enlist
in the English army, and suffered imprisonment and the loss of all
his goods in consequence. After the conclusion of the war, in
1815, he became a citizen of the United States, and recommenced
his trade at Prairie du Chien. In 1819, he removed to Pike Island
in the Mississippi River, and in 1826 to the village of St. Peter
or Mendota, Minnesota, opposite the military post of Fort
Snelling. There he remained until the last years of his life,
which were spent with his children in the town of Faribault,
Minnesota. A county in southern Minnesota was named after him, and
the city of that name after his eldest son. Faribault was always
kind and generous to the Indians, and tried to elevate them by
teaching them the useful arts of life, and by instilling into them
the principles of Christianity. He was much attached to the
Catholic faith of his childhood and presented a house for a chapel
to Father Lucien Galtier, the first resident missionary in
Minnesota (1840).
FRANCIS
J. SCHAEFER
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