Faribault: In the Beginning

The City of Faribault was platted (planned out) in 1855, three years before Minnesota became a state. As other pages on this site will attest to, Faribault today is home to a diverse group of people. While that diversity has changed over time, much diversity was present in Faribault’s beginnings. With origins as a fur trading post, it had attracted a number of European settlers, including Alexander Faribault, namesake of the city; but before settlers arrived, Faribault and environs had been in the heart of Wahpekute and Mdewakanton Dakota lands.  Even after the Treaty of 1851 and the forced removal of the Dakota in the aftermath of the 1862 Dakota-US war, these remain Dakota homelands.

A Brief Look at the Beginnings of Faribault

In order to trade with the Wahpekute and other Dakota, in 1826, Alexander Faribault, the city’s namesake, built his first fur trading post along the Inyan Bosndata Wakpa (Standing Rock River), later known as the Cannon River.¹  Faribault had close ties with the Dakota. Both his mother, Elizabeth Pelagie Kinzie Haines, and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Graham, had Dakota heritage. As such, Alexander Faribault knew the language and culture of the Dakota, skills that enabled him to develop good relationships with the Dakota. He began trading with them along the Cannon River and, in 1834,²  persuaded them to relocate their village to the junction of the Cannon and Straight Rivers, where he established a new trading post that became the site of Faribault today.³