08-23-2023 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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Adventures of Benjamin Gervais, Founder of Little Canada Gary J. Brueggemann To the 19th Century Dakota (Sioux) Indians of the Kaposia band, the future site of Little Canada was a very special place. Its rolling wooded hills and clear blue lakes were valued as the best hunting and fishing grounds within range of their village on the bank of the Mississippi River, just below what is now St. Paul. Every summer from the time of the American Revolution until 1852 when the band was removed to a reservation on the Minnesota River, large Kaposia hunting par ties made pilgrimages to this game filled land of lakes, woods and streams. There, on east shore of what is now Savage Lake, the hunters made their traditional "first day" camp. This camp site was used so regularly that white fur traders of the 1830s would often journey there to rendezvous with the Indians. These same traders were the ones responsible for naming the lake "Savage", a vulgar way of recognizing the fact that "Indians frequented its shores in large numbers." One such trader was Frenchspeaking Joe Belanger of Mendota, who was reported to have visited the "Lac au Sauvages" (Lake of the Savages) as early as 1836 and who 16 years later became one of Little Canada's pioneer settlers. But the Savage Lake Campground was not the only site in present Little Canada on which the Kaposia hunting bands left their mark. Over to the east, on the south bank of the stream destined to be named Gervais Creek, and near today's water tower, stood one of the more sacred landmarks; the burial hill of the Kaposia natives who died during the course of one of their bands' summer hunting trips. Although the scenic lake country of future Little Canada was keenly important to the Dakotas of the local Mississippi, they apparently never established a permanent village there. That sort of undertaking was fatefully left for non-Indian people to develop.