In the 1800s, when you wanted a guide to help you explore the American West, you called on Kit Carson. When you wanted to explore Minnesota and the Dakotas, you called on Pierre Bottineau.
He was a mountain of a man, over six feet tall and weighing over 200 pounds. The son of French-
Canadian fur trapper Charles Bottineau and Margaret Ah-dik-Songab (Clear Sky), an Ojibwe woman, he was born in 1816 in a hunting camp at Bear Point, near the mouth of the Turtle River near present-day Grand Forks, N.D.
He grew up under the cultural influences of the Ojibwe and the whites and could navigate seamlessly between them. Although he never learned to read or write, he was fluent in English, Ojibwe, French, Cree, Assiniboine, Mandan and Winnebago. Because his mother had Dakota parentage, he conversed easily in that language, too.
His father, who was employed by the North West Company, taught him how to hunt and trap. Pierre spent his early years working with his father and gained an intimate knowledge of the territory from the Red River to Winnipeg and along what became the U.S./Canadian border.
Charles Bottineau died when Pierre was in his early teens. The boy apprenticed to Antoine LeCount and made his first long trip as a messenger for the North West Company in 1830, traveling from the Red River to Prairie du Chien, Wis. He became a regular guide to families who left the Selkirk Settlement in Manitoba to the fledgling settlement of Pig’s Eye, which was later renamed St. Paul.
Above, Martha Gervais Bottineau. Below, Pierre Bottineau in 1855. (Minnesota Historical Society)
Becoming a legend
Bottineau’s skills as an outdoorsman were put to the test in 1834. A booklet published by the Brooklyn Historical Society in 1979 records an expedition on the Red River, when he accompanied LeCount and an older man named Alard on a mail run to Ft. Snelling. They had to ford their loaded pony cart, which was filled with furs and buffalo hides, across the Red River. Bottineau lashed a log raft together with buffalo hide strips and got the cart and supplies to the other side, then went back for the two men and the pony.
The raft took on ice and began to sink. Bottineau cut two logs free and had the men ride them to shore. Bottineau rode the raft to a bend in the river, then tried to jump ashore. He went into the river but managed to hold on to a cord attached to the raft. He was able to swim ashore and all three men changed into warm clothing. They eventually reached a Dakota camp and “stayed overnight feasting on otter and skunk meat.”
Pierre Bottineau Library, 55 Broadway St. NE, perhaps the most prominent place in Northeast bearing Bottineau’s name. (Cynthia Sowden)
According to his obituary in the July 28, 1895 Minneapolis Daily Times, Bottineau was in Selkirk when James Dickson proclaimed himself general of the Indian Liberating Army and sought to unite all the indigenous nations in a country of their own where he would be King Montezuma II. One of his followers was Martin McLeod, for whom McLeod County is named.
McLeod, “a Polander and an Irishman,” in the words of the paper, set out for the United States on snowshoes, with Bottineau as their guide. A blizzard came up, and the Irishman got separated from the party and died. McLeod and Bottineau built a hut for the Pole and continued the journey for 26 days. They went “without encountering another human being. Their provisions were exhausted, and after going five days without food, they killed and ate their dog.” The two eventually made it to Joseph Renville’s trading post on Lake Traverse in western Minnesota. When they went back for the other man, he had frozen to death.
Bottineau’s first addition to the Town of St. Anthony. (Hennepin County Library)
A serial town founder
In 1840 Bottineau built a home at what is now the intersection of Jackson and Seventh streets in St. Paul, though he continued his “migratory life of a hunter and voyageur.” He sold it four years later for $300 and moved across the river to become one of the first residents of St. Anthony. Bottineau had married for the first time in 1836 to Genevieve Larance. They had nine children before her death in 1851.
He built his new house on the riverbank above the north end of Nicollet Island. Many years later, his son Jean testified in a court case that the home was between 6th and 7th Avenues NE and west of Marshall Street. He owned about 700 acres in the area, including all the waterfront properties on the east bank, and partially supported his growing family by selling off parcels. He also started a trading post near Elk River.
Despite his rugged, steely-eyed appearance, Bottineau was known as a cheerful, social man with a ready smile. When the Red River oxcarts traveled through St. Anthony on their way to St. Paul, the Métis drivers and their families would often camp at his place. Celestia Dorr, wife of lumberman Caleb Dorr, recalled one of the drivers challenging her “to see who could dance the longest.” She danced until “my teeth rattled and I saw stars,” she said. “It seemed as if I was dancing in my sleep, but I would not give up and I jigged him down.”
Bottineau liked to gamble. At one point, he owned Nicollet Island but lost it in a card game. He was also said to skip silver dollars across the Mississippi. He was once fined $10 for racing a team of horses across the first Hennepin Avenue suspension bridge (drivers were supposed to walk their horses across). Bottineau supposedly handed the judge who levied the fine a $20 gold piece and told him to keep the change, as he’d be back soon.
He was also generous. He donated the land for the construction of St. Anthony of Padua Church in Northeast, and later, Osseo’s first Catholic Church.
A year after Genevieve died giving birth to twins, Bottineau married a second time, to Martha Gervais of Little Canada. They had 14 children together.
Although he was illiterate, Bottineau encouraged his children to attend school. Dr. Lysander P. Foster later recalled attending Miss Backus’ school on Marshall Street between 4th and 6th Avenues with the Bottineau children. Since the Bottineau children spoke only French and Miss Backus only English, he said lessons resembled a modern kindergarten, using object lessons. “McGuffey’s Reader” was the only textbook.
In 1855, the Bottineau family
pulled up stakes and moved northwest, where he claimed a stake called “Bottineau’s Prairie.” It later became the city of Osseo. The frame house he built there was preserved and is now a museum in Elm Creek Park Reserve.
Bottineau continued to guide English lords and bankers on hunting trips and facilitated treaty missions to the Pembina River region. In 1853, he guided Gov. Isaac Stevens of Washington Territory to help him find a railroad route to the west, and in 1869 guided the surveyors of the Northern Pacific railway. He was a founder of Breckinridge, Minn. During the Dakota War of 1862, he was Gen. Henry Hastings Sibley’s chief scout.
In 1875, the Bottineaus moved again to Red Lake Falls, where Pierre once more founded a town and built a farm there.
In 1888, Sen. Charles Russell Davis introduced a bill in Congress to grant Bottineau a pension of $50 per month for his “important services at great risk to his own life from hostile Indians. He is far advanced in years, and physically disabled from supporting himself by manual labor, and is, withal, reduced to poverty.” He died, surrounded by family, in 1895.
His legacy
Pierre Bottineau’s name lives on in Northeast Minneapolis and in many areas of the state:
Bottineau’s Addition to the Town of St. Anthony is the very underpinning of Northeast along the river. Although many streets have been renamed, Water, Sibley and Marshall streets and St. Anthony Lane still exist. His second addition encompasses the Holland Neighborhood.
The Bottineau Neighborhood runs from Lowry Avenue NE south to 16th and 17th Avenues NE and from University Avenue to the Mississippi River to the west.
Bottineau Field Park is located at 2000 2nd St. NE.
Perhaps the most visible remembrance of the old explorer is the Pierre Bottineau Library at 55 Broadway St. NE.
Outside Minneapolis, he’s also commemorated by Bottineau Boulevard (Hennepin Co. Rd. 81), which runs from North Minneapolis to Osseo, and the city and county of Bottineau, N.D.