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This Day in Minnesota History

July 26, 1895

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Pierre Bottineau, the "Kit Carson of the Northwest," dies. Bottineau, the son of an Ojibwe woman and a French fur trader was born in the Red River valley about 1817. Fluent in Ojibwe, French, Dakota, and English, he worked for Henry H. Sibley in the fur trade beginning in 1837. From 1850 to 1870 he led expeditions to Montana and British Columbia and was a guide for Isaac Stevens's transcontinental railroad survey of 1853. During an attack by Dakota forces at Fort Abercrombie in 1862, Bottineau slipped through the lines and went to get help. After retiring in 1870, he spent the rest of his life at Red Lake.

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