Roc, Augustin (1787–ca. 1857)

Augustin Roc was one of several generations of the Couilland dit Roc family who traded and lived on the upper Mississippi and St. Peters Rivers. As the nature of the trade between Europeans and the local Dakota people evolved, Roc moved, gradually progressing up the Mississippi River. In addition to trading, he worked for the United States as an interpreter because of his knowledge of and connections with the Dakota.

Roc was born in January 1787 and baptized at Michilimackinac. He was the son Joseph Roc and a Dakota woman—a daughter of the Mdewakanton leader Wabasha.

During the American Revolution, Joseph served as an interpreter for the British Indian Department and accompanied Wabasha’s band when it participated in the attempted attack on St. Louis in 1780. With the establishment of a United States Indian Agency at Prairie du Chien in 1808, he was again hired as an interpreter.

During the War of 1812, both Joseph and Augustin served as interpreters for the British Indian Department. Afterward, Augustin chose to continue living at Prairie du Chien, claiming a lot in the main village. He had married a woman named Angelique—the daughter of a Meskwaki father and a Mdewakanton Dakota mother—with whom he would have seven children.

Like many of the French Canadians who resided at Prairie du Chien, Augustin was involved in various pursuits. From 1815 through 1820, he worked for Joseph Rolette and his trading partners, wintering one season at Little Crow’s village, one season at Lake Pepin, and three years at the Driftwood River. In 1817 and again in 1823, Major Stephen Long hired Augustin as an interpreter. On Long’s 1817 voyage, after they had passed the River Embarrass, Augustin pointed out the cabin in which he had spent the previous winter.

From 1821 until 1838, Augustin worked for the American Fur Company in various capacities, receiving licenses to the trade at the Brushwood River, on the Red Cedar, and on the River Embarrass. During this time he was known as Wazustecha (strawberry in Dakota) or LaFramboise (raspberry in French)—possibly for the red blemish on his face.

In a treaty conducted at Prairie du Chien in July 1830 between the United States, the Sauk and Meskwaki, the Otoe, the Iowa, and the Dakota, the Dakota requested the establishment of a tract of land for the mixed-race relatives of their nation west of Lake Pepin. The creation of this tract may have inspired Augustin to leave Prairie du Chien.

In 1833, Augustin and Angelique sold their home in the main village, and the family moved up the Mississippi River. Four years later, Augustin “of Lake Pepin the County of Dubuque and Territory of Wisconsin” sold his Prairie du Chien farm lot to François LaBathe. Augustin had selected the site for their new home “at the south-eastern end of Lake Pepin, upon the high edge of a Prairie, fifty feet from the water on the right bank of the Mississippi.” When Henry Sibley stopped at Augustin’s home in 1834, he called it “the only habitation of a white man between Prairie du Chien and St. Peter’s.”

As the fur trade declined and game grew scarce in the 1830s, many Mdewakanton suffered. Under the guidance of Indian Agent Lawrence Taliaferro, some had begun farming. Taliaferro, therefore, suggested to his superiors that the Dakota would be willing to sign a treaty giving up their lands east of the Mississippi River in return for an annual annuity. In September 1837, Taliaferro led a delegation of twenty-one Mdewakanton Dakota leaders and warriors to Washington City (later called Washington, DC). Several traders accompanied them, including Augustin Roc and François LaBathe. As a result of the subsequent Treaty of 1837, Augustin and his family received annual annuity payments.

By October 1838, Augustin had moved again—this time to a house on the "Half-Breed" Reservation, southwest of Lake Pepin. In the 1838 census of Wisconsin Territory, Augustin was enumerated as living in the area “North of the Root River” with a household of five males and four females. There, he resided until his death in the winter of 1856–1857, when he left his estate to Angelique and his three sons.