Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/96

 64 HISTORY OF GOODHUE COUXTY place, but found the Sioux unfriendly. Continuing his way down the river to Illinois, he was captured by some allies of the Foxes, and was only saved from being burned by the friendly interposition of an aged Indian, who is supposed to have been one of his converts at the Frontenac mission. After five months of bondage he was set free. In the early thirties of the eighteenth century, Sieur Linctot selected a better position on higher ground in the rear of the first post, a few hundred feet from the shore, beyond the reach of high water, on and near the bluff edge of a wide plateaux, from which was an extensive view, both above and below the sandy peninsula, or point. Sieur Linctot was appointed com- mandant, and Sieur Portneuf ranked second. The new stockade ordered to be constructed was 120 feet square, with four bastions and accommodations within for the commandant. Linctot passed the following winter at Perrot's first establish- ment. "Montagne qui Trempe dans l'eau," now corrupted to "Trempeauleau;" and early in the spring he ascended to the site of the old stockade on Sandy Point, where he found a large number of Sioux awaiting his arrival. The elder Linctot's request to be relieved of the command was granted, and in 17:!.") the aide officer, Legardeur (Captain de) St. Pierre, was made his substitute. Upon the sixth day of May, the following year (1736), Sioux to the number of 140 arrived at the fort and said that they were taking back to the Puans a slave who had tied to them. St. Pierre told them that he thought it a large guard for one woman, and then they alleged that they were going to hunt turkeys to obtain feathers for their arrows. Continuing their journey down the Missis- sippi, they met and scalped two Frenchmen. When St. Pierre was on a visit up the river, still searching for the supposed out- let to the Pacific, and to build another post, the lawless party returned, and for four days danced the scalp dance in the vicinity of the fort. In August of this year (1736) St. Pierre was informed by letters from Lake Superior of the massacre of twenty-one Frenchmen on an island in the Lake of the Woods by a party of Sioux. Among the massacred was the Jesuit chaplain, Anneau, who was found with an arrow in his brain, and the son of Sieur Verendyre lying upon his back, his flesh hacked by tomahawks, and whose head had been removed, and was ornamented with garters and bracelets of porcupine quills. On the sixteenth of September five Indians, three chiefs and two young braves, delivered a quantity of beaver skins to St. Pierre as a pledge of friendship, and declared that they had no part in the attack at the Lake of the Woods. They w r ere then asked as to their