Page:History of Goodhue County, Minnesota.djvu/99

 HISTOEY OF GOODHUE COUNTY 67 as ever will be written, and is substantiated by considerable evidence. That the Captain St. Pierre, who had command of the Lake Pepin fort, is the same as the Legardeur St. Pierre who received Washington, is proven in as satisfactory a manner as has been a large part of what we now consider authentic history of early America. Some authorities place St. Pierre as the last commandant of the third fort at Frontenac, and declare that lie was there (probably with the son of Marin) in 1758. and that he went directly from there to Montreal, thence at once to Fort Duquesne. The more probable statement is that he was the commandant of the second fort at Frontenac, and that it was he, who, with the son of Linctot. burned and abandoned the second-built fort in 1737. In this connection the thoughtful reader will consider the fact that the commandant of the fort in western Pennsylvania, who received "Washington, Mas an aged man, while this St. Pierre of Lake Pepin fame was a man of middle age. This would be better accounted for by a lapse of sixteen years, allowed by those who place him as the com- mandant of the second fort at Frontenac. rather than by the lapse of a few months, allowed by those who place him as the last commandant of the third and last fort built at Frontenac. The building of this third fort is variously placed as from 1747 to 1750. Whether Marin was called from the fort to take charge of the army in the Ohio valley in the early fifties of the eight- eenth century, or whether he did not leave the fort at Frontenac until after the outbreak of the French and English hostilities, is another question .that has never been solved, although, if St. Pierre succeeded him at Fort Duquesne, the former is probable. In regard to the early exploration of the French in this locality, much confusion has arisen from the fact that the early investigators evidently took "LaSieur" to be a name, whereas it is only a complimentary title, prefixed to names, as our ' ' Esq. ' ' is affixed to English names, and the result is much the same as the result might be five hundred years from now, should investi- gators then consider "Esq." a name, and try to identify with each other from records of the present day all names ending in that manner. It is with considerable hesitancy that the edi- tor advances the theory, so firmly believed by the earlier his- torians, that Le Sieur de la Pierriere du Bouche. of Frontenac fame, is the de la Perriere Boucher known in history as the one who led the Indians in their attack on Haverhill, Mass.. when they killed the Puritan minister of the village, scalped his wife, and then clashed out his infant's brains against the rocks. In 1766, scarcely more than a decade after the supposed final abandonment of the third fort at Frontenac, Captain Jonathan Carver, probably the first English traveler to the Falls of St.