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Long before settlers drained and farmed southwest Minnesota, the region's cash crops walked on four legs.

An inventory of furs shipped in 1836 by Joseph LaFramboise from his fur-trading post in Murray County numbered 38,000 muskrat pelts, 102 raccoon, 23 fisher, 198 mink, 110 otter, two beaver and two bear, plus one swan skin, Janet Timmerman said at Southwest State University during a recent presentation of her research on the fur trader.

Timmerman, a fellow at the Center for Rural and Regional Studies at SSU, is concluding 10 years of research into the fur trader's history for a book she plans to write. She also is curator at the Pipestone County Historical Museum.

Timmerman credits LaFramboise with forging overland routes in the region and with playing a role in treaty negotiations with various American Indian groups; he spoke five languages, including Chippewa, Dakota, Ottawa, French and English.

She hopes in her final research to determine the nature of his relationship with American Indians and the extent of his role in acculturating and moving the Dakota off their land.

Timmerman first learned of LaFramboise when researching "Draining the Great Oasis," an essay that details a thick stand of trees surrounded by four lakes that were drained by farmers in the early 1900s. The fur trader built his post on this site in the early 1830s, about 15 miles west of Lake Shetek, because it provided food, fuel, water, shelter and fur-bearing animals, Timmerman said. American Indians supplied the labor.

"This area was a frontier because it wasn't navigable by river," Timmerman said.

Great Oasis likely emptied in a rambling way into the Mississippi River, but LaFramboise probably carried his furs over land rather than by canoe, Timmerman said. Records show that in 1837 he owned five horses, a yoke of oxen and a full ox cart.

"He opened this area up for the world to see," Timmerman said.

LaFramboise came from a long line of fur traders, who arrived in the new world from France in 1637 under the surname Fafard, Timmerman said. They, along with numerous other traders, rebelled against laws stipulating to whom they could sell their furs. To reduce risks of apprehension, they all assumed the same surname of LaFramboise, after a common bush in the area, the raspberry.

The French-Ottawa trader was born in 1805 in Mackinaw Island, Canada. His mother took over the family fur-trading business when he was 4 years old, after his father was shot and killed. She sold the business in 1820 to the American Fur Company, owned by John Jacob Astor, who in 1826 became LaFramboise's first employer.

LaFramboise opened the Murray County trading post in the early 1830s as an agent for the company. He also worked in various other locations, from the New Ulm area, to points near Watertown, S.D., Timmerman said.

"For the most part, Indians would come in, they'd write up credits for things they needed to do the job that year, and they'd trap through the winter because that's when pelts are prime," Timmerman said.

As payment, LaFramboise kept an inventory of blankets, cotton cloth, beads, scalpers, tomahawks, lances, gun power, guns, kettles, lace, pantaloons and barrettes, Timmerman said.

During his tenure at the post, LaFramboise also played host in 1836 to George Catlin, a bit of an adventurer who was painting American Indians, Timmerman said. Catlin journeyed to the Pipestone quarry, where rumor has it he found favor with American Indians by blowing away some of the quartzite with dynamite and exposing more of the valued pipestone.

LaFramboise also acted as interpreter in 1837 for treaties with the Sioux and Chippewa, Timmerman said. These documents in part made tribes responsible for individual members' debts, including unpaid amounts owed to fur companies.

"We only have an estimate of how much (fur companies) took right off the top of those treaties," Timmerman said. "Some say the American Fur Company got as much as $200,000."

LaFramboise also interpreted in 1851 during the Traverse Des Sioux treaty, where native tribes of Minnesota relinquished most of the southern part of the state in exchange for an annual annuity. Failure of the U.S. to live up to the treaty eventually led to the 1862 U.S.-Dakota conflict.

"One of the things I need to find out is how well LaFramboise interpreted some of the things that went on," Timmerman said. "The Native Americans trusted the traders. If they could trust them in their trade, then surely they could trust them to interpret what the government was telling them. Sometimes that wasn't the case."

LaFramboise married into the tribes, which was a common strategy for fur traders, Timmerman said.

"You became entangled with the tribe; you became a trusted friend and a relative," Timmerman said. "How much of it was planned, and how much of it just happened because he was caught in the machinery that was doing the same thing? To find those things I need to find out more about the traders' agreements and his marriages."

His first wife was Mdewakanton. His second and third wives both were Sisseton-Sioux and daughters of Chief Sleepy Eye, Timmerman said. His fourth wife was Christian.

"I know that he loved his children very much," Timmerman said. "He tried to have every one of his children educated, especially his daughters."

His offspring took up various professions, including scout, farmer, interpreter, missionary and schoolteacher. One son moved to the Sisseton reservation and the youngest daughter married William Blake, one of the City of Marshall's founders.

When the post lost profitability and closed in 1838, LaFramboise guided Joseph Nicollet, explorer and cartographer, and John C. Fremont from the U.S. Topographical Bureau Corps of Engineers on a mapping expedition between the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers. He eventually settled at Little Rock, between New Ulm and Fort Ridgley, where he became a trader for the army and a merchant for new settlers until he died in 1856.

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