Jean-Baptiste Faribault was a typical son of the Northwest, coming thither from Canada in fur-trading days and living to see the founding of the states of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, where at his advent only Indians had roamed. aribault’s father, Barthélemy, was Royal notary during the French régime; after marrying Catherine Amable Véronneau he settled at Berthier, Quebec province, where their son was born.
Jean Baptiste had a good education in the village schools, was destined for a mercantile career, and spent several years at Quebec in the store of a prominent merchant.
Adventure appealed to the youth and he desired to go to sea; since his family opposed this plan he was apprenticed (1796) to the North West Fur Company and sent out to its posts in Illinois where he first traded with Potawatomi tribesmen. About 1800 Faribault was assigned to a trading-station among the Sioux on the upper Des Moines River where he had numerous adventures and was once almost assassinated by a jealous half-breed. Later his post was at Little Rapids on the Minnesota River. Then Faribault withdrew from the North West Fur Company and built a home at Prairie du Chien, where he engaged in the lead trade with Julien Dubuque. He also opened a farm near the village. It was claimed that he favored the Americans during the War of 1812; documents prove, however, that he was in the British militia in the attack in 1814 on Prairie du Chien ( Wisconsin Historical Collections, IX, p. 262). At the close of the war he prepared to remove to Lord Selkirk’s colony on Red River of the North, but finally decided to become a naturalized American. This same year (1817) a priest visited Prairie du Chien and Faribault had his wife and children baptized (St. Gabriel parish register, 1817). Two years later, at the instance of American army officers he took his family to the vicinity of Fort Snelling at the mouth of the Minnesota River. There he opened a farm on an island, which was submerged by a flood in 1822. The same year he entered the Columbia Fur Company and continued to trade with the Sioux, with headquarters at Little Rapids. When he was wounded in 1836 his wife walked from her home at Mendota to the Little Rapids post in order to give him care. The city of Faribault, Minnesota, was named for his son Alexander, but a county in the state obtained its name from the elder Faribault. He died at his daughter’s home in St. Paul.
Faribault was a patron of the church and aided Father Galtier, the first priest in Minnesota, to build a mission house.
In 1805 he took as wife Pélagie, a Sioux daughter of Joseph Hanse or Ainse of Mackinac. Their son Alexander was born the next year,
