Duncan Graham: (? - 1847)
Duncan's
early life is a mystery. Where he came from prior to arriving in trade
with the Dakota in the 1790's is unknown. He became Hohayteedah or Hoarse
Voice to the Dakota and married the daughter of Dakota chief, Penichon
(Penichon was the half-blood son of a French deserter who traded with the
Dakota after the Marin's left their country,
about the time the British won Canada from the French).
Duncan's trading career paused when the War
of 1812 broke & he became a captain in the British cause. At the battle
of lower Sandusky he was repulsed by the American's while leading his command
of Dakota warriors and was under Col.William McKay's command when he took
Prairie du Chien from the Americans. He lead the efforts which drove, future
U.S. President, Zachary Taylor, back down the
Mississippi R., in Taylor's attempt to retake Prairie du Chien on 6 Sept.
1814.
In 1816 he became apart of Lord Selkirk war
with the Northwest Fur Co., in which he helped secure the trade in northern
Minnesota from the NWCo. traders James Grant, Wm.Morrison
& Eustace Roussain for a trading season.
The following are exerts of a letter Duncan wrote on 24 Feb.1818 to John
Allen (Surgeon of the Royal Navy) from Big Stone Lake, giving us insight
of his thoughts of his profession & his view of a Yankton Sioux village
on the Cheyenne River in today's North Dakota, "...although you are not
thoroughly acquainted with all Indian customs from what you have seen of
them you may easily judge of my situation surrounded by about 300 lodges
of the ferocious savages bruts...the bones of the Grand Siruex (Yankton
Chief-killed by an Ojibwe from Leech Lake) were on a scaffold before my
lodge. There was continually night & day somebody crying howling over
these bones he was father to one brother to another & cousin to a third
& so on, in short where he had one relation in his life he had 500
after his death they are related together as they originated from the devil
whom I think must be the great Grandfather of them all...This far,
past the most disagreeable winter that ever I past in my life I have experienced
more trouble, anxiety & danger since the 18th of October last than
in the whole course of my life before and I would not undergo as much again
for all the beaver that went out of Hudson's Bay in ten years...I am in
hopes to go straight to heaven as I have every reason to think that I have
already gone through purgatory...I have given the place where I am the
name of hell upon earth as I can find no other name more becoming it."
In 1820 he was a Hudson Bay Co. trader at Lac Traverse, giving Col. Leavenworth
(the new U.S. commander at the mouth of Minnesota R.) concern in accomplishing
one of his missions, to secure the fur trade from British traders in U.S.
territory. By 1834 he had become an American, settling near Wabasha, Mn.,
at the foot of Lake Pepin. His daughters had married American traders/voyageurs,
Alexander Faribault, Oliver Cratte, Joseph
Buisson & James Wells. Duncan died at Mendota on 5 Dec. 1847.
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