Congrats Janeé Harteau!
>And, from the mayor's news release: "I think
>it's also important to point out that Janeé
>Harteau, who is of French Canadian and Native
>American background, will be the first woman to
>lead the Minneapolis Police Department, and one
>of only two women police chiefs of America's big
>cities."
Connie here: As some of you may know, I do a lot
of historical "digging" into Minnesota and
Minneapolis history, for my neighborhood and for
a biography of a MN pioneer who was at St.
Anthony Falls really early.
That's why I've read a number of really early
censuses for our area, which post-1837-1838 had
been opened to white settlement by the Ojibwe and
Dakota, in treaties. What I thought of immediatly
upon seeing the name of the newly-nominated
Minneapolis police chief is the absolutely
dominant presence in our area in the 1830s and
1840s and beyond of people of the same ethnic
background as hers: French Canadian and Native
American.
The area that comprises today's Como
neighborhood, like St. Anthony Falls generally,
was originally part of St. Croix County, then
Ramsey County, until 1856. Censuses from
Wisconsin Territory from 1840 and after (St.
Croix County on "our" side of the St. Croix River
was part of Wisconsin Territory until Wisconsin
became a state in the late 1840s) and from the
new Minnesota Territory in 1849 and 1850 and 1855
all show huge populations of folks with French
names. Like that of the new police chief nominee.
These French-surnamed people had been here a
while, but Minneapolis history only retains the
record of Pierre Bottineau (according to the
rather phonetic transcription of the 1849 census
transcriber, it was pronounced not
"Bought-i-know" but "Botch-i-know"). Many of them
were what was called "métis," or mixed-blood
French and [mostly] Ojibwe. They were and had
long been connected with the fur trade. There
were hundreds of them. One of the big political
conflicts of MN Territorial politics was how, in
certain areas, the New Englanders of Democratic
leanings let these "Frenchies" vote in elections,
which outraged the Whigs, or Republicans.
Like Little Canada (so-named since the 1840s
because of all those French-Canadian/Ojibwe
residents) and St. Anthony in early Ramsey
County, the Como neighborhood has had, way into
the 20th century, tons of families with French
names. Some of them were anglicized (for example:
the "St. " taken off of "St. Cyr"). That French,
or French-Canadian-Indian, presence in
Minneapolis and St. Paul surprised me, mostly
because little of Minneapolis written history
bothered with anyone except Bottineau. An
interesting guy, but far from unique and far from
the first French-Native American in the
Minneapolis area.
What a fitting return to roots, this appointment of Janée Harteau represents!
Connie Sullivan
Como, in part of the 1837 treaties' cession to
the U. S. between the St. Croix and the
Mississippi