Joseph Renville

RENVILLE, Joseph. b. Kaposia, a Dakota Indian village near present-day St Paul, Minnesota, 1779; d. Lac qui Parle, Minnesota, 18 March 1846. Born to a French-Canadian trader, Joseph Renville, and a Dakota Native American mother, Renville was educated by a Roman Catholic priest in Canada and then worked as a soldier, interpreter, guide and fur trader at his own trading post at Lac qui Parle, Chippewa County, western Minnesota. He married a Dakotan, and encouraged the building of a Native American mission site by the Presbyterian Church through the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). His language skills helped a group of missionaries to translate the Bible into...