Note III-33 — Chapter III · ITINERARY, CONCLUDED: LEECH LAKE TO ST. LOUIS, FEBRUARY 1ST-APRIL 30TH, 1806.

Joseph Rolette, Sr. There were various persons of this surname, whose spelling varies as usual. Billon gives one Michel Rolette as a French soldier who came from Fort Chartres to Laclede's village (St. Louis) in 1764. Pike's "Mr. Rollett" is the same man as Beltrami's "Mr. Roulet," said in Beltrami's book, II. p. 174, to have been at Prairie du Chien in 1823, in the S. W. Co. The Minn. Hist. Coll., II. Part 2, 1864, 2d ed. 1881, p. 107, mentions "the notorious Joseph Rolette, sen.," as at Prairie du Chien, in or about Feb., 1822. The memoir of Hercules M. Dousman, by General H. H. Sibley, Minn. Hist. Coll., III. 1870-80, p. 193, speaks of "the late Joseph Rolette, senior," as a partner of the American Fur Company, in 1826; again we read there, p. 194: "In 1834 ... I formed with him [Dousman] and the late Joseph Rolette, senior, a co-partnership with the American Fur Company of New York, which passed in that year under the direction of Ramsay Crooks as President"; and once more, ibid., p. 199: "In 1844, Col. Dousman was united in marriage to the widow of his former partner in business, Joseph Rolette, senior, who died some years previously."