"The frontier army post," writes Professor F. J. Turner, "serving to protect the settlers from the Indians, has also acted as a wedge to open the Indian country, and has been a nucleus for settlement."[499] When the Fifth Infantry built its cantonment on the Minnesota River there were no other habitations in the neighborhood. Traders yearly frequented the region and wintered on the banks of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers, but their headquarters were located at Prairie du Chien. Immediately after the beginning of the military establishment, however, the movement mentioned by Professor Turner was initiated. In the spring of 1820 J. B. Faribault came up with cattle for the garrison and decided to locate in the vicinity as a fur trader. On August 9th the Indians granted Pike's Island to his wife, Pelagi Faribault, who was the daughter of a Frenchman and a Sioux woman. Faribault immediately built houses upon the island, but high water washed them away. Thereupon he removed to the east side of the Mississippi. It is probably to this establishment that Beltrami referred in 1823 when he wrote that "there are no buildings round the fort, except three or four log-houses on the banks of the river, in which some subaltern agents of the Southwest Company live among the frogs."[500] This position was also upon low land, and on April 21, 1826, when the ice began to move, Faribault's houses were carried away, while he and his family escaped in canoes.[501] After this second disaster Faribault's establishment was erected at Mendota, where Alexis Bailly had already located.[502] The growth of this village was very slow. But gradually old fur traders settled about it with their families; voyageurs, when not employed on the rivers, lounged about the trading house; and the agents and clerks of the American Fur Company had their permanent homes in the rude log cabins which were clustered about. In the meantime a new element had been added to the surroundings of the fort. It was already three-quarters of a century since the traders had erected the first trading post upon the Red River of the North. The early French voyageurs had left a race of half-breeds, popularly called _bois-brules_, who were the vassals of the two great companies. When their strength had been spent in the labors of hunting and trapping, they retired to the vicinity of some post--the largest of these settlements being Fort Garry, the germ of the modern city of Winnipeg, which as early as 1823 boasted of a population of about six hundred.[503]