Two culturesA Closer LookFrederick Frink, an early settler who wrote about the town, described his arrival in Faribault: “I approached the town from the east, coming down the hill by the Front street road (now Division street)...Looking across the valley, the most conspicuous objects that met my sight were the numerous scaffoldings, elevating by rude pole structures ten or twelve feet above the ground the bodies of dead Indians, according to the custom of the Sioux... All along up and down the river were the tepees of the Wa-pe-cou-tas, far more numerous than the habitations of the white man, and the intermingling of tepees, log cabins, frame houses had just begun, with four or five steam mills plying a busy trade in their midst, with the rude monuments of an Indian cemetery in the background, pictured a blending of civilization and barbarism never again to be seen on the continent.”
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