Joseph Thiebault served General Scott as interpreter in negotiating an 1833 treaty by which the Winnebagoes ceded to the United States all their title to the territory between the lakes and the Mississippi.

The evidence

• “But, to return: we must make out to see some picturesqueness in old Joseph Thiebault, the first white man known to have made Turtle Village his abode. He was a Frenchman trading with the Indians, and (for services rendered to General Scott as interpreter in negotiating, in 1833, a treaty by which the Winnebagoes ceded to the United States all their title to the territory between the lakes and the Mississippi) he claimed all the land lying about his cabin within "three looks." Even if he had two wives with a corresponding number of children, that is not counted a disadvantage nowadays, at least in the congress of the United States. I speak of Thiebault chiefly because he had a log-cabin, for, when Caleb Blodgett came, early in 1836, and for $200 bought Thiebault's vast and rather dubious claim, the log-cabin, duly cleaned, became the abode of the settlers till they could build for themselves.”

  1899-whitney-beloit-settlement/03-thiebault-blodgett.md, PDF pp. 9–9

  Whitney, Henry M. The Settlement of Beloit, as Typical of the Best Westward Migration of the American Stock. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1899. archive.org/details/settlementofbelo00whit.

  Grade A: Found on a page of one of our sources