Hypolite Dupuis

Hypolite Dupuis (October 16, 1804– July, 1879) was a fur trader with the American Fur Company. He was born at LaPrairie de la Madeleine, near present-day Montreal in lower Canada. By 1831 he had moved to what would become the Minnesota Territory to work at Joseph Renville’s Lac qui Parle trading post. He moved to Mendota, Minnesota around 1840, and built a house on the property of Henry Hastings Sibley. Dupuis worked as a clerk for Sibley, and managed the company store. By the 1850s, the fur trade had largely died out, and Sibley and Dupuis liquidated their fur trade interests in 1853. In 1854, DuPuis built a home for his family and operated a general store until it closed as a result of the financial panic of 1857. The house is part of the Sibley House Historic Site.

DuPuis was active in the Mendota community, serving as county treasurer in 1854, the justice of the peace in 1855, and as the Mendota postmaster from 1854 to 1863. In 1871 DuPuis sold his brick home to Timothy Fee, and moved to the Devil’s Lake Reservation in North Dakota to work as storekeeper for the Fort Totten Indian Agency. The Indian Agent for the reservation was William H. Forbes, a former employee for Henry Sibley.