Theophile Bruguier Monument

This monument honors Theophile Bruguier, often called the first settler of what became Sioux City. Born near Montreal in eighteen thirteen, he trained as a lawyer, but after his young fiancee died of cholera just before their wedding, a grieving Bruguier left Canada for a rugged life as a fur trader and interpreter with the American Fur Company. According to legend, he told his friend War Eagle, a Yankton Sioux leader, about a dream of land where two rivers met beneath a high bluff.

War Eagle knew the very place, near where the Big Sioux flows into the Missouri. In eighteen forty nine Bruguier built his cabin and trading post here, the oldest structure in Sioux City, now preserved in Riverside Park. His remains were reinterred near this site in nineteen twenty six.