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is a city in Crow Wing County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 947 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Brainerd Micropolitan Statistical Area.
According to the Pequot Lakes Heritage Preservation Commission , a city once called Sibley and Frogtown became Pequot. In 1900, Walter and Flora Brown filed their plat for the E 1/2 of the SW 1/4 section 10 in T136N-R29W under the title Pequot. It's easy to figure out where the name Lakes came from, but what about Pequot? The Pequot Indians are a small tribe that has existed in eastern Connecticut since the first European settlers arrived here (see Pequot War). While no Pequot tribes ever lived in this area, the Algonquin language was carried here by the Chippewa (Ojibwe) tribes. The name Pequod was used by Herman Melville for the fictitious ship in his novel Moby-Dick.
1. Lakes area historian Carl Zapffe suggests that a variation of the Chippewa word for arrow (bikwas) as listed by Father Barroga in his Chippewa dictionary gave rise to the word Pequot.
2. Another explanation comes from a 1936 interview of Laurence Anderson, who moved to the town in the mid 1890s. "A daughter of Waubanaquot, Chief of the White Earth Tribe, was named O-Pequot and lived north of the town on the north end of Sibley Lake. She graciously allowed her dugout home to be used as a school and a church for the early settlers of the town. When she died, she was buried in the town cemetery."
Was the name Pequot chosen to honor her? No one knows for sure why Walter and Flora chose the name Pequot. However, we do know that change was mandated by the U.S. Post Office because of a town already named Sibley in southwestern Minnesota. In any event, the town's name was officially changed to Pequot in 1902.