Location
Mille Lacs County and LakeThe ten southern townships of this county, Dailey, Mudgett, Page, Hayland, Milaca, Borgholm, Milo, Bogus Brook, Greenbush, and Princeton, were known as Monroe County until Mille Lacs County was established in 1860. The county was named for the large lake, called Mille Lacs, meaning a thousand lakes, which is crossed by the north boundary of the county. It was named Lac Buade by Father Louis Hennepin in 1680, for the family name of Count Frontenac. By the Dakota it was called Mde Wakan, that is, Wonderful Lake or Spirit Lake. Pierre Charles Le Sueur's journal, written in 1700 and 1701 and transcribed by Bernard de la Harpe, states that the large part of the Dakota who lived there received from this lake their distinctive tribal name, spelled, by La Harpe, Mendeouacantons. The same name, with better spelling, was given by William H. Keating in 1823, and the lake, on the map accompanying his Narrative, is named Spirit Lake, but this group of the Dakota, the Mdewakanton, had before that time been driven from the Mille Lacs region by the Ojibwe and then lived along the Mississippi. From: Upham, Warren. Minnesota Place Names: A Geographical Encyclopedia. St. Paul, MN: Minnesota Historical Society Press, First edition 1920. Third Edition 2001. Print.
