Editing Pequot Lakes, Minnesota (section)

==History==
[[Image:Pequot Lakes 1.jpg|thumb|left|upright|The water tower in Pequot Lakes is decorated like a fishing bobber.]]
Pequot Lakes was [[plat]]ted in March 1900. It was named by a postal official for the first Indian-sounding name he thought of, which is the name of a tribe of Algonquian Indians in eastern Connecticut. A post office was established at Pequot Lakes in 1896.<ref>{{cite book|last=Upham|first=Warren|title=Minnesota Place Names: A Geographical Encyclopedia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ho23eS5qjNgC&pg=PA161|year=2001|publisher=Minnesota Historical Society Press|isbn=978-0-87351-396-8|page=161}}</ref>

According to the [https://web.archive.org/web/20060619081140/http://explorebrainerdlakes.com/community/city/pl/history.htm Pequot Lakes Heritage Preservation Commission], the city once called Sibley and Frogtown was renamed as 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. The [[Pequot]] Indians are a tribe that used to dominate southeastern New England before the English colonists arrived. While no Pequot tribe members lived in Minnesota, they spoke an [[Algonquian languages|Algonquian]] language related to that of the local [[Chippewa]] ([[Ojibwe]]) tribes. Author Herman Melville named his lead ship in  his novel ''[[Moby-Dick]]'' as the ''Pequod''.

Two possible explanations for the town's name arise:

1. The local 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. In a 1936 interview, Laurence Anderson, who moved to the town in the mid-1890s, gave the following explanation. "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."{{citation needed|date=March 2013}}

Because there was already a town named Sibley in southwest Minnesota, the U.S. Post Office said the second Sibley had to take a new name. In any event, the town officially became Pequot Lakes in 1902.

On June 4, 2002, the former Sibley Township was absorbed into the City of Pequot Lakes.