Tim Spitzack

FACT...

Searching for Pig's Eye's Saloon

It’s two o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon and I’m in downtown St. Paul searching for a saloon. With the infusion of many new restaurants in recent years it’s not hard to find a place to whet your whistle but the historic establishment I’m looking for no longer exists. It was shuttered nearly 175 years ago by its debt-laden owner who was later publicly ridiculed following an unconventional land dispute ruling and eventually left town spewing curses on the city that once bore his name. 

The saloon was owned by the infamous Pierre “Pig’s Eye” Parrant and was located on the river near the foot of today’s Robert Street Bridge. I’m standing at that site but find it impossible to imagine what the area looked like when Parrant hung out his shingle to sell whiskey to soldiers from nearby Fort Snelling, Native Americans and early settlers. What was once the rolling native landscape of a prairie river is now all concrete and pavement. Fronting the river are Lambert’s Landing, the Sam Morgan Trail and Shepard Road, and rising above are the arches of the Robert Street Bridge and the city’s skyscrapers. 
 

This is actually the second location where Parrant practiced his illicit trade. The first was a few miles upstream near the confluence of a creek that flowed from Fountain Cave, a 1,000-foot-long sandstone cavern where he stored liquor. He established a sizeable business there but borrowed heavily to do it. By 1840 he had sunk deeply into debt and was forced to relinquish the claim on his land to a debtor. After relocating to present day downtown St. Paul, a small village soon formed around his tavern and the river men who brought him whiskey and other supplies began calling the settlement Pig’s Eye Landing.
 

Parrant was of mixed French Canadian origin, his father being French and Huron and his mother French and Ojibwe. He spent much of his life running boats for the fur trade on the Missouri and Mississippi rivers. In 1832, at age 60, he traveled to the Minnesota Territory seeking an easier, more profitable lifestyle. He squatted on land around Fort Snelling and started bootlegging but was soon booted off the federal land by Indian agent Major Lawrence Taliaferro. In his journal, Taliaferro described Parrant as a “coarse, ill-looking, low-browed fellow, with only one eye.” The other eye was “blind, marble-hued, crooked, with a sinister white ring glaring around the pupil, giving a kind of piggish expression to his sodden low features.” Furthermore, he said his English was dreadful, his behavior “intemperate and licentious.”
 

For three years Parrant, who imbibed heavily of his own product and was prone to fits of rage, stood behind his bar and jawed with the miscreants who came there to drink, smoke and gamble. The saloon became a rough and rowdy watering hole that attracted vagabonds, and their raucous activity frequently spilled into the streets, drawing the ire of the upstanding citizens of the village. Once again feeling the pressure to relocate, Parrant drifted a few miles downstream and made claim to a tiny tract near what is now Pig’s Eye Lake. That claim, however, led to one of the most colorful land dispute resolutions in the territory’s history.
 

It wasn’t long before his neighbor Michel LeClaire showed up and accused Parrant of infringing on his land boundary. They bickered, exchanged heated words and parted ways. The disagreement escalated and the two men took their case before the Justice of the Peace at Grey Cloud. After hearing their testimony, Justice Joseph R. Brown determined that neither had legal rights to the land because it had not been staked in the presence of witnesses. He closed the proceedings by telling the feuding neighbors that the first to plant stakes on the property would be the rightful owner, and the race was on. 
 

It must have been quite a sight to see the two men sprint out the door, rays of hope sparkling in their eyes, or in Parrant’s case his one eye. Legend has it that they raced by foot through the forest, bogs and sloughs that covered the eight miles between Grey Cloud and the land they hoped to rightfully claim. At age 67, Parrant was unable to compete with the younger LeClaire and he watched his neighbor slowly disappear from sight. By the time Parrant arrived at his home LeClaire had driven in stakes and was standing smugly with his witnesses, likely laughing at the panting old man.
 

Word of the event spread to the village and people began to poke fun at him. Fed up with the abuse from his mockers and being displaced for a fourth time, Parrant spurned the community and decided to make his way back to his native Sault Ste Marie, Mich. He left town slinging a string of expletives that would make even a drunken sailor blush. 
 

Although Parrant’s tavern no longer exists, the site still attracts those living on the fringe. As I leaned against the metal railing overlooking Lambert’s Landing I looked down and saw three disheveled men huddled below, sharing conversation over a smoke. And on the whisper of the cool November breeze I heard Old Pig’s Eye laugh.