Q&A: Who was Joseph Godfrey?
Joseph Godfrey or Otakle (Many Kills), was born at Mendota in 1835. The son of a French Canadian Voyageur and an enslaved black woman named Courtney, Godfrey grew up in the family of Alexis Bailly, a mixed-blood fur trader. In 1857 he married a Dakota woman and moved to the Lower Sioux Agency. At the…