Joseph Renville (1779–1846) was an interpreter, translator, expedition guide, Canadian officer in the War of 1812, founder of the Columbia Fur Company, and an important figure in dealings between settlers of European ancestry and Dakota (Sioux) Natives in Minnesota.

[3][2] His wife, Mary Tokanne (Tokahewiŋ) Renville, also a kinswoman of Big Thunder (Wakiŋyaŋtaŋka) Little Crow II, was an early Christian convert.

In 1805, Renville was appointed by the U.S. as an interpreter on the recommendation of officer Zebulon Pike during his expedition to explore the upper northern reaches of the Louisiana Purchase.

[3] During the War of 1812, he was appointed by Colonel Robert Dickson as a captain in the British army leading a group of Dakota soldiers.

Joseph Renville was descended from a long line of French Canadian voyageurs in the fur trade, including his great-grandfather Charles de Rainville (b.

(1800-1879) that he set up a mission at Lac qui Parle; Dr. Williamson agreed after learning that Renville would welcome the missionaries if they also taught his children in school.

[10] Although the mission was less successful in converting Dakota men (because the missionaries required them to reject polygamy), there were a handful of men who attended church and school at Lac qui Parle Mission regularly over the years, including Taoyatetuda, Mary Renville's kinsman, who would later return to Kaposia to take over as Chief Little Crow.

Riggs wrote that the little group of translators "usually consisted of Mr. Renville, who sat in a chair in the middle of his own reception room, in which there was at one end an open fireplace with a large blazing fire, and Dr. Williamson, Mr. G. H. Pond, and myself, seated at a side-table with our writing materials before us.

Gauss assisted with translation of the Bible from French into Dakota, and Dr. Williamson wrote, "Brother Gauss, Mr. R's present clerk being pious and feeling a deep interest in the spiritual welfare of the Dakotas and my own increasing knowledge of the French language make it more practicable to give religious instruction than heretofore."

In modern English-language hymnals, a paraphrase by Philip Frazier, loosely based on Renville's text, appears with the tune LACQUIPARLE, and it is known to many Christians by the opening words, "Many and great, O God, are thy works, maker of earth and sky".

Joseph and Mary Renville of Lac qui Parle encouraged their eight children to read and write in both Dakota and English.

[11] Many of them went on to forge further ties in fur trading society, in Sioux kinship networks[5] and in Christian missionary circles, and contributed to the preservation of Dakota language, history and culture.

Their youngest daughter, Marguerite Renville, taught most of the classes at the mission school in Kaposia when the American Board missionaries were invited to settle there in 1846 by Taoyateduta, Chief Little Crow.

He went on to become Chief of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate Sioux Tribe, overseeing the creation and settlement of the Lake Traverse Reservation.

Perhaps the greatest source of confusion is that Akipa, a full-blood Dakota of the Wahpeton band (with no direct relation to the French Canadian Renville/Rainville family or the Mdewakanton),[9] greatly admired Joseph Renville of Lac qui Parle and adopted his English name in tribute.