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SAUK & FOX INDIAN HISTORY
Indians in Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa and Kansas
Lewis & Calrk enountered the Sauk and Fox Indian Tribes on their expedition of 1804. Clark noted the meeting in his journal of "Sunday 25th - a fair morning. The river rose 14 Inches last night. The men find numbers of bee trees, & take great quantities of honey. At 11 o'clock, 24 Sauckees came past from St Louis, and asked for Provisions. I ordered them 75 lb Beef, 25 lb flour, & 50 lb meal.The musquitos are verry bad this evening."
They were perhaps lucky the mosquitos were their worst problem. French Missionary Father Allouez, was the first to describe the Sauk Indians, writing in 1667 that they were more savage than all the other peoples he had met. He wrote that they were a populous tribe, but were wanderers in the forests with no fixed dwelling place. He was told that if they or the Foxes found a person in an isolated place they would kill him, especially if he were a Frenchman, and that they could not endure the sight of the whiskers of European. Two years later he reported that the first place in which he began to give Christian religious instruction was in a village of the “Ousaki,” situated at the DePere Rapids, Wisconsin, where he found several tribes in winter quarters,the “Ousaki, the Pouteouatami, the Outagami (Fox), and the Ovenibigoutz (Winnebago) about 600.” Allouez adds that a league and a half away there was another village of about 150 persons; that at 4 leagues farther away there was another of about 100 persons; that at 8 leagues away there was another of about 300 persons, situated on the opposite side of the bay; that at 25 leagues, at a place called Ouestatinong, dwelt the Foxes, and that at a day’s journey from this tribe dwelt the Mascoutens, and the Oumami (Miami), the latter a band of the Illinois. The Indians of this region, the Father reported, were “more barbarous than usual,” having no ingenuity, not knowing even how “to make a bark dish or a ladle,” using shells instead.
A Sauk band, which later became known as the Missouri River Sauk, had been in the habit of wintering near the post of St Louis on the Missouri. In a brutal winter of 1804, the leaders of this band were invited into negotiations with government officials. It is an unclear whether these leaders really knew what the whites really wanted from them as these negotiations would lead to their scattered end. In return for assistance, the Sauk and Foxes were to relinquish all claims to territory in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Missouri. When the full consequences of the Treaty of 1804 made by the Missouri Band was realized by the rest of the tribes, it was too late. The Foxes became so angry with the Sauk, they separated and within a generation they had moved to hunting grounds in Iowa. From the dissatisfaction with the terms of the treaty erupted the Black Hawk War of 1832.
The cause of this conflict has been tied to the refusal of the Sauk to comply with the terms of the treaty, especially regarding the lands along the Rock River in Illinois. The actual fighting between the Sauk and the U.S. Government was mostly of an intermittent skirmish variety. But the fighting between the Sauk and their native rivals, the Sioux, Omaha, and Menominee was intense. These tribes, together with the Potawatomi and Winnebago, had previously sent emissaries to the Sauk urging them to fight the whites while promising immediate assistance. The Potawatomi were the most insistant, with prophets in the camp of the Sauk preaching restoration of the old hunting grounds, the return of the game, and the sudden total destruction of the whites, but when hostilities began, their chief, Shabonee, was the first to turn to the whites against the Sauk.
Among the Sauk was a warrior of the Thunder Clan known as Black Hawk. He was not a chief, but had a reputation for bravery and leadership in war and was deeply religious and patriotic for his people. He had fought under Tecumseh and had become enamored of the nationalistic ideas of the Great Shawnee. Many of the hostile Sauk rallied around him. He first tried holding them back until he could unite with the Kickapoo and Foxes, but the fighting started before he was ready and the Sauk were badly beaten, and sought refuge with the Foxes in Iowa. Considerable resentment was felt against the Winnebago for having delivered Black Hawk over to the whites when he had come to them seeking refuge; and the same feeling was entertained toward the Potawatomi for going over to the whites. For some time before this there had been a close relationship between the Sauk and these two tribes. This conflict practically broke the power of the Sauk and Foxes and they united again in Iowa, this time to avenge themselves against the Sioux, Omaha, and Menominee.
So constantly harassed were the Sioux that they finally left Iowa altogether, and the Menominee withdrew northward where they continued to remain. In 1837 the Sauk and Foxes made the last of their various concessions of Iowa lands, and were given in exchange a tract across the Missouri River in Kansas, where they stayed about 20 years. But internal dissensions, due chiefly to the Keokuk, caused them to grow apart, and they maintained separate villages, the Sauk in one and the Foxes in another.
In 1854, while on a buffalo hunt, a party of about 50 men were attacked by a large force of Plains Indians, consisting, it is claimed, of Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, and Comanche. The Foxes were armed with “Kentucky Rifles” while the others had only bows and arrows. Retreating to a superior rise of ground, the Foxes fended off their attackers, whileinflicting heavy losses. On their return home they became uneasy should the Government, on learning the news of the slaughter, might deal harshely with them, and so they quietly slipped off to Iowa. A few Foxes had never gone to Kansas, but had remained in Iowa.
One summer about the years 1857-59, the leading Foxes returned from another buffalo hunt and found in their absence the Sauk had signed a treaty where the Sauk and Foxes would take up some lands together and sell the remainder. Land speculators for the expanding railroads and had acquired a large stretch of Indian Territory for virtually a handful of beans, further shrinking the Sauk and Fox lands.
The Fox chief refused to ratify the agreement on behalf of the Foxes and was removed from his chieftain position by the government Indian Agent. The Foxes didn't recognize the act of the agent deposing their chief and when he went to Iowa, many of the Foxes went with him and settled on the Iowa River near Tama City, where they bought a small piece of land. This was added to until they had about 3,000 acres. In 1867 the Sauk ceded their lands in Kansas and in exchange were given a tract in Indian Territory. In 1889 they took up lands together and sold the remainder to the Government.
The close relations of the Sauk with the Foxes in historical time make it difficult to form more than an approximate estimate of their numbers in the past, but it is probable that the population of the tribe never exceeded maybe 3,500. By 1885 the two tribes had a total population of about 930, of whom 457 were in Indian Territory, 380 (Foxes) were at Tama, Iowa, and 87 in southeast Nebraska. There were also a few at various Indian Schools. The Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1909 shows 352 persons (almost all Foxes) at the Sauk and Fox agency, in Iowa, 536 (chiefly Sauk) at the Sauk and Fox agency in Oklahoma, and 87 Sauk and Foxes (mainly Sauk) in Kansas, with a total Sauk and Fox population just past the turn of the century at 975.
Sources: "Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico" Frederick W. Hodge1906