The Sac and Fox

The Sac and Fox were not native to Missouri, but were significant in Missouri’s territorial and early statehood periods. Unfortunately, much of that interaction was tumultuous. Their history in Missouri and its region was marked by warfare with other Native Americans, European colonists, and the young United States.

Sac (Sauk) is a conflation of Thâkîwaki, “People of the Outlet.” It has also been interpreted as “People of Yellow Earth.” Wagoshé, meaning “Fox,” was a clan name that Europeans erroneously applied to the Meskwaki (Mesquakie), “People of Red Earth.” French explorers first met these Algonquian-speaking peoples at Saginaw Bay in what is now Michigan. The Iroquois drove them westward into southwest Wisconsin in the mid-1600s. The Fox were almost exterminated by the French for challenging their control of the fur trade, and by 1735 the Fox remnant had amalgamated with the Sac. The Sac and Fox then built their principal town of Saukenuk at the mouth of the Rock River where it flows into the Mississippi near present-day Rock Island, Illinois.

The Sac and Fox adapted their Eastern Woodland culture to the Midwestern prairies. Seasonal buffalo hunting on horseback for food became important. Their hunting expeditions extended south and west to the Missouri River. The women tended gardens of corn, beans, and squash and gathered edible wild plants, nuts, berries, and tubers in their season.

At the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, France ceded the Illinois Country east of the Mississippi to Great Britain and the territory west of the river to Spain. Both sides of the river competed for Sac and Fox loyalty. The Spanish in St. Louis recruited them as mercenaries against the Osage and Missouria. The Sac and Fox nearly annihilated the Missouria around 1790.

When the region that included Missouri became US territory, relations between the Sac and Fox and the United States were unsettled almost from the start. In his autobiography published in the 1830s, Sac war leader Black Hawk recalled a visit to St. Louis shortly after the Louisiana Purchase: “I discovered on landing, that all was not right: every countenance seemed sad and gloomy! I inquired the cause, and was informed that the Americans were coming to take possession of the town and country! This news made myself and band sad—because we had always heard bad accounts of the Americans from Indians who had lived near them!”

At the turn of the nineteenth century, the Sac and Fox numbered about six thousand people and dominated the Mississippi Valley from St. Louis to Prairie du Chien in what is now southwest Wisconsin. The United States viewed friendly relations as imperative, but some Sac and Fox regarded Americans as trespassers. Several clashes occurred, and in September 1804 some American settlers on the Cuivre River northwest of St. Louis were killed.

Quashquame and several other Sac chiefs came to St. Louis in October to make amends. They surrendered the leader of the Cuivre River attack to William Henry Harrison, the territorial governor. Harrison promised to release the man in exchange for some land. On November 3, 1804, the chiefs signed a treaty ceding fifteen million acres of land in Illinois, Wisconsin, and northeast Missouri, receiving in exchange $2,000 worth of gifts, a $1,000 annuity for the tribe, and a promise of a trading post. But apparently, they did not fully realize what was happening. Black Hawk said, “They had been made drunk the greater part of the time they were in St. Louis.” Harrison did not release the man, who was shot allegedly while trying to escape in February 1805, the day a pardon from President Thomas Jefferson arrived. The tribal council protested the treaty as invalid, but Congress ratified it anyway. 

In September 1808, US troops began building Fort Madison above the mouth of the Des Moines River near present-day Keokuk, Iowa. Angry Sac warriors protested the intrusion. Tempers cooled, however, when they were told it was the long-promised trading post. The fort was completed in April 1809, but the continued presence of soldiers irritated the Sac and Fox. In 1810 they visited Fort Malden, Canada, and received generous gifts from the British. American officials chastised and threatened them for consorting with the British. The contrast in treatment was not lost on them.

Tensions between the Sac and Fox and the United States ran high throughout 1811. William Clark, superintendent of Indian Affairs in the West, took Sac and Fox leaders to Washington, DC, in June 1812. En route they learned that the United States had declared war on Great Britain. President James Madison asked the Native leaders to remain neutral, but Britain provided arms and encouraged them to make war on the United States.

The leaders returned from Washington believing they could obtain supplies on credit. When they went to Fort Madison to trade, however, they were informed the policy remained cash only (direct payment in furs). Black Hawk said, “Here ended all hopes of our remaining at peace—having been forced into WAR by being DECEIVED!” The British landed two boatloads of trade goods at Saukenuk, giving them to the Sac and Fox on credit. Black Hawk’s warriors were then encouraged to participate in the capture of Fort Detroit, Michigan. When the Sac warriors returned, they besieged Fort Madison in September 1812.

In April 1813, some Sac and Fox leaders visiting St. Louis offered to fight for the United States. Governor Benjamin Howard did not trust any Native Americans and refused them. Several hundred warriors under Black Hawk then campaigned with the British in the Great Lakes region. After British General Henry Proctor blamed his Native auxiliaries for his failure to capture Fort Meigs and Fort Stephenson in Ohio in the summer of 1813, however, Black Hawk was insulted and disgusted at how the British wasted men in frontal assaults. He said, “I was now tired of being with them; our success being bad, and having got no plunder I determined on leaving them and returning to Rock River.”

Hostilities on the western frontier then increased. Fort Madison, considered a first line of defense for the Missouri Territory, was constantly harassed and finally abandoned in November 1813. Meanwhile, smaller military and civilian forts were built throughout the Missouri Territory for protection.

The stress brought on by war created factions within the Sac and Fox nation. A rivalry developed between Black Hawk and Keokuk, who counseled accommodation with whites rather than warfare. Clark separated some neutral Sac and Fox from British influence. In October 1813 a trading post was built on the Missouri River at the mouth of Moniteau Creek in what is now Cole County. About a thousand Sac and Fox were settled nearby and became known as the Missouri Band. In April 1814, some Rock River Sacs visited their relatives on the Missouri River. They raised a British flag over the council house and attempted to pillage the trading post. Over the summer they raided and burned some of the Boonslick settlements upriver.

On May 1, William Clark and two hundred Missouri Rangers and US army troops advanced up the Mississippi River in a fortified gunboat to eliminate the British outpost at Prairie du Chien, which was supplying the western Native warriors. Hearing of Clark’s bold approach, the Native Americans refused to support the British, who fled. After establishing Fort Shelby, Clark returned to St. Louis, leaving the gunboat anchored at Prairie du Chien. Benjamin Howard, now a general, dispatched a relief force of 125 men upriver on five fortified keelboats. On July 19, this “Missouri Navy” anchored at the mouth of the Rock River. They did not expect trouble because of Clark’s actions, but the next day a British and Native force captured Fort Shelby.

On July 21 the keelboats became separated. Gale-force winds blew one boat to the shoal of an island. When the troops disembarked, a volley of gunfire cut down half of the thirty-three soldiers on board. Hundreds of Native Americans swarmed the boat. Even the women used their hoes as weapons. The sails were set on fire with flaming arrows. The boats upstream saw a plume of smoke and returned, driving off the attackers with gunfire and picking up the survivors. The retreating gunboat appeared on the scene with news of the fall of Prairie du Chien. The entire flotilla retreated to St. Louis, leaving the burning boat behind.

On August 22, an enraged General Howard dispatched 430 men in eight keelboats under Major (and future US president) Zachary Taylor, with orders to destroy all Native villages on the Rock River. Taylor planned to deceive the Sac and Fox with a flag of truce and then fire on them. The Sac refused the bait, and Taylor pressed on as though he were heading to Prairie du Chien. During the night the boats tied up to a small willow island, planning to attack Saukenuk early in the morning. At first light on September 5, warriors killed the sentries. Taylor’s men started firing on the island when cannon shot began splintering their boats and ripping the sails. Totally surprised, they retreated, while a thousand Native warriors poured gunfire into the boats in a gauntlet that continued for two miles. The British wheeled their cannons along shore, keeping up fire. 

Britain and the United States made peace on Christmas Day, 1814, but the news traveled slowly. The year 1815 opened with renewed hostilities by the Sac and Fox in Missouri. Most settlers remained shut up in forts. Captain James Callaway, Daniel Boone’s grandson, was killed near Loutre Creek in what is now Montgomery County on March 7, and a major assault on the Missouri River settlement of Cote sans Dessein, across the river from Jefferson City, occurred on April 4.

On May 10, 1815, British officers at Prairie du Chien informed the Native nations that Britain and the United States had made peace. Black Hawk held up the war belt he had received from the British early in the war and said, “I have fought the Big Knives and will continue to fight them until they are off our lands. Till then my father your Red Children cannot be happy.” He stormed out of the council and led several raids into Missouri. On May 24, four men were killed near Fort Howard in Lincoln County. Missouri Rangers pursued and trapped Black Hawk’s party in a large sinkhole. Another party of Sac fired on Fort Howard, drawing the Rangers away and enabling Black Hawk’s party to escape.

The United States had to make a separate peace with each Native American nation. Treaty negotiations with nineteen different tribes and bands at Portage des Sioux, Missouri, began on July 6, 1815, and concluded on September 6. Among the Sac and Fox, the Missouri Band signed the treaty, but the Rock River Band refused until, at the urging of the British, they signed in St. Louis in May 1816. 

The Missouri Band remained independent of the rest of the tribe and moved to northern Missouri. On August 8, 1824, the Sac and Fox signed a treaty ceding their claims in northern Missouri from the Mississippi River to a line beginning at the mouth of the Kansas River and running north one hundred miles to the state boundary. The Missouri Band settled west of this line in a tract known as the Platte Country. 

Unresolved issues of the Treaty of 1804 led to the so-called Black Hawk War in the summer of 1832. Black Hawk and about twelve hundred of his followers made a futile attempt to retain Saukenuk. The US Army and Illinois militia pursued them for nearly three months. Governor John Miller ordered the Missouri militia to build protective forts along the state’s northeast border. At Bad Axe in what is now southwestern Wisconsin, about four hundred Sac men, women, children, and elderly were massacred on August 2, 1832, while trying to flee across the Mississippi River. Black Hawk was imprisoned at Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis. In April 1833 he was paraded as a prisoner of war in several eastern cities. Despite the government’s intention to humiliate him, he was treated as a celebrity wherever he was taken, but his notoriety did not gain him or his people any special consideration from the government. Black Hawk died on October 2, 1838. Settlers in northeast Missouri and southeast Iowa who knew him described him as an honorable man.

The Missouri Band signed the Platte Purchase Treaty on September 17, 1836, relinquishing their claim to land that became the northwest corner of Missouri. The Missouri Band relocated to a reservation in northeast Kansas, where they remain today. In the fall of 1845, Chief Keokuk and Black Hawk’s son Chief Whirling Thunder led two thousand Sac and Fox from central Iowa to Saline County, Missouri. They spent the winter on the Missouri River before moving to a Kansas reservation in the spring. 

In 1857, a group of Meskwaki returned to central Iowa and purchased their own land. The remaining Sac and Fox were removed to Indian Territory (Oklahoma) in 1868.

Today there are three federally recognized tribes: the Sac & Fox Nation of Stroud, Oklahoma, the largest group, with nearly four thousand members; the Sac & Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska at Reserve, Kansas, with about 450 members; and the Meskwaki Nation Sac & Fox Tribe of the Mississippi at Tama, Iowa, with more than 1,450 members. Noted athlete Jim Thorpe was a member of the Sac & Fox Nation in Oklahoma. Eight members of the Meskwaki Nation served as code talkers in the Pacific campaign of World War II.