Note 19 — Chapter I · Why I went to Great Salt Lake City.—The various Routes.—The Line of Country traversed.—Diaries and Disquisitions.

In the days of Major Pike, who, in 1805-6-7, explored, by order of the government of the United States, the western territories of North America, the Sacs numbered 700 warriors and 750 women; they had four villages, and hunted on the Mississippi and its confluents from the Illinois to the Iowa River, and on the western plains that bordered on the Missouri. They were at peace with the Sioux, Osages, Potawotomies, Menomenes or Folles Avoines, Iowas, and other Missourian tribes, and were almost consolidated with the Foxes, with whose aid they nearly exterminated the Illinois, Cahokias, Kaskaskias, and Peorians. Their principal enemies were the Ojibwas. They raised a considerable quantity of maize, beans, and melons, and were celebrated for cunning in war rather than for courage.

[20] From the same source we learn that the Ottagamies, called by the French Les Renards, numbered 400 warriors and 500 women: they had three villages near the confluence of the Turkey River with the Mississippi, hunted on both sides of the Mississippi from the Iowa stream below the Prairie du Chien to a river of that name above the same village, and annually sold many hundred bushels of maize. Conjointly with the Sacs, the Foxes protected the Iowas, and the three people, since the first treaty of the two former with the United States, claimed the land from the entrance of the Jauflione on the western side of the Mississippi, up the latter river to the Iowa above the Prairie du Chien, and westward to the Missouri. In 1807 they had ceded their lands lying south of the Mississippi to the United States, reserving to themselves, however, the privileges of hunting and residing on them.

[21] The Winnebagoes, Winnipegs (turbid water), or Ochangras numbered, in 1807, 450 warriors and 500 women, and had seven villages on the Wisconsin, Rock, and Fox Rivers, and Green Bay: their proximity enabled the tribe to muster in force within four days. They then hunted on the Rock River, and the eastern side of the Mississippi, from Rock River to the Prairie du Chien, on Lake Michigan, on Black River, and in the countries between Lakes Michigan, Huron, and Superior. Lieutenant Pike is convinced, “from a tradition among themselves, and their speaking the same language as the Ottoes of the Platte River,” that they are a tribe who about 150 years before his time had fled from the oppression of the Mexican Spaniards, and had become clients of the Sioux. They have ever been distinguished for ferocity and treachery.