Note VIII-2 — Chapter VIII · ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE MISSISSIPPI.[VIII-1]

The Sacs and Foxes have a curious history, perhaps not exactly paralleled by that of any other tribes whatever. The names are linked inseparably from the earliest times to the present day. Each has always been to the other what neither of them has ever been to any other Indians or to any whites—friend. The entire composure with which we have been able to speak of Sacs and Foxes in our day and generation is the reverse of the frame of mind which many persons now living can recall as having been once theirs, before the final subjugation of these capricious, turbulent, and enterprising tribes in trans-Mississippian territory. They are Algonquian Indians who can be traced in blood from Lake Ontario westward, along the gauntlet they ran from Ontarian Canada to the final burying-grounds of their hatchets in Iowa, Kansas, and the Indian Territory. They fought everybody in their way—French, English, and American in turn, as well as perhaps every Indian tribe they encountered. They were alternately friends and foes of each of the two principal nations whose lands they overran—their Algonquian relations the Chippewas, and their natural enemies the Sioux, thus at times turning the balance of power between these two hereditary foes. They inhabited at times many places along the Great Lakes and westward, and the present names of not a few are directly traceable to such occupancy. They were specially identified with the histories of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois for more than a hundred years. Carver speaks of their villages on the Wisconsin r. in 1766, after they had been expelled from the Green Bay and Fox River region. They appear to have been driven from the St. Croix by the decisive battle at the Falls, in which they were defeated by the Chippewas under Waboji (d. 1793). Writing of 1832, Schoolcraft speaks of their recent residences on Rock r., and their confinement west of the Mississippi by the then latest tragic act in their history. This was the decisive battle of the Bad Axe in 1832: see note51, p. 45. The Foxes are located on the old maps under some form of their Chippewan name Otagami; they were also called Miskwakis or Red Earths; their F. name Reynard, which we translate Fox, and sometimes Dog or Wolf, was an opprobrious nickname or nom de guerre. The Indian name Osagi, Osawki, Osaukee, Sauk, Sac, Sacque, etc., is by some said to signify the erratic propensities of the tribe which bears it, meaning migrants, or those who went out of the land: for a probably better definition, see note16, p. 101. The survivors of both tribes scarcely number 1,000.

Le Bras Cassé, or Broken Arm, was a Sac chief whom Pike names Pockquinike in his folding Table of the Foxes and other Indians. He was a noted character, whose name turns up in various published accounts. He figures, for example, in the Relation, etc., of Perreault, on the scene of the assassination of Mr. Kay at Sandy Lake, May 2d, 1785, by Le Cousin and his mother, both of whom knifed their victim. Le Cousin was promptly stabbed by Feebyain or Le Petit Mort, a friend of Kay's, and Brasse Casse (as Mr. Schoolcraft spells his name) took Kay in hand to cure him; but the wound proved fatal Aug. 26th, 1785.