The New Student's Reference Work/Sacs and Foxes

Sacs and Foxes, Indian tribes which settled near Green Bay, Wis. They lived and usually acted together. Both belong to the Algonquin family. Among the Sacs the children of each family at birth are marked white or black in turn, thus dividing the tribe into two bands, the white or Kiscoquah and the black or Oshkosh. The Foxes also were in two branches, the Outagamies (foxes) and the Musquakink (men of red clay). Both tribes were daring and warlike, fighting courageously the much more numerous Iroquois and Sioux. The French had no greater enemies and the English no greater friends than the Foxes, who attacked Detroit in 1812, and were cut to pieces at Presque Isle on Lake St. Clair, to which they had retreated. The Sacs on the whole favored the English, serving under Pontiac, supporting the British in the Revolutionary War and fighting under their renowned chief, Blackhawk, in 1832 to recover their hunting grounds from the United States. In 1857 a party of 317 Sacs and Foxes bought lands at Tama, Ia., which they have worked, becoming industrious and self-supporting. The two tribes now number about 1,000, separate bands living in Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.