Sauk

1. 1. A Native American people formerly inhabiting parts of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa, with a present-day population mainly in Oklahoma. Sauk resistance to removal from their Illinois lands ended in 1832 with the Black Hawk War.
   2. A member of this people.
2. The Algonquian language of the Sauk, dialectally related to Fox.

[North American French saki, from Sauk asaakiiha.]

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The Sauks, or Sacs, originally spoke a Central Algonquian dialect and referred to themselves as asa•ki• waki, meaning "People of the Outlet." They left their central Michigan location for northern Wisconsin after Iroquois attacks in the mid-seventeenth century. The tribe first contacted the French in 1667 at Chequamegon Bay, Lake Superior. Population estimates fluctuated between several thousand after contact and several hundred during the 1800s. Closely related to the Foxes culturally and allied with them politically between 1733 and 1850, the Sauks nonetheless always maintained a distinctive tribal identity.

The Native enemies of the Sauks included the Iroquois, Illinois, Osages, and Siouxes. The Sauk maintained good relations with the French (until the Fox wars of 1712–1736) and the English but divided over supporting the United States. The most famous Sauk leaders included Keokuk, a tribal chief who curried favor with the United States, and Black Hawk, a rival war chief who led his faction during the disastrous Black Hawk War (1832).

The Sauks maintained numerous clans and distributed themselves into "moieties" (two complementary divisions of the tribal group). Traditional economic gender definitions found women engaged in agriculture and gathering, while men concentrated on hunting. After residing in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas, the majority of the Sauks settled in Oklahoma and lost most of their traditional culture. Today approximately 2,700 Sauks (Thâkîwâki) live in central Oklahoma as the Sac and Fox tribe.

Bibliography

Callender, Charles. "Sauk." In Handbook of North American Indians. Edited by William C. Sturtevant et al. Vol. 15: Northeast, edited by Bruce G. Trigger. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978. This most useful and authoritative account was prepared by an anthropologist.

Hagan, William T. The Sac and Fox Indians. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958. Reprint, 1980.

Jackson, Donald, ed. Black Hawk: An Autobiography. Urbana:

University of Illinois Press, 1955. Black Hawk's autobiography was first published in 1833 under the title Life of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak.

Scottish Agricultural College.

• SAC Veterinary Science Division Reports — SAC Veterinary Science Division Reports monthly reports of major diseases encountered in the 8 veterinary diagnostic laboratories in Scotland; reported in the Veterinary Record.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: a member of the Algonquian people living in Wisconsin the Fox River valley and the shores of Green Bay