Meskwaki

The Meskwaki, whose name Meshkwahkihaki means the red-earth people after their creation story, were called Fox by the French, who mistook a clan name for that of the tribe. An Algonquian-speaking Woodland people, by sustained French contact in 1698 they held the Fox River waterway linking Green Bay and the Mississippi, vital to New France's fur trade.

Disputes brought the Fox Wars of 1701 to 1742. The French crown ordered their extermination in 1728, and in 1730 a French-led army killed hundreds of Meskwaki breaking out to the east in Illinois, reducing the tribe to perhaps fifteen hundred.

Survivors sheltered with the linguistically related Sauk, and from 1735 the peoples acted together. Meskwaki warriors joined Black Hawk's attempt to reclaim Illinois lands in 1832; after the war the United States treated the two peoples as one body in land-cession treaties.