Osaakiiwaki

The Osaakiiwaki, better known as the Sauk or Sac, are an Algonquian-speaking people whose name refers to the yellow earth of their homeland. The Ojibwe called them Ozaagiiwag, people at the outlet, from which Europeans derived Sauk.

Driven from the St. Lawrence valley around 1600, they settled at Saginaw Bay; wars with the Ojibwe and Odawa around 1638 to 1640 pushed them west toward Green Bay. In the Fox Wars they supported their Meskwaki allies against New France, and after the French slaughter of Fox refugees in 1730 the two peoples moved west into Iowa.

The leaders Keokuk and Black Hawk rose among them: Keokuk sought accommodation with the United States, while Black Hawk led a band into Illinois in 1832 and was defeated in the Black Hawk War. Land cessions followed, and between 1832 and 1837 pressure forced the Sauk into three relocations west of the Mississippi.