Sauk/Sac Indian Tribe

Sauk ( Osā'kiwŭg, 'people of the outlet,' or, possibly, 'people of the yellow earth,' in contradistinction from the Muskwakiwuk, 'Red Earth People', a name of the Foxes).
     One of a number of Algonquian tribes whose earliest known habitat was embraced within the eastern peninsula of Michigan, the other tribes being the Potawatomi, the "Nation of the Fork," and probably the famous Mascoutens and the Foxes. The present name of Saginaw Bay (Sāginā'we’, signifying 'the country or place of the Sauk') is apparently derived from the ethnic appellative Sauk. There is presumptive evidence that the Sauk, with the tribes mentioned above, were first known to Europeans under the general ethnic term "Gens de Feu" or that of "Asistagueronon," the latter being the Huron translation of the specific name Potawatomi, both the terms in question being first recorded by Champlain and Sagard. In 1616 Champlain, while in what is now Ontario, learned from the Tionontati, or Tobacco Nation, that their kindred, the Neutral Nation, aided the Ottawa (Cheueux releuez) in waging war against the Gens de Fen, i. e. 'People of the Fire,' and that the Ottawa carried on a warfare against "another nation of savages who were called Asistagueronon, which is to say, 'People of the Place of the Fire,"' who were distant from the Ottawa 10 days' journey; and lastly, in more fully describing the country, manners, and customs of the Ottawa, he added, "In the first place, they wage war against another nation of savages who are called Asistagueronon, which is to say, 'people of the fire,' distant from them 10 days' journey." He supplemented this statement with the remark that "they pressed me strongly to assist them against their enemies, who are on the shore of the Mer Douce [Lake Huron], distant 200 leagues." Sagard, who was in Canada during the years 1623-26, wrote in his Histoire du Canada (I, 194, ed. 1866), that the sedentary and the migratory Ottawa together waged war against the Asistagueronon, who were 9 or 10 days' journey by canoe from the Ottawa, a distance which he estimated at "about 200 leagues and more of travel." Read more...