Daniel Avery, the War of 1812, and the Illinois land bounty that brought my family west

I know that everyone who came here post-Columbus is guilty of taking Native American land. It’s part of the deal when you start researching your family history if you’re a white American. You know there’s going to be bad stuff. You know, if you had ancestors here early on in the American experiment, that they, either directly or indirectly, fucked over the people who predated them on the continent. And I was prepared for that when I started digging through the archives. I wasn’t expecting, however, that my ancestors would be among the first people pushing west during the post-War of 1812 expansion. I guess I thought that they moved out later, once a little more time had passed. I mean, I thought that I’d be thinking about these issues with earlier ancestors, some of whom may have been in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but I didn’t think it would come up with the Averys of Illinois. And now I’m reading about the forced relocation of the Sauk and Fox people, who, beginning in 1825, were pushed to Iowa, and then Kansas, and wondering about the role my ancestors played. [Apparently that was also after years of pressure from the French had pushed them into Illinois.]

So, yeah, I’m sitting here tonight trying to reconcile these two things. First, I wouldn’t be here if my great, great, great, great, great grandfather hadn’t moved his family to Illinois after the War of 1812. And, second, that my family played a part in a system that saw the Sauk and Fox tribes absolutely decimated. I suppose I could try to downplay the role of my ancestors, and say it was a different time, and that these actions were made possible by treaties, and that other people were the ones who ultimately made the decisions, but, with over 200 years of hindsight, it’s difficult not to see the criminality of it all, and the cruelty of the system that was put in place by the European occupiers.

I don’t know how accurate it is, but here’s a brief history of the movements of the tribes…

The Fox and the Sauk are two closely related, but separate, tribes which in 1600 occupied the eastern half of lower Michigan between Saginaw Bay and Detroit. Both of their oral histories tell of an earlier time when they migrated from the Atlantic coast via the St. Lawrence River. When this happened is unclear. The Sauk lived around Saginaw Bay (which is named from them), while the Fox were just to the south and west. Driven from their homeland during the 1640s, the Fox resettled in central Wisconsin. The Sauk crossed over to the upper peninsula near the Mackinac Strait and moved into the headwaters of the Wisconsin River west of Green Bay. Except for the two-years (1710-12) the Fox lived near Detroit, neither tribe ever returned to Michigan. They remained in Wisconsin until 1734, when both were driven across the Mississippi River into eastern Iowa by the French.

The Fox afterwards lived along the upper Mississippi in northeastern Iowa except for the period (1765-83) when they maintained some villages in western Wisconsin. The Sauk were also located along the upper Mississippi after 1734 just south of the Fox but, being the more numerous of the two, occupied a larger area. Through wars with the Illinois Confederation, Missouria, and Osage, the Sauk expanded southward. By 1800 they controlled the upper Mississippi between St. Louis and Dubuque, Iowa. These lands were ceded to the Americans beginning with a treaty signed in 1804. Internal disagreements over accepting this treaty caused one Sauk group to separate from the others and move south to the Missouri River. Known as the Missouri Band, they remained there until 1824 when they were removed to the northwest corner of the state. In 1836 they exchanged their last lands in Missouri for a reserve west of the Missouri River on the Kansas-Nebraska border. Despite allotment, the Sac and Fox of Missouri have retained a small reservation with their tribal headquarters located in Reserve, Kansas.

Pressures from settlement after 1825 forced the Sauk along the Mississippi to leave western Illinois and relocate to southeast Iowa. The exception was Blackhawk’s Band at Rock Island (Illinois) which did not finally leave until after the Blackhawk War in 1832. As a consequence of the war, the Sauk were forced to surrender a large part of eastern Iowa. The Fox and Sauk remained in Iowa until 1842 when they ceded their lands for a reserve in Kansas just south of present-day Topeka. However, many of them refused to leave Iowa and kept the army very busy trying to find them. Once in Kansas, major disagreements developed between the Fox and the Sauk. Some of the Fox moved in with the Kickapoo and later left with them for northern Mexico. By 1859 most of the Fox had left Kansas and returned to Iowa where they purchased land near Tama.

The remaining Fox and Sauk sold their Kansas land and relocated to Oklahoma in 1869 where they were given a 750,000 acre reservation in Potawatomi, Lincoln, and Payne Counties east of Oklahoma City. After allotment, most of this was released to whites in 1891. Currently, the Sac and Fox Nation of Oklahoma, headquartered in Stroud, has kept less than 1,000 acres. On the other hand, the Fox in Iowa have used their own money to purchase land, and their tribal holdings have grown to almost 5,000 acres. The only federally recognized tribe in Iowa, they prefer to be called the Mesquaki Indian settlement, but because of treaties signed jointly with the Sauk, their official name is the Sac and Fox of the Mississippi in Iowa.

At the time of their first contact with the French in 1666, both the Fox and the Sauk were living in Wisconsin. The initial French estimates placed the Fox at 5,000 and the Sauk at 6,500. Since both tribes had just endured 30 years of war, a relocation to Wisconsin, and numerous epidemics, it appears their original populations must have been at least twice this – approximately 10,000 for each tribe. By 1712 the Fox had dropped to about 3,500. They lost half of these in the First French War (1712-14). They began the Second Fox War in 1728 with about 1,500, only 500 of whom survived the attempt by the French to remove them from the face of the earth. The Sauk relations with the French were friendly until they protected the Fox in 1734, and they numbered close to 4,000 at this time. Later estimates are sometimes confused because the Fox and Sauk were treated as a merged tribe. Both tribes increased after 1737. Zebulon Pike in 1806 listed the Fox at 1,750 and the Sauk at 2,850. His estimate of the Sauk may actually have been too low. Government records in 1829 reported there were 5,000 Sauk, 1,600 Fox, and another 500 Sauk in Missouri.

After their removal from Iowa in 1846, the population of both tribes underwent a drastic decline. The Indian Bureau in 1845 stated 1,300 Fox and 2,500 Sauk had left Iowa, but only 700 Fox and 1,900 Sauk arrived in Kansas. The Missouri Band at this time numbered less than 200. After a terrible smallpox epidemic, 300 Fox and 1,300 Sauk were all that remained on the Kansas reserve in 1852, but at least 300 Fox and an unknown number of Sauk were hiding in Iowa. Others were on the Kickapoo reserve or in places where no one could count them. Most of the Fox left shortly afterwards and returned to Iowa. Following the Civil War, 600 Sauk and 100 Fox relocated to Oklahoma. Only the Missouri Band managed to stay in Kansas. The 1910 census listed 343 Fox in Iowa, 630 Sauk and Fox in Oklahoma, and 90 Sauk in Kansas. The current enrollments of the three federally recognized Sac and Fox tribes are: 1,100 Sac & Fox Tribe of the Mississippi (Iowa); 400 Sac & Fox Tribe of Missouri (Kansas and Nebraska); and 2,200 Sac & Fox Tribe of Indians (Oklahoma)…