Sac

Member of an American Indian people who lived on Sagninaw Bay, Michigan, until the 1640s. They speak an Algonquian dialect, and are closely related to the Fox. Primarily farmers, they maintained permanent agricultural settlements, but dispersed for winter hunting. The French drove them into Wisconsin from 1642, and then into Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois in 1734. Most of their lands were ceded to the USA in 1804 by a minority faction. The disputed treaty led to the Black Hawk War (1832), and eventual removal to reservations in Kansas and Oklahoma, where most now live. They number about 2,500 (1990).

The Sac lived in large communal domed houses covered in bark. Women were responsible for farming, and grew maize (corn), beans, squash (pumpkins), and tobacco. During the winter individual family groups moved onto their hunting grounds, leaving behind the old and sick under the care of strong young boys. Originally they hunted forest game, but they later took to buffalo hunting on horseback. When hunting, they lived in small huts covered in reed mats. Sac society was divided into patrilineal clans (membership passing through the father). Political organization consisted of a council of elders and three kinds of chiefs: permanent hereditary civil chiefs, and war and ceremonial chiefs who were chosen on merit when required. Their major religious ceremony was the Midewiwin, or ‘Grand Medicine Society’, common to many Great Lakes tribes, which was an annual celebration of the secret religious organization. Members appealed to the spirits to cure the sick and protect the tribe. Many rituals were controlled by the male-dominated clans and involved the use of sacred medicine bundles (collections of magical objects).

The Sac first encountered the French in 1667, who eventually drove them across the Mississippi River with the Fox in 1734. By 1800 they controlled a large area of the upper Mississippi in Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois, but a small group of chiefs ceded most of this territory to the US government in 1804. Unable to have the treaty rescinded, conflicts arose that resulted in war against the settlers in 1832 under the Sac leader Black Hawk, who refused to leave Illinois. The Sac and Fox were subsequently removed to Iowa, and then Kansas in 1842, although some Fox later returned to Iowa. The remaining Sac and Fox were resettled in Oklahoma on a 30,000 ha/75,000 acre reservation in 1867. Most of this was allocated to white settlers after allotment in 1891, and by the end of the 20th century the land held by the Fox and Sac Nation had shrunk to some 400 ha/1,000 acres. A separate group of Sac known as the Missouri Band, who had split from the main body of the Sac after the treaty of 1804, have retained a small reservation in Kansas since 1836.