Meskwaki

The Meskwaki suffered damaging wars with the French and their Native American allies in the early 18th century, with one in 1730 decimating the tribe.

Euro-American colonization and settlement proceeded in the United States during the 19th century and forced the Meskwaki/Fox south and west into the tall grass prairie in the American Midwest.

The name is derived from the Meskwaki creation myth, in which their culture hero, Wisaka, created the first humans out of red clay.

[citation needed] Historically the Meskwaki used Triodanis perfoliata as an emetic in tribal ceremonies to make one "sick all day long,"[2] smoking it at purification and other spiritual rituals.

Under US government recognition treaties, officials treat the Sac (anglicized Sauk term) and Meskwaki as a single political unit, despite their distinct identities.

[citation needed] The Meskwaki gained control of the Fox River system in eastern and central Wisconsin.

[citation needed] The Meskwaki fought against the French, in what are called the Fox Wars, for more than three decades (1701–1742) to preserve their homelands.

This first Fox War was purely economic in nature, as the French wanted rights to use the river system to gain access to the Mississippi.

[citation needed] Some Meskwaki were involved with Sac warriors in the Black Hawk War over homelands in Illinois.

After the Black Hawk War of 1832, the United States officially combined the two tribes into a single group known as the Sac & Fox Confederacy for treaty-making purposes.

The United States persuaded the Sauk and Meskwaki to sell all their claims to land in Iowa in a treaty of October 1842.

The Dakota Sioux called the Meskwaki who moved west of the Mississippi River the "lost people" because they had been forced to leave their homelands.

[citation needed] In 1851 the Iowa legislature passed an unprecedented act to allow the Meskwaki to buy land even though they had occupied it by right before and stay in the state.

It also had a continuing relationship with the State of Iowa due to the tribe's private ownership of land, which was held in trust by the governor.

[citation needed] For the next 30 years, the Meskwaki were virtually ignored by federal as well as state policies, which generally benefited them.

Subsequently, they lived more independently than tribes confined to Indian reservations regulated by federal authority.