[2] The county partly overlaps with the reservation of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians.

The area that is now Sawyer County was contested between the Dakota and Ojibwe peoples in the 18th century.

Oral histories tell that the Ojibwes defeated the Dakotas locally in the Battle of the Horse Fly on the Upper Chippewa River in the 1790s.

Ojibwes allowed trader Michel Cadotte to build a fur-trading outpost in the area in 1800.

Ojibwe people successfully negotiated to establish the permanent Lac Courte Oreilles Indian Reservation in the 1854 Treaty of La Pointe.

These were "Yankee" migrants, that is to say they were descended from the English Puritans who had settled New England during the 1600s.

[9] In the 1890s immigrants came from a variety of countries such as Germany, Norway, Poland, Ireland and Sweden.

[18] Additionally, fewer than five induced abortions were reported as performed on women of Sawyer County residence in 2017.