MICHBLSON: notes on the fox INDIANS 485 



THE EARLY HISTORY OF FOX INDIANS 



The general history of the Fox Indians is extremely well- 

 known.^^ I shall accordingly only try to clear up the beginning 

 of their history. First of all, the Outitchakouk are not the Foxes, 

 as is stated in the index to the Jesuit Relations (ed. Thwaites).^^ 

 Now we are told: "The Outagamis are of two lineages; those of 

 one family call themselves Renards, and the others are of the 

 Red-earth family."^' Evidently something of this sort is to 

 be understood by the statement in the Jesuit Relations ,^^ "The 

 mission of St. marc to the Outagami, where are the ouagoussak, 

 Makoua, makoucoue, Mikissioua." For ouagoussousak simply 

 meahs "foxes. "^^ Whether or not a misunderstanding arose 

 by taking the name of a gens as the name of the tribe, ^° the fact 

 remains that some Indian tribes did and do call the Meskwakis 

 by the equivalents of "foxes." Now the Skenchiohronon of the 

 Jesuit Relations are not the Neuters as is commonly assumed, ^^ 



^^ A list of the more important papers dealing with this topic is as follows : Arti- 

 cles Fox and Sauk in Handbook of American Indians (Bur. Amer. Ethnol. Bull. 30), 

 H. W. BeckwiTh, The Illinois and Indiana Indians, 146-162; Ward, Meskwakia, 

 Iowa Journ. Hist. Polit. 4: 179-189; Ward, The Meskwaki people of to-day, ibidem., 

 190-219; Ferris, The Sauk and Foxes of Franklin and Osage Counties, Kans. State 

 Hist. Coll. 11: 333-395; Parkman, A half century of conflict, chapters xii and xiv; 

 J. F. Steward, Lost Maramech and earliest Chicago (1903); M. M. QuaifE, Chicago 

 and the Old Northwest (1913); S. S. Hebberd, Wisconsin under the Dominion of 

 France (1890); J. N. Davidson, Unnamed Wisconsin (1895); F. J. Turner, Indian 

 Trade in Wisconsin (in Johns Hopkins University Studies in Hist. Pol. Sci. 1891); 

 Kellog, The Fox Indians during the French Regime (Wise. State Hist. Soc. Proc. 

 1907: 142-188); Re(o)bok, The Last of the Mtis-qua-kies (reprinted in Iowa Hist. 

 Record 17: 305-335). Quite a few facts can be gleaned from A collection of Mesk- 

 waki Manuscripts, prepared by Cha ka ta ko si, published by the State Historical 

 Society of Iowa, 1907, but as no English translation accompanies the text, use of 

 it is confined to a few specialists or Meskwaki Indians. 



^^ See the Handbook of American Indians under the article Atchakangouen. 



3^ La PoTHERiE. Savage Allies of New France, apud Blair, Op. cit. i: 360. 



38 Ed. Thwaites, 58: 41. 



'' On the note, ibidem, 293, see various articles in the Handbook of American 

 Indians. 



*" Jones, Amer. Anthrop. n. ser. 6: 370; Handbook of American Indian Languages. 

 Pt. i: 741 ; apud Steward, Loc. cit. 79. 



*i See the ed. of Thwaites, 8: 302. 



