MICHELSON: notes on the fox INDIANS 49 1 



to be between 2000 and 2400, adding that he himself considered 

 2000 to be nearer the figure. Apparently the fact that the 

 population was exaggerated was gradually making headway in 

 officialdom, for, in the Report of the Commissioner of Indian 

 Affairs in 1838, this is taken into account and the Mississippi 

 Sauk population is given as 2100. But such is the attachment 

 for large figures, apparently to balance at least partially his 

 over-estimates of the Sauks, that the agent gives the reckless 

 figure of 2446 for the Foxes. Unfortunately officialdom could 

 not be contented with such modest figures for the Sauks, and in 

 1 84 1 we have the old exaggeration (vide supra). A wholesome 

 reaction came in the next year when a treaty for the removal 

 of the Sauks and Foxes from Iowa was effected, and from 1842 

 to 1845 the combined Sauk and Fox population is given as about 

 2300. An attempt at honesty was made in 1841 when in spite 

 of the erroneous separate enumeration of the Sauks, the com- 

 bined population of the Sauk and Fox of the Mississippi is given 

 as 2300. It is to be borne in mind that in the same official 

 document the Fox population is given as 1600! Other exag- 

 gerations of the Sauk population are passed over, save that in 

 1826 Forsyth gives the number of warriors as 1000 and Keo- 

 cuck as 1200.*^° Summing up for the population prior to the 

 removal to Kansas, we may say that if we accept the figures of 

 Lewis and Clark, Drake, Marsh, and the report of the Com- 

 missioner of Indian Affairs for 1842, we have an orderly sequence, 

 such as may be readily accounted for (as by the Black Hawk 

 war, and natural causes) ; the acceptance of the larger figures 

 (and this applies especially to the Sauk) involves us in hopeless 

 meshes. From now, owing to the merging of the enumeration, 

 the situation is difficult. The removal of Indian tribes ordi- 



^^ Wennebea (apud Narrative of an Expedition to the Source of St. Peter's River 

 1823, compiled by William H. Keating, vol. i: p. 219) says, "upwards 

 of a thousand warriors . . . the real number of warriors of pure Sauk extraction 

 does not . . . exceed two hundred." The adoption of prisoners of war accounts 

 for the rest. Are we to understand something of this sort from Forsyth's and 

 Keocuck's figures? 



