MICHEL-SON: notes on the fox INDIANS 493 



others doubtless have Fox blood; but their proportion is un- 

 known.*'^ 



THE AIvIvEGED IROQUOIS ORIGIN OF THE EOXES 



N. H. Winchell,*'- attempts to prove that the Foxes (Outa- 

 gami) were originally an Iroquoian people (thus repeating Smith's 

 old error) . The arguments adduced are so absurd that they would 

 not merit any attention were the paper not in a periodical of 

 high standing. The statement that the Foxes were almost 

 annihilated by the Ojibwa in 1777 simply shows that Winchell 

 could not have investigated the question of the Fox population 

 with any care; the figures given by Lewis and Clark, Pike, Ann. 

 d. Prop, de la Foi, Marston, and Forsyth, give the lie direct to 

 this imputation. "^^ The argument is that the Foxes being vir- 

 tually annihilated by the Ojibwa were absorbed by the Sauks, 

 and began to be transformed, language and all, and consequently 

 present linguistic investigations would be of little value unless 

 such an amalgamation were taken into consideration. The 

 question of annihilation has been dealt with above; as to absorp- 

 tion, undoubtedly many Foxes have Sauk blood, but Fox eth- 

 nology has remained distinct from Sauk ethnology in at least 

 certain respects. '^^ The linguistic point raised by Winchell can 

 readily be overthrown. The language spoken by the Foxes of 

 to-day is more archaic than that spoken by living Sauks, as I 

 have shown elsewhere ;''•' and it should be noted that Kickapoo 

 agrees with Fox in many of these differences. Hence the ques- 



^^ Steward {Lost Maramech and earliest Chicago, 1903), discusses the Sauk and 

 Fox populations, and comes to the conclusion that they increased very rapidly 

 between 1805 and 1825. Had he carried his investigations further he would have 

 seen that the supposed increase in reality did not take place (vide supra). Turner 

 (loc. cit.) also touches on the Fox population in so far as he gives various early 

 estimates of the number of warriors, closing with 1762. 



^- Proceedings of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, 1910-1911: 181- 

 188. 



^^ A similar error is to be found in the Handbook of American Indians under the 

 article "Foxes." 



^^ For example, in social organization. 



^^ Bur. Amer. Ethnol. Ann. Rep. 28. 



