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Fox, Sauk and Kickapoo
Meskwaki-Sauk-Kickapoo is the speech of three allied peoples who in the 17th century lived in what is now Wisconsin and Michigan. The French called the Meskwaki Renards, 'foxes', after one of their clans, and 'Fox' became their English name. Meskwaki and Sauk differ very little. Kickapoo is further apart, and whether it counts as a dialect of the same language or as a separate language is partly a matter of definition: Ives Goddard treats all three as one language, while Ethnologue and Glottolog list Kickapoo separately.
Their history is one of repeated displacement. In the Fox Wars, from 1712 into the 1730s, the Meskwaki fought French control of the route between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi and were nearly destroyed; the survivors took refuge among the Sauk. After the Black Hawk War of 1832 the Sauk and Meskwaki were pushed west of the Mississippi and later to Kansas and Oklahoma. In 1857 a group of Meskwaki bought land of their own in Tama County, Iowa, now the Meskwaki Settlement, where the language has kept its strongest hold.
The Kickapoo scattered further still. Bands settled in Kansas and Oklahoma, and one moved to northern Mexico around 1850, where it was granted land at El Nacimiento in Coahuila. Its members still move between Coahuila and the Texas border, and their community has been the most conservative in language and custom.
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Writing and the Fox Texts
By the late 19th century many Meskwaki, Sauk and Kickapoo could write their language in a script of their own, now called the Great Lakes Algonquian syllabary. It uses the letters of a European, probably French, cursive alphabet in a syllabic way, and was passed from person to person without schools or missionaries; its exact origin is uncertain. It was used for letters, notes and religious texts, and was also taken up by the Potawatomi and the Ho-Chunk.
As a result Meskwaki has one of the largest bodies of native-written text of any North American language. William Jones, himself of part-Meskwaki descent, published Fox Texts in 1907, and Truman Michelson of the Smithsonian's Bureau of American Ethnology collected thousands of pages of syllabic manuscripts from Meskwaki writers in the 1910s and 1920s, many of them by Alfred Kiyana. Bloomfield used the published Fox material in his Proto-Algonquian comparisons, and Ives Goddard has since re-edited and analysed much of it.
Kickapoo is also known for a whistled form of speech, described among the Mexican Kickapoo in the 1950s, in which the rhythm and pitch of spoken words are whistled to carry messages over a distance, notably between young men and women during courtship.
Where it’s spoken
- United States
- Mexico
Turning points
- Contact
The Fox Wars
The Meskwaki resist French control of the Fox–Wisconsin waterway and are attacked by the French and their Native allies. By the 1730s the Meskwaki are reduced to a few hundred people and take refuge among the Sauk, beginning the close association of the two peoples.
Sources (1)
- Split
Kickapoo in Mexico
A band of Kickapoo moves south into Mexico and is granted land at El Nacimiento, Coahuila. Separated from the other Kickapoo, the Mexican community keeps the language longer than any other group of the three.
Sources (1)
- WritingContested
The Great Lakes syllabary
Meskwaki, Sauk and Kickapoo take up a syllabic script built from the letters of a European cursive alphabet, spread entirely among the people themselves. Where and when it began is uncertain.
Sources (2)