Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/119

CHAPTER VII THE SACS AND FOXES

HERE is evidence to show that early in the seventeenth century the Foxes occupied the country along the Atlantic coast now embraced in the State of Rhode Island. Later they moved to the valley of the St. Lawrence River and thence to the vicinity of Green Bay, where they were found by Jean Nicolet in 1634. In 1667 Claude Allouez, a French Jesuit, found on the Wolf River in Wisconsin, a village of Musquakies, which contained a thousand warriors, and nearly five thousand persons. The Musquakies seemed to realize that the invasion of the west by French trappers and missionaries threatened the eventual occupation of their lands by the whites, and from the first they waged war against the French intruders and were nearly the only tribe with whom the French could not live in peace. The English and Dutch were seeking to gain possession of the far west, and they bribed some of the Indian tribes to assist them. They succeeded in forming an alliance with the Musqukies and other tribes, for teh purpose of exterminating the French. The French, on the other hand, formed an alliance embracing the Hurons, Ottawas, Pottawattamies, Sacs, Illinois, Ojibwas and other tribes who greatly outnumbered the Musquakies and their allies and a long war followed.

In 1712 the Foxes joined the Iroquois in an attack upon the French fort at Detroit but were defeated with heavy losses. They were driven by the French out of that part of the country and settled on Fox River in the vicinity of Green Bay. They continued their war on the fur traders