Sac (tribe)

The Sac or Sauk are a group of Native Americans of the Eastern Woodlands culture group. Their autonym is oθaakiiwaki, and their exonym is Ozaagii(-wag) in Ojibwe. The latter name was transliterated into French and English by colonists of those cultures.

Today they have three federally recognized tribes, together with the Meskwaki (Fox), located in Iowa, Oklahoma and Kansas.

The Sauk, an Algonquian languages people, are believed to have developed as a people along the St. Lawrence River. They were driven by pressure from other tribes, especially the powerful Iroquois League or Haudenosaunee, to migrate to Michigan, where they settled around Saginaw Bay. Due to the yellow-clay soils found around Saginaw Bay, they called themselves the autonym of Oθaakiiwaki (often interpreted to mean "yellow-earth".)

The neighboring Ojibwe and Ottawa peoples referred to them by the exonym Ozaagii, meaning "those at the outlet". French colonists transliterated that as Sac and the English as "Sauk". Anishinaabe expansion and the Huron attempt to gain regional stability drove the Sac out of their territory. The Huron were armed with guns supplied by their French trading partners. The Sac moved south to territory in parts of what are now northern Illinois and Wisconsin.

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