The Meskwaki Indians at present live in the vicinity of Tama, Iowa, and
are 350 in round numbers. Officially, all are listed as full-bloods,
but the fact is that there is a good deal of old white (French and
English) mixture—practically none within the last sixty years. And many
have Sauk, Potawatomi, and Winnebago blood. On the rolls the Meskwaki
are carried as Sauk and Fox of the Mississippi; but this is due to the
fact that the Federal government long ago legally consolidated the two
tribes, though they are, even to-day, distinct in language, ethnology,
and mythology. Fox is but one of the many synonyms for the Meskwaki
Indians.
Their native name, me sgw A ki A ki, in the current syllabary, means
“Red-Earths.”
The Meskwaki linguistically are closely related to the Sauk and
Kickapoo, more remotely to Shawnee, and to the Penobscot, Malecite,
etc., of Maine and adjacent parts of Canada. They are also
comparatively close to the Cree and Menomini. Culturally the Sauk,
Fox, and Kickapoo are very near each other, and show woodland traits
predominantly, with touches of those of the plains. They are also close
to the adjacent Siouan tribes. The physical type of the Meskwaki has
not been worked out; from Michelson’s unpublished data it would appear
that beside a mesocephalic tribe, a brachycephalic one also occurs.
This last is probably due to intermarriage with Winnebagos. Moderate
occipital deformation occurs owing to the use of hard cradle boards;
and so the problem is not simple, for moderate deformation is not
always easy to detect.
A practically complete bibliography on the Meskwaki is given by
Michelson, _Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences_, vol. IX,
pp. 485, 593-596. Since that time (1919) but little has appeared. A
number of volumes on the Meskwaki by Michelson will eventually be
published by the Bureau of American Ethnology.[21] The most important
publications on the Meskwaki are:
MAJOR MARSTON. Letter to the Rev. Jediah Morse, 1820.
FORSYTH, THOMAS. Account of the Manners and Customs of the Sauk and
Fox Nations of Indians’ Traditions, 1827. (This, and the
preceding are readily accessible in E. Blair’s Indian
Tribes of the Upper Mississippi and Great Lakes Region,
vol. II, pp. 137-245).
JONES, WILLIAM. Fox Texts, 1907.
The Algonkin Manitou (_Journal of American Folklore_, vol.
XVIII, pp. 183-190 [1905]).
Mortuary observances and the adoption rites of the Algonquin
Foxes of Iowa (Congrès International des Americanists,
XVI: 263-277 [1907]).
Algonquian (Fox) (revised by Truman Michelson: Handbook of
American Indian Languages, Bulletin 40, of the Bureau of
American Ethnology part 1; pp. 735-873 [1911]).
MICHELSON, TRUMAN. Preliminary report on the linguistic classification
of Alqonquian Tribes (28th Annual Report of the Bureau of
American Ethnology, pp. 221-290b [1912]).