Both tribes originally resided upon the waters of the St. Lawrence. The
Foxes removed first to the west, and established themselves in the
region of Green Bay. Upon a river bearing their name, which empties into
the head of this Bay, they suffered a signal defeat by a combined body
of French and Indians, at a place, since known as La Butte de Mort, or
the Hill of the Dead.[1] Subsequently to this battle, they were joined
by the Sacs, who having become involved in a war with the Iroquois or
Six Nations, were also driven to the westward. They found their
relatives, the Foxes, upon Green Bay, but so far reduced in numbers, by
the attacks of other tribes, that they were no longer able to sustain
themselves as an independent people. The union between these two tribes,
which then took place, and continues to this day, was as much a matter
of necessity as of feeling. The period of their migration from the St.
Lawrence to the upper Lakes cannot be satisfactorily ascertained. La
Hontan speaks of a Sac village on Fox river, as early as 1689; and
Father Hennepin, in 1680, mentions the Ontagamies or Fox Indians, as
residents on the bay of Puants, now Green Bay.

From this place, the Sauks and Foxes, crossed over to the eastern bank
of the Mississippi, and combining with other tribes, began to act on the
offensive. The period of this irruption from the north, it is not easy
to determine. Major Thomas Forsyth, who resided for near twenty years
among the Sauks and Foxes, in a manuscript account of those tribes, now
before us, says:

"More than a century ago, all the country, commencing above Rock river,
and running down the Mississippi to the mouth of the Ohio, up that river
to the mouth of the Wabash, thence up that river to Fort Wayne, thence
down the Miami of the Lake some distance, thence north to the St.