The Anishinabe-Fox War

When the Iroquois League swept into southern MIchigan around the 1650s, they waged a war against the native Fox and Sauk Indians who originally lived in southern Michigan, including the region where Detroit is now situated. After the Lake Superior Anishinabek defeated the Iroquois League in 1700, what befell the Fox and Sauk who originally lived in southern Michigan was not good. Unlike their willingness to allow some of the other Algonquian and Iroquois tribes to return to their original homelands, the Lake Superior Anishinabek refused to allow the Fox and Sauk to return to their southern Michigan homeland after 1700.

After the French were allowed to construct a trading post where Detroit, Michigan is now situated early in the 18th century, the French requested from the Anishinabek that the Fox and Sauk be allowed to visit Fort Detroit to barter with them which the Anishinabek granted. After the Fox and Sauk returned to their original homeland, they became very emotional about their former land, which would soon escalate into acts of violence, then into open war between the Anishinabek and the Fox and the Sauk. Both the Fox and Sauk wanted their original land back but the Anishinabek would not tolerate them getting back land the Anishinabek had fiercely fought for.

In the war that followed between the Anishinabek and the Fox and Sauk, the Fox and Sauk not only had to fight the powerful Anishinabek but they also had to fight the French who openly admitted that they wanted to exterminate the Fox nation. After several military campaigns the Anishinabek eventually defeated the defiant Fox and Sauk, who had no choice but to return back to Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa, where several decades later they had to deal with the Anishinabe once again after Pontiac was assassinated.