Sauk in the first month on the Missouri
The Corps did not council with the Sac and Fox. Clark and Floyd still write the Sauk (Clark’s “Saukees”) as the recent military fact of the lower Missouri.
On 17 May 1804 visitors told Clark “the Saukees had lately Crossed to war against the Osage Nation.” On 5 June he again guessed that a small war party heading against the Osage were Sauk.
On 13 June, at a prairie between the Creeks of the Round Bend, he recorded an older massacre of the Missouri nation:
at this place 300 of them were killed by the Saukees
Floyd’s 12 June entry keeps the same memory. On 15 June Clark added that after the Sauk war the Missouris divided: some under Osage protection, “the war was So hot & both nations becom So reduced.” On 17 June the same crossing is listed for Sauk, Iowa, and Sioux war parties. On 20 June he named “Saukee Prarie” opposite a large island.
The journals here are downstream hearsay and place-names, not a Sac-and-Fox embassy. They are still a record. The earlier synthesis that reported zero entries was looking at an empty tag, not at Clark’s June 1804.
