The former syllabary was aimed at remaining native speakers of Sauk; the more recent orthography was developed for native English speakers, as many Sauk grow up with English as their first languageSauk has so few speakers that it is considered an endangered language, as are numerous others native to North America. In 2005, A Concise Dictionary of the Sauk Language was published using the Algonquianist Standard Roman Orthography.In 2012, Shawnee High School in Shawnee, Oklahoma, began to offer a Sauk language course. Sauk language loss
Use of Sauk as the official tribal language in everyday communication declined rapidly between 1935 and 1945. The chances of coming across a tribal member who can understand basic phrases of Sauk is small, due to the fact that the main language spoken by the Sac and Fox today is English. The loss of Sauk, as with many other Native American languages, lies in context with American history. Speaking in the native language was actively discouraged and often punished in Indian boarding schools during the late 19th and early 20th century, when the U.S. was attempting to assimilate Native Americans into European-American culture. Another conflict for the preservation of the language, is that the original syllabary created was intended for the use of native Sauk speakers, and its clarification was designed from the Sauk language. This is a problem because this is no longer as helpful for the majority of the Sac and Fox nation, as the official tribe language today is English.
A smaller number returned to the Midwest from Oklahoma (or resisted leaving.) They joined the Mesquakie at the Mesqwaki Settlement, Iowa. The land currently occupied by the Sauk is only a section of what used to be the Sac and Fox Reservation during the time of 1867–1891. This reservation was established by the U.S. and spanned 480,000 acres. In 1887, however, the Dawes Act failed to recognize Native American culture by dividing the reservation into small allotments designated for individual households. The remainder of land not allotted to the Sac and Fox was then sold to non-Native settlers in an attempt to gain Oklahoma statehood and the full assimilation of its Native American population. By 1889, 519 of the tribe were located in Indian Territory, what is now central Oklahoma. On June 10, 1890, they ceded these Indian Territory lands to the federal government. Treaties with U.S. Many of the latter treaties listed have little to no information regarding their details, besides the date. In total, twenty two treaties were signed from 1789 to, more than a century later, 1891.