CHAPTER I.
Birth–Personal Description and Character of Black Hawk–Not a Chief–Made a Brave–Expeditions Against the Osages–Death of Py-e-sa–Period of Mourning–Expedition Against the Osages–Expedition Against the Cherokees–Expedition Against the Chippewas, Osages and Kickapoos–The First Appearance of the Americans.
Black Hawk’s name, as given in his autobiography, was Ma-ka-tai-she-kia-kiak[[1]], and, without reference to the many renditions of it by various writers, is the version that will be adopted in this work as nearest authentic. He was born in the year 1767 at the Sac or Sauk village, located on the north bank of Rock River in the State of Illinois, about three miles above its confluence with the Mississippi. His father, Py-e-sa, a grandson of Na-na-ma-kee or Thunder (a descendant of other Thunders), was born near Montreal, Canada, where the Great Spirit was reputed in Indian lore to have first placed the great Sac nation. Black Hawk was a full blood Sac, five feet eleven inches tall in his moccasins; of broad but meager build[[2]] and capable of great endurance. His features were pinched and drawn, giving unusual prominence to the cheek bones and a Roman nose, itself pronounced. The chin was sharp. The mouth was full and inclined to remain open in repose. His eyes were bright, black and restless, glistening as they roamed during a conversation. Above these rested no eyebrows. The forehead was given the appearance of unusual fullness and height from the fact that all hair was plucked from the scalp, with the single exception of the scalp lock, to which, on occasions of state, was fastened a bunch of eagle feathers. In his later years it was his boast that he had worn the lock with such prominence to tempt an enemy to fight for it and to facilitate its removal should he be slain in the encounter. This statement, however, must be received as a boast and nothing more, because among the Sacs the custom of plucking from the scalp all hairs save the scalp lock was general and not confined to Black Hawk’s redoubtable person, as he would have us believe. J.C. Beltrami, the Italian traveler, who ascended the Mississippi in 1823, stopping at all the Indian villages, particularly Black Hawk’s upon Rock River, which he reached May 10th, has this to say, which is interesting: “The faces of the Saukees, although exhibiting features characteristic of their savage state, are not disagreeable, and they are rather well made than otherwise. Their size and structure, which are of the middle kind, indicate neither peculiar strength nor weakness. Their heads are rather small; that part called by French anatomists voute orbitaire has in general no hair except a small tuft upon the pineal gland, like that of the Turks; this gives the forehead an appearance of great elevation. Their eyes are small and their eyebrows thin; the cornea approaches rather to yellow, the pupil to red; they are the link between those of the orang-outang and ours. Their ears are sufficiently large to bear all the jewels, etc., with which they are adorned; two foxes’ tails dangled from those of the Great Eagle. I have seen others to which were hung bells, heads of birds and dozens of buckles, which penetrated the whole cartilaginous part from top to bottom. Their noses are large and flat, like those of the nations of eastern Asia; their nostrils are pierced and ornamented like their ears. The maxillary bones, or pommettes, are very prominent. The under jaw extends outwards on both sides. Their mouths are rather large; their teeth close set, and of the finest enamel; their lips a little inverted. Their necks are regularly formed; they have large bellies and narrow chests, so that their bodies are generally larger below than above. Their feet and hands are well proportioned. Except the tuft on the head, which we have already remarked, they have no hair on any part of the body. Books which deal greatly in the marvelous convert this into an extraordinary phenomenon, but the fact is that, from a superstition common to all savages, they pluck it out, and, as they begin at an early age and use the most perservering means for its extirpation, nothing is left but a soft down.”
With this personal description of Black Hawk, it may be well to add the following, published in the “Annals of Iowa,” 3rd series, Vol. 4, page 195: “Bones of Black Hawk.–These bones, which were stolen from the grave about a year since, have been recovered and are now in the Governor’s office. The wampum, hat,[[4]] etc., which were buried with the old chief, have been returned with the bones. It appears that they were taken to St. Louis and there cleaned; they were then sent to Quincy to a dentist to be put up and wired previous to being sent to the East. The dentist was cautioned not to deliver them to anyone until a requisition should be made by Governor Lucas. Governor Lucas made the necessary requisition and they were sent up a few days since by the Mayor of Quincy and are now in the possession of the Governor. He has sent word to Na-she-as-kuk, Black Hawk’s son, or to the family, and some of them will probably call for them in a few days. Mr. Edgerton, the phrenologist, has taken an exact drawing of the skull, which looks very natural, and has also engraved it on a reduced scale, which will shortly appear on his new chart. Destructiveness, combativeness, firmness and philoprogenitiveness are, phrenologically speaking, very strongly developed. Burlington Hawk Eye, Dec. 10, 1840.”[[3]]
An intimate knowledge of Black Hawk is denied us. The little known of him prior to 1832 is derived from less than a dozen sources, the most important being his autobiography;[[5]] the others, nearly all military, are to be found in treaties and the records of the war department. A few settlers only knew him, because settlers about his haunts in those days were exceedingly scarce. And so it has come to pass that his character has been universally judged by the contact with him during the last five or six years of his long life, while he was in a sense a captive, brooding over his fallen estate, while the drapery of an eternal evening was fast falling about him. At such an age, shorn of power, chafing under restrictions, disgruntled at the supremacy of his ancient enemy Keokuk, who had answered for his good behavior, the old man’s ambitions crushed, he was naturally a distressing object, evoking that pity which so universally appeals to an American and is so surely allowed to cover a multitude of sins. Those few last years have been thus carelessly permitted to become the monument to the man, and those who drove him from power have been harshly judged or jocularly denominated “carpet soldiers,” as much as to say the pioneers had never suffered hardships nor endured wrongs. Justice to those whose wives and children had been butchered, whose fathers and brothers had been burned at the stake, demands that all the truth be told and the reason given why those settlers, infuriated at the loss of two successive crops from Black Hawk’s perfidy, finally drove his band into the Mississippi River at the mouth of the Bad Axe and almost annihilated it.
It has been written that he possessed a mind of unusual strength, but slow and plodding, with little genius and few talents to manage a great enterprise in war.[[6]] The influence to sustain such a paradox, as well as kindred irregularities and disorders of the man’s mind, may be attributed to the fact that he was a confirmed hypochondriac, morbidly regarding as frivolous everything save war. He was discontented and reckless, envious of others with greater influence or name, and in meeting questions in or out of the council with such men as Keokuk he was churlish to a degree unless his individual will ruled. While it must candidly be owned that the whites have been guilty of the most revolting injustices to other Indians, notably Shabona, the same cannot be pleaded for Black Hawk. He was found making and breaking engagements and treaties[[7]] the greater part of his very long life, and then, when retribution was imminent, he hoisted flags of truce down to August 2d, 1832, when his power for further mischief was forever crushed.
The reputation which he has established in Indian annals comes not from any sacrifice he made for his people, for never in his life did he make one. Neither comes it from his struggles for an oppressed race, for he never conceived a solitary scheme for its amelioration. He had never a lofty aspiration for his nation. His every venture was made for personal aggrandizement or popularity. Tecumseh dreamed of a great confederation; not to become a leader. Cornstalk, Logan and Pontiac were ambitious for their people, but Black Hawk never. Black Hawk said of Keokuk that the latter was a groveling sycophant, but Keokuk was the most powerful orator of his race, and, penetrating the inevitable destiny of the whites, he conformed to it and used his great genius to gain for his people the greatest good. While Black Hawk was stolidly plotting for war, Keokuk was planning to secure for his people good homes and larger annuities, and these he secured, to their very great benefit. Black Hawk’s prominence comes from notoriety alone.
In his various conflicts with the whites he was invariably the aggressor. The unfortunate affair which resulted in the death of his so-called adopted son cannot be, by any conceivable logic, tortured into an exception, as we shall presently see. After the treaty of 1804 he and his band were permitted to remain unmolested upon the ceded lands year after year and decade after decade, a license rarely allowed and, as it proved, a thoroughly mistaken policy. He received his yearly annuities and retained the lands for which the annuities were given, literally eating his cake and keeping it. His passions were many, but the consuming passion of his life was hatred of the Americans, a hatred without cause and as unjustifiable and unreasonable as man’s baser passions are always found to be. Yet this may not be surprising, fed as he was by his devouring gloom and restless, war-like spirit. The mantle of charity has many a time before and since covered graver faults; so let it be with Black Hawk’s, for it is said of him that in his domestic life he was a kind husband and father, and in his transactions with his people he was upright and honest,[[8]] if he was not ambitious for their elevation.
Black Hawk was not a chief of the Sac nation.[[9]] He was simply a brave. His father was the tribal medicine man, and whatever standing Black Hawk may have secured was derived from his personal bravery and daring as a warrior, which have never been questioned. Possessed, as we have seen, of a martial spirit, he was ever ready and eager to lead war parties of young companions to battle, and one or two engagements alone were sufficient firmly to establish him in that leadership which bravery fitted him to hold over his followers in war.
At fifteen, having distinguished himself by wounding an enemy, he was permitted to paint and wear feathers and join the rank of the Braves.[[10]] About the year 1783 he united in an expedition against the Osages and had the fortune to kill and scalp one of the enemy, for which youthful act of valor he was for the first time permitted to mingle in the scalp-dance. As one exploit followed another his desire for blood became insatiable, and from his own account, the number of the enemy slain by him staggers credulity.
A short time after the ’83 tragedy–“a few moons,” as he puts it–Black Hawk was leader of a party of seven which attacked a band of one hundred Osages, killed one of their number and retreated without loss, Black Hawk taking the credit for this fatality to his personal valor. His taste for war, coupled with his prowess, attracted notice from others, and very presently he was found marching at the head of one hundred and eighty braves against the Osage village on the Missouri. Finding it deserted, the greater number of his young followers became dissatisfied, abandoned the enterprise and returned home, but Black Hawk continued, and, with but five followers, came upon the Osages, killed and scalped one man and a boy and then returned home. In consequence of this mutiny he has told us he was not again able to raise sufficient force to move against the Osages until his nineteenth year, during which interim, it was claimed, the Osages committed many outrages on his nation.
In 1786 his restless spirit had planned another attack of a retaliatory nature against the Osages. Setting out with two hundred followers, he met a party of the enemy about equal in strength, which for a time stubbornly resisted Black Hawk’s attack, but, unable to maintain an unequal contest with the fierce Sac fighters, the Osages were finally routed and the band almost annihilated. One hundred of them were killed outright and the remnant which remained was left to be scalped while helplessly wounded, or driven from the country, while, on the other hand, Black Hawk’s loss was but nineteen men. Six of the enemy were killed by Black Hawk–five men and one squaw–and in alluding to this he adds these words: “I had the good fortune to take all their scalps.” In recording his glorious enterprise his interpreter doubtless insisted that the murder of a female by a great warrior was not creditable, for, once the enormity of his offense is cited, he pleads in extenuation that the squaw was accidentally killed; yet he scalped her.
The severe cost to the Osages of this battle brought about a treaty of peace between the belligerents which lasted for a considerable period, as peaceful times between Indian nations seem then to have been reckoned.
The stormiest periods of Black Hawk’s life were all born of tranquil times, and this interval of peace served to incubate a plan of campaign against his ancient and inveterate enemy, the Cherokees, which was to be fraught with consequences more serious than all his former campaigns together.
Py-e-sa, Black Hawk’s father, the hereditary medicine man of his tribe, had held the medicine bag for many years and his ability as a discreet, fearless and upright man cannot be controverted. Regarding a campaign by the young men so far from home as hazardous in the extreme, he joined this expedition, and with his people paddled his canoe night and day down the Mississippi River until the enemy was reached upon the Merameg River, south of St. Louis, in vastly superior forces. The battle which followed was stubbornly waged, but in it, as in so many others, the ferocity of the attack put the Cherokees to flight, leaving twenty-eight of their number dead upon the field, while the Sacs lost but seven braves. But one of those seven was Py-e-sa, whose loss was never thereafter supplied to the great Sac nation. Had he been spared to treat of subsequent questions with the whites, his moderation had unquestionably sustained Keokuk’s position and the campaigns of 1831 and 1832, with their trains of slaughter, would have been averted. In this engagement Black Hawk himself killed three outright and wounded many more.
By the death of Py-e-sa, Black Hawk fell heir to the medicine bag, with its attendant responsibility. He immediately returned to his village, blackened his face and remained tranquil for the succeeding five years of his life, with no more stimulating employment than hunting, fishing and meditation. During this period of inaction, Black Hawk maintains, the Osages were constantly harassing his people by incursions into his country, carrying with each invasion a predatory warfare extremely distressing and galling. These became so frequent and offensive that, as Black Hawk has told us, “the Great Spirit took pity on them” (the Sacs), upon which event he took to the field. Here, at the head of a small party, he overtook a few struggling Osages, so feeble that he simply made them prisoners and handed them over to the Spanish father at St. Louis. With this famous act of clemency he continued his plan of total destruction of the offending Osages.
About the year 1800, the Iowa nation, having accumulated many grievances against the Osages, made common cause with the Sacs for the purpose of waging a war of extermination. Raising a force of about one hundred, which joined the Sac forces, numbering now about five hundred more, the two allies marched upon the unsuspecting Osages, who were unarmed and wholly unprepared for defense. They valiantly defended their homes and families and fought with the desperation known only to those who have waged such defenses against overpowering odds. One by one and dozen by dozen and score by score fell dead before the terrific attacks of the most terrible of Indian fighters, until there was none left to fill the gaps made in their ranks by the tomahawk and spear. Forty lodges were destroyed and every inhabitant save two squaws was put to death. Then, returning home, a great feast was made, at which Black Hawk exploited his personal valor to his friends. In this engagement he killed seven men and two boys with his own hand.
During those five years of meditation following his father’s death resentment had but slumbered. They killed his father, ’tis true, but it had been done defending themselves. The Sacs as a nation had no quarrel with the Cherokees. But immediately he returned from his war upon the unsuspecting Osages, Black Hawk collected another party and moved down the river against them. In due season the enemy’s country was reached and invaded, but, roam as they would, no more than five unknown people could be found, four men and one squaw. The men, after a short detention, were released, and the squaw was taken back to Black Hawk’s village on Rock River.
The futility of this campaign rankled in Black Hawk’s heart for a time, and to recoup his lost, or at least suspended reputation, he planned, in the year 1803, about the ninth moon, the most extensive campaign of his life against the combined forces of the Chippewas, Osages and Kaskaskias. No just reason existed for this war; none of the tribes of these nations had trespassed on Sac territory or rights, and none had offended in any other particular. Black Hawk was piqued at his last miscarriage and he simply made war against these people for the sake of war, and bloody indeed it proved to be. During its continuance seven pitched battles were fought, together with numerous skirmishes, in all which more than one hundred of the enemy perished. Here again Black Hawk boasts of personally killing with his own hands thirteen of the bravest warriors in the enemy’s ranks. His ferocity in these engagements is the best evidence for the statement that the glory of Black Hawk was placed above every other consideration.
In 1763 France ceded Louisiana to Spain, though Senor Rious, the Spanish agent, did not formally take possession of St. Louis and the upper Louisiana country until 1768, and even then St. Ange, the French Governor, continued to perform official acts until 1770. In 1800 Napoleon took it away again, retaining it until 1803, when it was purchased by the United States.[[11]] During the Spanish domination Black Hawk had been a periodical visitor to St. Louis, accepting frequent presents and forming what might be termed a devotion to the Governor, whom he designated as his “Spanish Father.”
After the conclusion of his last war, he paid this Spanish father a friendly visit at St. Louis. Spanish and French domination had ended and the Americans were just then taking possession of the country, much to his regret and, as might be imagined, disgust. Here are his comments: “Soon after the Americans arrived I took my band and went to take leave for the last time of our father. The Americans came to see him also. Seeing them approach, we passed out of one door as they entered another and immediately started in our canoes for our village on Rock River, not liking the change any more than our friends appeared to at St. Louis. On arriving at St. Louis, we were given the news that strange people had taken St. Louis and that we should never see our Spanish father again. This information made all our people sorry.”