Black Hawk offers to leave the question of bargain to the people of the United States. From present day standpoints it might be considered a hard bargain, but from the facts in the case, the reply might be made with an inquiry if the Wisconsin farmer got much of a bargain when he bought from a sharper the Masonic Temple of Chicago for $2,000.
Two-thirds or more of the land ceded was claimed and occupied by the Winnebagoes and Pottowattomies at the time, and Black Hawk knew the fact and admitted it times without number on subsequent occasions. Even down so close to him as the Prophet’s village, in the present county of Whiteside, the country was Winnebago territory; the same at Dixon’s Ferry, while over on the Illinois River the Pottowattomies had for a great length of time held dominion, and this had never been controverted by the Sacs and Foxes. The fact is that the United States acquired but very little territory by that treaty, when the magnificent proportions are mentioned without regard to the facts.
With his usual carelessness of fact, Black Hawk omitted to mention the payments down in money and trade which were made and which in those days were not regarded as trifling. He made no mention of subsequent and additional payments and annuities, neither did he credit the Government for the use and occupation of those same lands for over a quarter of a century after they had been ceded. He omitted entirely that he had never kept a treaty in his life until he was finally crushed and driven from power at the point of the bayonet, and he forgot to omit the further fact that all the Sac and Fox Indians, save Black Hawk and his immediate followers, recognized that treaty as just in 1808, when a delegation visited Fort Madison to ascertain if its erection was in violation of it. Schoolcraft, Vol. VI, page 393, made a very sensible observation regarding the sales by Indians of their lands: “But while any section of their territories abounded in game, the Indians elected to retire thither, and bestowed but little attention on either grazing or agriculture. There was, therefore, a singular concurrence in the desire of the emigrants to buy and in the willingness of the Indians to sell their lands.”
At no time had the Illinois lands been valuable to the Sacs for hunting, the streams and forests of Iowa having always been sought for their annual hunts. There can be no doubt that this feature had its influence exactly as Schoolcraft, the friend always to the Indian, has stated.
FORT MADISON.
GROUND PLAN OF FORT MADISON.