FORT ARMSTRONG.
Though hampered by various annoyances, the troops eventually completed Fort Armstrong and occupied it; their presence serving a healthy object lesson to quiet those British Sacs who were too fierce to be pacified while life lasted, and to stimulate a healthy and satisfactory trade between the remote points of the north and northwest and those to the south. It frequently has been alleged that Black Hawk and his people never received their annuities. This is untrue as the record of the time has disclosed.[[48]]
In November, 1820, we find the Sacs were drawing their annuities and had been on the 3d of each November; in fact, those annuities had been made permanent, and while bickerings about a fair division at times had been noticeable, the tribes and head men were satisfied.[[49]]
It may be well to add here, that when Rev. Jedediah Morse made the report just cited, he was a commissioner appointed by the President for the purpose of ascertaining the actual state of the Indian tribes of the northwest, and having visited Fort Armstrong in the summer of 1820, he found British flags still floating and English medals still worn almost exclusively in Black Hawk’s village. An exchange of these for American flags and medals had been recommended in a letter written to him November 20, 1820, from that post, and he adopted the suggestion in his report;[[50]] but the flags and medals continued in evidence, notwithstanding Morse’s report.
Following those manifestations, hostility to American rule was also expressed in mutterings and quiet threats in 1823, when Beltrami stopped there, and which he expressed in his books as follows: “For, both from instinct and from feelings transmitted from father to son, they cordially despise and hate them”[[51]] (the Americans), which certainly did not indicate that the treaty of 1804 was responsible for their hatred; it indicated also that the treaty of 1816 rested very lightly upon their shoulders and that the erection of Fort Armstrong was a wise precaution. If it may be thought that the treaty of 1804 made Black Hawk a fault-finder with the Americans, it may be well to introduce a specimen of his chronic affliction, found in the papers of Capt. T.G. Anderson, British Indian Agent, in Vol. 10, Wis. Hist. Coll’s., pp. 145, 146.
“Speeches of Black Hawk and Na-i-o-gui-man, at Drummond’s Island, July 12, 1821.
“Present, Lieut.-Col. Wm. McKay, British Indian Superintendent; Capt. Thos. G. Anderson, Clerk; Maj. James Winnett, and other officers of the Sixty-eighth British Regiment, together with Lieut. L. Johnston.
“The Black Hawk, Speaker:
“‘Father, I am not very able to speak–probably I may say something improper. I may have something to reproach my father with. I could not get any of my chiefs to come with me.[[52]] One of the Reynard or Fox chiefs accompanied me, and some of the Menominees who reside among us. My mind has been entirely taken up since I left home with the idea that every stroke of my paddle carried me nearer to my Great Father’s fire, where his soldiers, the red coats, would be charitable to me and cover my naked skin; and that in consequence of my not having been able for three years to step across the barriers, which separate us from them, I would receive a double proportion of my Great Father’s bounty.
“‘The Americans, my father, surround us, but we are ever ready to meet them. Now, my father, as we see you but seldom, I hope you will open your stores and give us more presents than you do to other Indians who visit you annually. Now I speak to you, my father, in hopes you will be charitable to us, and give us something to take to our wives and children. They are expecting to be warmed by the clothing of their Great Father.’