The presidential election of 1828 was decided in favour of General Jackson of Tennessee, with whose arbitrary and decisive military movements we are already acquainted; and John Calhoun, of South Carolina, was chosen vice-president. When, on the 4th of March, 1829, Jackson assumed the reins of government, he found the country rich and prosperous, at perfect peace with all nations, and having in the national treasury a surplus of more than 5,000,000 dollars.
During the year 1828, congress enacted a tariff law, laying protective duties on such imported articles as competed with certain manufactured goods and agricultural products of the United States, by means of which additional duties were laid on wool and woollen goods, iron, hemp and its fabrics, distilled spirits, silk-stuffs, window-glass and cottons. The manufacturing states were well pleased with this law, which, however, was highly unsatisfactory to cotton-planters of the southern states. This tariff law was the fertile source of agitation, and almost revolution, during the presidentship of General Jackson.
In April of 1832, the Winnebagoes, Sacs, and Foxes, Indian tribes inhabiting the upper Mississippi, commenced hostilities under their celebrated chief, Black Hawk, re-entering the lands which had been sold to the United States, and which were now occupied by the citizens of Illinois. The so-called sale of Indian lands was frequently anything but with the free-will of the red man, and, as in this very instance, the Sac Indians were extremely unwilling to vacate their lands; but American generals, of the same character as the president, unscrupulous and resolute, not troubled either with too much conscience or too much sensibility, were ever at hand ready to pledge themselves “within fifteen days to remove the Indians, dead or alive, over to the west side of the Mississippi.” The conduct of Black Hawk on this occasion is worthy to be related. Gaines, the American general, rose in the council of the chiefs, and said that the president was displeased with the refusal of the Sacs to go to the west of the great river. Black Hawk replied that the Sacs, of which he was the chief, had never sold their lands, and were determined to hold them.
“Who is this Black Hawk? Is he a chief?” inquired the general. “What right has he in the council?”
Black Hawk rose, and gathering his blanket round him, walked out of the assembly. The next morning he was again in the council, and rising slowly, said, addressing the American general: “My father, you inquired yesterday, ‘Who is this Black Hawk? Why does he sit among the chiefs?’ I will tell you who I am. I am a Sac; my father was a Sac; I am a warrior, and so was my father. Ask those young men who have followed me to battle, and they will tell you who Black Hawk is; provoke our people to war, and you will learn who Black Hawk is.”
The people were provoked to war, and the Americans learned to know Black Hawk. He and his warriors came mounted and armed into the country which they still claimed as their own, and broke up the settlements of the white intruders, killing whole families and destroying their dwellings. Generals Scott and Atkinson were sent out against them. But an enemy more formidable than the red man went with them, and thinned their ranks more remorselessly than the hatchet of the savage. This was the cholera. The troops embarked in steamboats at Buffalo, and the disease made its first appearance on board. Great numbers died; great numbers also deserted on landing, and fled to the woods, where they perished either from the disease or starvation. Scott was not able to reach the scene of action. Atkinson, by forced marches, came up with Black Hawk’s party on the 2nd of August, near the mouth of the Upper Iowa. The Indians were routed and dispersed, and Black Hawk and his two sons and several great warriors made prisoners. Nothing in the history of humanity is much sadder than the putting down and destroying the last remnants of these once powerful tribes. Driven out from their fertile lands, thousands literally died of starvation; and if, as in the case of the Sacs, they were headed by a chief of superior intellect, who could not patiently submit to be uprooted like a weed from the soil of his fathers, and who clung to it with a love as intense as that of the Swiss for his mountains, then fire and sword swept him and his followers from the land, and they were killed as traitors. God sees these things, and permits them; nevertheless they are great iniquities. Black Hawk and his sons were sent to Fort Jefferson, and put in irons; they were taken to Washington, and had an interview with President Jackson, when a treaty was concluded, and the captives relinquished all claim to their territory, and consented to remove west of the Mississippi. After this they were taken through several of the eastern cities, that they might see the power and greatness of the whites, and how hopeless it was to contend against them. Black Hawk ended his days on the Des Moines river, where his people had settled. He had a bark cabin, which he furnished, in imitation of the whites, with chairs, a table, a mirror, and mattresses. He was no longer the great warrior; in the summer he is said to have cultivated a few acres of land, on which he grew corn, melons, and other vegetables. His last speech was at Fort Madison, on the 4th of July, a festival to which he had been invited, and thus he spoke: “It has pleased the Great Spirit that I am here to-day. I have eaten with my white friends. The earth is our mother; we are now on it, with the Great Spirit above us. It is good. I hope we are all friends here. A few winters ago I was fighting against you. Perhaps I did wrong—but that is past; it is buried—let it be forgotten. Rock River was a beautiful country; I loved my towns, my corn-fields, and the home of my people. I fought for it. It is now yours; keep it as we did; it will produce you beautiful crops.”
Such was the spirit of the old, exiled Indian chief; he was a Christian in practice, though not in name.
As the last chief of a once great and powerful people, we must be allowed to say a few more words respecting Black Hawk, which we give from the pen of one who knew him personally. “A deep-seated melancholy,” says he, “was apparent in his countenance and conversation, and he spoke occasionally of his former greatness with an inexpressible sadness, representing himself as at one time master of the country north-east and south of us. In the autumn of 1838 he set out for the frontier, where payment was to be made to the tribe of a portion of their annuity. The weather was both hot and wet, and he appears to have imbibed on his journey the seeds of the disease which terminated his life. In October the commission was to meet the tribes at Rock Island, but Black Hawk was then too ill to accompany them. On the 3rd of October he died, after an illness of seven days. His only medical attendant was one of the tribe who knew something of vegetable antidotes. His wife, who was devotedly attached to him, mourned deeply for him during his illness. She seemed to have a presentiment of his approaching death, and said, ‘He is getting old—he must die; Monotah is calling him home!’
“After his death, he was dressed in the uniform presented to him at Washington, and placed upon a rude bier with bark laid across, on which he was carried by four of his braves to the place of interment, followed by his family and about fifty of the tribe, the chiefs being all absent. They seemed deeply affected and mourned in their usual way, shaking hands and muttering in gutteral tones prayers to Monotah for his safe passage to the land prepared for the reception of all Indians. The grave was six feet deep and of the usual length, situated upon a little eminence about fifty yards from his wigwam. The body was placed in the middle of the grave in a sitting posture, upon a seat constructed for that purpose. On his left, the cane given him by Henry Clay was placed upright, with his right hand resting upon it. Many of his old trophies, his favourite weapons and some Indian garments were placed in the grave. The whole was then covered with plank, and a mound of several feet in height thrown over, and the whole enclosed with pickets twelve feet in height. At the head of the grave was placed the American flag, and a post was raised at the foot, on which, in Indian characters was inscribed his age, which was about seventy-two.”
As an instance of the rapid growth of civilization in the wilderness of the West, we will give a few sentences from the graphic pen of Judge Hall, when speaking of this very region in the year of Black Hawk’s death. “The country,” says he, “over which Black Hawk, with a handful of followers, badly mounted and destitute of stores or munitions of war, roamed for hundreds of miles, driving off the scattered inhabitants, is now covered with flourishing settlements, with substantial houses and large farms—not with the cabins and clearings of border-men, but with the comfortable dwellings and the well-tilled fields of independent farmers. Organised counties and all the subordination of social life are there; and there are the noisy school-house, the decent church, the mill, the country store, the fat ox and the sleek plough-horse. The Yankee is there with his notions and his patent-rights, and the travelling agent with his subscription book; there are merchandise from India and from England, and in short all the luxuries of life. And all this within six years. Six years ago the Indian warrior ranged over that fertile region which is now covered with an industrious population, while the territories of Wisconsin and Iowa and vast settlements in Missouri have since grown up, beyond the regions which was then the frontier and the seat of war.”