Stories of the Badger State

by Reuben Gold Thwaites

BLACK HAWK

At the outbreak of hostilities between Great Britain and the United States in 1812, Black Hawk naturally allied himself with Tecumseh and the British. After burying the hatchet, he settled down into the customary routine of savage life, hunting in winter and loafing about his village in summer, improvidently existing from hand to mouth, although surrounded with abundance. Occasionally he varied the monotony by visits to Malden, whence he would return laden with provisions, arms, ammunition, and trinkets, his stock of vanity increased by wily flattery, and his bitterness against the Americans correspondingly intensified. It is not at all surprising that he hated the Americans. They brought him naught but evil. The even tenor of his life was continually being disturbed by them; and a cruel and causeless beating which some white settlers gave him, in the winter of 1822-23, was an insult which he treasured up against the entire American people.

In the summer of 1823, squatters, covetous of the rich fields cultivated by the "British band," as Black Hawk's people were often called, began to take possession of them. The treaty of 1804 had guaranteed to the Indians the use of the ceded territory so long as the lands remained the property of the United States and were not sold to individuals. The frontier line of homestead settlement was still fifty or sixty miles to the east; the country between had not yet been surveyed, and much of it not explored. The squatters had no rights in this territory, and it was clearly the duty of the general government to protect the Indians within it so long as no sales were made.

The Sacs would not have complained had the squatters settled in other portions of the tract, and not sought to steal the village which was their birthplace and contained the cemetery of their tribe. There were outrages of the most flagrant nature. Indian cornfields were fenced in by the intruders, squaws and children were whipped for venturing beyond the bounds thus set, lodges were burned over the heads of the occupants. A reign of terror ensued, in which the frequent remonstrances of Black Hawk to the white authorities were in vain. Year by year the evil grew. When the Indians returned each spring from the winter's hunt, they found their village more of a wreck than when they had left it in the fall. It is surprising, in view of their native love of revenge, that they acted so peaceably while the victims of such harsh treatment.

Returning to his village in the spring of 1831, after a gloomy and profitless winter's hunt, Black Hawk was fiercely warned away by the whites; but, in a firm and dignified manner, he notified the settlers that, if they did not themselves remove, he should use force. This announcement was construed by the whites as a threat against their lives. Petitions and messages were showered in by them upon Governor John Reynolds, of Illinois, setting forth the situation in exaggerated terms that would be amusing, were it not that they were the prelude to one of the darkest tragedies in the history of our Western border.

The governor caught the spirit of the occasion, and at once issued a flaming proclamation calling out a mounted volunteer force to "repel the invasion of the British band." These volunteers, sixteen hundred strong, coöperated with ten companies of regulars in a demonstration before Black Hawk's village on the 25th of June. During that night the Indians, in the face of this superior force, quietly withdrew to the west bank of the Mississippi, whither they had previously been ordered. On the 30th they signed a treaty of capitulation and peace, solemnly agreeing never to return to the east side of the river without express permission of the United States government.

The rest of the summer was spent by the evicted savages in a state of misery. It being now too late to raise another crop of corn and beans, they suffered for want of the actual necessaries of life. White Cloud, the eloquent and crafty Prophet of the Winnebagoes, was Black Hawk's evil genius. He was half Sac and half Winnebago, a hater of the whites, an inveterate mischief maker, and, being a "medicine man," possessed much influence over both tribes. He was at the head of a Winnebago village some thirty-five miles above the mouth of the Rock, on the east side of the Mississippi; and to this village he invited Black Hawk, advising him to raise a crop of corn there, with the assurance that in the autumn the Winnebagoes and Pottawattomies would join him in a general movement against the whites in the valley of the Rock.

Relying on these rose-colored promises, Black Hawk spent the winter on the west bank of the Mississippi, recruiting his band, and on the 6th of April, 1832, crossed the great river at Yellow Banks, below the mouth of the Rock. Thus he invaded the State of Illinois, in the face of his solemn treaty of the year before. With him were his second in command, Neapope, a wily scoundrel, who was White Cloud's tool, and about five hundred Sac warriors with their women and children, and all their belongings. Their design was to carry out the advice of the Prophet, in regard to the corn planting, and if possible to take up the hatchet in the autumn.

But it became evident to Black Hawk, before he reached the Prophet's town, that the main body of the Pottawattomies, now controlled by the peace loving Chief Shaubena, did not intend to go to war; and that the rascally Winnebagoes, while cajoling him, were preparing as usual to play double. He tells us in his autobiography that, crestfallen, he was planning to return peacefully to the west side of the Mississippi, when of a sudden he became aware that the whites had raised an army against him, and he was confronted with a war not in the time and manner of his asking.

The news of his second invasion had spread like wildfire throughout the Illinois and Wisconsin settlements. The United States was appealed to for a regiment of troops; and meanwhile, under another fiery proclamation from the governor of Illinois, an army of eighteen hundred militiamen was quickly mustered. Amid intense popular excitement, during which many settlers fled from the country, and others hastily threw up log forts, the army was mobilized by General Atkinson, who appeared at the rendezvous with three hundred regulars. There were many notable men upon this expedition: Abraham Lincoln, then a rawboned young fellow, was captain of a company of Illinois rangers; Zachary Taylor, famous for his bluff manner, was a colonel of regulars; and Jefferson Davis, who was wooing Taylor's daughter, was one of his lieutenants; also of the regulars, was Major William S. Harney, afterward the hero of Cerro Gordo in the Mexican War; and the mustering-in officer was Lieutenant Robert Anderson, who was to become famous in connection with Fort Sumter.