History - Black Hawk
The year 1832 marked the culmination of conflict between white squatters who took over a Sauk village and the Indians who tried to continue to live there despite repeated attempts by white officials to enforce a very dubious treaty with the Sac and Fox Nations and permanently move them west of the Mississippi. That spring, the aging, dissident Sauk leader Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak (better known to white audiences as Black Hawk) returned to Illinois with several hundred women, children, old men, and warriors. According to Meskwaki (Fox) oral tradition, the group was planning to gather food, but they were perceived by settlers and the government as "invaders" intent on violently retaking their ancestral home with support from other tribes and the British in Canada. The governor and military commanders soon mobilized the army and Illinois militia, which was little more than a semi-trained band of settlers intent on killing Indians. The combined forces scoured the countryside in pursuit of the band, which they regarded a-priori as hostile 'invaders.' After the militia attached representatives of Black Hawk's band when they had been sent to reach a truce, the Indians and US military chased each other around the frontier all summer, with members of the band and other area tribes raiding white settlements. Black Hawk's band slowly ran out of provisions and began starving before deciding to retreat across the Mississippi, where they were pursued and slaughtered en masse by the army and militia at the mouth of the Bad Axe River about 50 miles south of La Crosse. Black Hawk himself fled the scene of this final massacre and was turned over a few weeks later by the Ho-Chunk nation. Incarcerated for almost a year in St. Louis, Black Hawk toured the east coast - still as a prisoner of war - and become a major celebrity before dying in obscurity in Iowa in 1838.
Black Hawk's status as pop-culture icon can be traced to his tour of the east coast in 1833, which seemed intended as much to wow the residents of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia with the exotic virility of the frontier "savages" (and by transference the white men who fought them) as to impress Black Hawk with the military might, technological wizardry and "inevitable" dominance of the United States. He attracted crowds as large as those that greeted the president, sat for portraits by the most important artists of the day, and received gifts and kisses on the cheeks from white, upper class women. In the 175 years that followed, his mystique has been cashed in on by high school and professional sports teams, auto-body shops, sculptors, repossession agencies, girl and boy scout councils, condominium developments, and the military hardware.
Black Hawk Trail
Project
Locations
- The Blackhawk Trail