Born at Saukenuk, the largest Sauk village, near the mouth of the Rock River in northwestern Illinois, Black Hawk grew to manhood at a time of great change for the tribal people in the upper Mississippi Valley. British victory in the Seven Years' War had ousted France from North America, but French traders remained active among the Mississippi Valley peoples as they and the British and Spanish competed for Indian trade and alliances. By 1804 the Spanish had left Louisiana and the British retreated into Canada, leaving many northern tribes at the mercy of the Americans. During his adult life, Black Hawk watched with great impatience and anger as the Sauks had their economy weakened, their mobility limited, and their lands taken by the advancing United States. In the face of these fundamental shifts he spoke for Sauk traditions; he opposed the pioneers and rejected their claims to tribal lands. His unbending resistance eventually brought disaster to his followers. Nevertheless, his life exemplified traditional Sauk values. A village war leader who hoped for better times, he helped to foster resistance to unavoidable, if painful, changes in tribal life.
———In a world of rapidly changing political and economic allegiances, the Sauks suffered a continuing decline in their standard of living. As pioneers hurried west into the Mississippi Valley and south of the Great Lakes, Indians in these regions faced continuing pressures to cede part or all their land holdings. The same population pressures forced more competition among neighboring tribes as they strove to maintain their hunting, trapping, gathering, and farming subsistence cycles. When available game diminished, the villagers had few options. They could travel farther from home to hunt, or shift to other economic activities. The Illinois Sauks rejected the latter option, and, as a result, their hunting parties met spirited resistance from the Cherokees in the south and the Osages to the west.
———Young Black Hawk developed his skills as a warrior and leader during the late eighteenth century as the Sauks and their allies the Mesquakies (Fox) carried out repeated raids against neighboring tribes. (Before Black Hawk reached adulthood, his father died while fighting against the Cherokees.) Nevertheless, the Sauks engaged in diplomacy as well as warfare. Until 1804, when Americans supplanted the Spanish at St. Louis, Black Hawk looked upon the Spanish as friends and allies. He felt the same way about the British. As late as 1820s, large groups of Sauks traveled north and east to the Canadian post at Malden, just across the border from Detroit, to receive annual presents and assurances of English goodwill.
———The Americans were different. From the first Sauk contacts with federal officials, Sauk leaders felt threatened or dissatisfied. To them the Americans seemed to favor their Osage enemies and to ignore or look down upon the eastern tribes The perception led to violence, and in 1804 the Indians killed several settlers. The pioneers demanded that the Sauks be punished, and when a small delegation of tribal village leaders visited St. Louis in 1804, federal officials there persuaded them to sign a treaty ceding the tribal lands east of the Mississippi River. For nearly three decades, that agreement brought continuing friction and misunderstanding between the tribe and the United States. It was a direct cause of the Black Hawk War.
———It took some years for the main body of Sauks to learn about the 1804 treaty, and from the start the majority of villagers rejected it because it had not been ratified. While not a political leader, Black Hawk spoke against the treaty repeatedly. As a mature adult he came to see all actions by the Americans as suspect and as aimed at harming or disrupting Sauk life. An outspoken translationalist, he rejected payments of treaty annuities from U.S. officials. His world centered in the village of Saukenuk. It was there that he had grown to manhood, participated in the annual ceremonies, and recounted his victories over tribal enemies. It was also the burial place of his friends and family members. At the outbreak of the War of 1812 the forty-five-year-old warrior urged his tribesmen to join the British and fight American expansion.
———During the war Black Hawk led hundreds of Sauk warriors east to Detroit, where they had campaigned with the British in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. By late 1813 the warriors had returned home only to learn that the village elders had chosen young Keokuk as the war leader for the community. Much of Black Hawk's consternation, Keokuk's superior oratorical and political skills allowed him to dominate Sauk affairs for the next several decades. While Keokuk stood at center stage, the older and more experienced Black Hawk led a successful attack on American shipping on the Mississippi. In May 1814 the warrior defeated a force of over four hundred soldiers and militiamen commanded by Major Zachary Taylor, who had been sent north to punish the Sauks for their anti-American acts.
———In 1816 Sauk and Mesquakie leaders signed treaties ending hostilities. From then until the late 1820s the villagers continued their precarious occupation of the Mississippi Valley in the face of ever-increasing numbers of settlers. By 1831 Black Hawk had come to be reorganized as the spokesman for a motley grouping of Sauks, Mesquakies, and other Indians who continued to refuse to migrate west beyond the Mississippi.
———The following year Black Hawk led the so-called British Band east across the Mississippi into Illinois. He and his followers hoped to establish a new village and begin farming again. This action set off loud protests from pioneers and politicians, and President Andrew Jackson ordered federal troops into action. By late April 1832, American regulars and Illinois militiamen began chasing the Indians up the Rock River valley into southern Wisconsin and then west toward the Mississippi. They overtook the exhausted band at the mouth of the Bad Axe River, slaughtering many of them. This crushing defeat persuaded other midwestern tribes to accept removal to the West and ended Black Hawk's public career. After being imprisoned in Virginia for some months, he was sent back to his tribe in disgrace. He died in 1838.
———Black Hawk's career illustrates the divisions within tribal and village groups as they sought to deal effectively with the United States. Some leaders reorganized the need for accommodations with the powerful Americans. Others rejected such action, turning to native religion and even denial in hopes of retaining traditional practices and locations. Black Hawk provided a powerful symbol of cultural pride for the Sauks and Mesquakies during an era of constant disruption and hardship. He based his actions on Sauk practices and beliefs, but by 1832 the crush of frontier settlement had made such ideas impossible to maintain.

ROGER L NICHOLS
University of Arizona