Black Hawk's Legacy
Defiant to the End
Aug 31, 2007 Jeffrey R Gudzune
On August 2, 1832, Black Hawk and his entire tribe were trapped along the banks of the Mississippi River. Unable to cross due to the presence of a looming warship and pinned against the shoreline by an advancing force, the Sauk were at the mercy of the Americans. Some of the noncombatants had made efforts to cross the river into Chippewa territory and they were fired upon. In the early hours of August 3, before Black Hawk could rally his forces into a defensive posture, the Americans attacked. In what became known as the Bad Axe Massacre, the Sauk were decimated indiscriminately. Women and children were numbered among the dead and those who did manage to forge across the river when the steamship Warrior withdrew were subsequently killed by the Sioux, who had allied with the Americans. Black Hawk and 150 of his followers managed to escape the carnage and made their way into Winnebago domain with the assistance of White Cloud, another survivor of the battle. Alive, but in defeat, Black Hawk finally surrendered to the Americans on August 27, 1832. “Farewell my nation,” he declared to his surviving people as he set out. Black Hawk was immediately taken into custody and held as prisoner of war. Incidentally, from his jail cell he could see the outskirts of his beloved capital, Saukenuk.
While in prison, Black Hawk received numerous visitors and expressed his views on the state of Indian affairs. One such visitor was a journalist and Oquawka Indian named J.B. Patterson, who recorded Black Hawk’s autobiography. As native tribes in the east were being removed by force of arms and at the end of armed resistance in the northwest, Black Hawk dictated his life story and presented to white audiences the reason why he rebelled. To give up Saukenuk meant more than the relocation of one branch of the Sauk Nation. To give up this ground, Black Hawk maintained, was to give in to domination by whites. Aside from providing a defense of his actions, in keeping with Sauk tradition regarding the possession of the land, Black Hawk’s biography allows the reader to glimpse into the world of the dispossessed Suak Nation. Far from a bitter diatribe, this works still stands as the representation of one man’s struggle against the inevitable.
As America’s official policy towards Indian tribes at this time treated them as sovereign states, no criminal charges were brought against Black Hawk for his involvement in the war. He was released from captivity in 1833 and escorted to Washington D.C. to meet with President Andrew Jackson. Although the soldiers bringing the great warrior to the capital intended to parade Black Hawk and his followers as conquered people, the white citizens saw him as a proud symbol of resistance. Even in the presence of the President of the United States, Black Hawk adamantly insisted that his actions were justified. “We never sold our country,” he had stated in his biography, “we never received any annuities from our American father.”
As a condition of his release, Black Hawk was no longer the chief of his band of Sauk. The survivors of his campaign were relocated to Kansas and Keokuk was recognized (by the United States) as the sole leader of the Sauk Nation. Black Hawk remained a symbol of the dispossessed and gained notoriety among even his former enemies in the years following his death in 1838. Though no longer a threat to the United States, no longer the head of small yet determined resistance army, Black Hawk’s legacy is still present to this day.
Sources:
Mark C Carnes, Ed, U.S. History. (New York: MacMillan Library Reference, 1996).
Kenneth C. Davis, Don’t Know Much About History. (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2003).
Gilbert Legay, Atlas of Indians. (Hauppage: Barron’s, 1995)
Carl Waldman, Atlas of the North American Indian. (New York: Checkmark Book, 2000).
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