As fast as Tecumseh and the Open Door, or their messengers, traveled, they left in their trail other prophets. Soon it was a poor tribe indeed that did not have a medicine-man who spoke from the Great Spirit.
When Tecumseh first visited the Creeks, in Georgia and Alabama, they were not ready for war. They were friendly to the whites, and were growing rich in peace.
The Creeks belonged to the Musk-ho-ge-an family, and numbered twenty thousand people, in fifty towns. They had light complexions, and were good-looking. Their women were short, their men tall, straight, quick and proud.
Their English name, "Creeks," referred to the many streams in their country of Georgia and eastern Alabama. They were also called "Muskogee" and "Muscogee," by reason of their language—the Musk-ho-ge-an.
They were well civilized, and lived almost in white fashion. They kept negro slaves, the same as the white people, to till their fields, and wait upon them; they wore clothing of calico, cotton, and the like, in bright colors. Their houses were firmly built of reed and cane, with thatched roofs; their towns were orderly.
With the Chickasaws and the Choctaws, their neighbors in western Alabama and in Mississippi, they were at war, and had more than held their own.
White was their peace color, and red their war color. And when Tecumseh gave them the red sticks, on which to count the days, he did nothing new. The war parties of the Creeks already were known as Red Sticks.
This was their custom: that a portion of their towns should be White Towns, where peace ceremonies should be performed and no human blood should be shed; the other portion should be Red Towns, where war should be declared by erecting a red-painted pole, around which the warriors should gather. The war clans were Bearers of the Red, or, Red Sticks.
The first visit by Tecumseh, in 1811, carrying his Great Spirit talk of a union of all Indian nations, failed to make the Creeks erect their red poles. Even the earthquake, that Tecumseh was supposed to have brought about by the stamping of his foot, failed to do more than to frighten the Creeks.
But they caught the prophet fad. Their pretended prophets began to stir them up, and throw fear into them. In 1802 the United States had bought from the Creeks a large tract of Georgia; the white people were determined to move into it. Alarmed, the Creeks met in council, after Tecumseh's visit, and voted to sell no more of their lands without the consent of every tribe in the nation. Whoever privately signed to sell land, should die. All land was to be held in common, lest the white race over-run the red. That was a doctrine of the Shawnee Prophet himself, as taught to him by the Great Spirit.
When Tecumseh came down from Canada, in the winter of 1812, on his second visit, the Creeks were ripening for war. Their Red Sticks party was very strong. The many prophets, some of whom were half negro, had declared that the whites could be driven into the sea. The soil of the Creek nation was to be sacred soil.
Traders had been at work, promising aid, and supplying ammunition, in order to enlist the Creeks upon the British side.
So in the Red Towns the Red Sticks struck the painted poles; the peace party sat still in the White Towns, and was despised by the Reds as white in blood as well as in spirit.
The hope of the Creeks was to wipe the white man's settlements from the face of Mississippi, Georgia and Tennessee. Alabama, in the middle, would then be safe, also. But the Choctaws, the Chickasaws, the Cherokees, refused to join. The White Sticks themselves listened to the words of their old men, and of Head Chief William Macintosh; they said that they had no feud with the United States.
Commencing with President Washington, the United States had treated the Creeks honestly; the Creek nation had grown rich on its own lands.
The Red Sticks went to war—and a savage war they waged; the more savage, because by this time, the spring of 1813, all the Creeks were not of pure blood. They had lived so long in peace, in their towns, that their men and women had married not only among the white people but also among the black people; therefore their blood was getting to be a mixture of good and bad from three races.
Head Chief William Macintosh was the peace chief. He was half Scotch and half Creek, and bore his father's family name. He joined the side of the United States.
The war chiefs were Lam-o-chat-tee, or Red Eagle, and Menewa. They, too, were half-breeds.
Chief Red Eagle was called William Weatherford, after his white trader father who had married a Creek girl. He lived in princely style, on a fine plantation, surrounded with slaves and luxury.
Menewa was second to Chief Macintosh. His name meant "Great Warrior"; and by reason of his daring he had earned another name, Ho-thle-po-ya, or Crazy-war-hunter. He was born in 1765, and was now forty-eight years old. He and Chief Macintosh were rivals for favor and position.
Menewa was the head war chief—he frequently crossed into Tennessee, to steal horses from the American settlers there. A murder was committed by Indians, near his home; Georgians burned one of his towns, as punishment. Chief Macintosh was accused of having caused this murder, in order to enrage the white people against Menewa; and when Macintosh stood out for peace, Menewa stood out for war.
He and Chief Weatherford led the Red Sticks upon the war trail; but greater in rank than either of them was Monahoe, the ruling prophet, of Menewa's own band. He was the head medicine-chief. He was the Sitting Bull of the Creeks, like the later Sitting Bull of the Sioux.
Out went the Red Sticks, encouraged by Monahoe and the other prophets. Already the white settlers had become alarmed at the quarrel between the Macintosh bands and the Menewa bands. When two Indian parties fight, then the people near them suffer by raids. All Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia prepared for defense.
There were killings; but the first big blow with the Creek hatchet, to help the British and to drive the Americans into the sea, was struck in August against Fort Mimms, at the mouth of the Alabama River in southwestern Alabama above Mobile.
With all the cunning of the three bloods, the warriors waited until sand enough had drifted, day by day, to keep the gate of the fort from being quickly closed. Then, at noon of August 30, they rushed in. The commander of the fort had been warned, but he was as foolish as some of those officers in the Pontiac war. The garrison, of regulars, militia, and volunteers, fought furiously, in vain. More than three hundred and fifty—soldiers, and the families of settlers, both—were killed; only thirty persons escaped.
Now it was the days of King Philip, over again, and this time in Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, instead of in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. At the news of Fort Mimms, the settlers fled for protection into towns and block-houses. If the Choctaws, the Chickasaws and other Southern Indians joined in league with the Creeks, there easily would be fifteen thousand brave, fierce warriors in the field.
However, the Choctaws and Chickasaws enlisted with the United States; Chief Macintosh's friendly Creeks did not falter; and speedily the fiery Andy Jackson was marching down from Tennessee, at the head of two thousand picked men, to crush out the men of Menewa and Weatherford.
Other columns, from Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, also were on the trail. The Creeks fought to the death, but they made their stands in vain. The United States was on a war footing; it had the soldiers and the guns and the leaders; its columns of militia destroyed town after town—even the sacred Creek capital where warriors from eight towns together gathered to resist the invader. Yes, and even the town built by direction of the prophets and named Holy Ground and protected by magic.
By the close of 1813, this Jackson Chula Harjo—"Old Mad Jackson," as the Creeks dubbed him—had proved to be as tough as his later name, "Old Hickory." But Menewa and Weatherford were tough, too. They and their more than one thousand warriors still hung out.
In March they were led by their prophets to another and "holier" ground; Tohopeka, or Horseshoe Bend, on the Tallapoosa River in eastern Alabama.
The Creek town of Oakfuskee was located below. And here, in 1735, some eighty years before, there had been a fort of their English friends. It was good ground.
Chief Prophet Monahoe and two other prophets, by song and dance enchanted the ground inside the bend, and made it safe from the foot of any white man. Monahoe said that he had a message from Heaven that assured victory to the Creeks, in this spot. If the Old Mad Jackson came, he and all his soldiers should die, by wrath from a cloud. Hail as large as hominy mortars would flatten them out.
As was well known to the Creeks, Old Mad Jackson was having his troubles. The Great Spirit had sent troubles upon him—had caused his men to rebel, and his provisions to fail, until acorns were saved and eaten. The United States could not much longer fight the British and the Indians together. Let the Creeks not give up.
The Horseshoe was rightly named, for a sharp curve of the Tallapoosa River enclosed about one hundred acres of brushy, timbered bluffs and low-land, very thick to the foot. The entrance to the neck was only three hundred yards wide. On the three other sides the river flowed deep.
Menewa was the field commander of the Red Sticks, at this place. He showed a great head—he was half white and half red, but all Creek in education. Across the neck, at its narrowest point he had a barricade of logs erected, from river bank to river bank.
The barricade, of three to five logs piled eight feet high and filled with earth and rock, was pierced with a double row of port-holes: one row for the kneeling warriors, and one for the standing warriors. The barricade was built in zigzags, along a concave curve, so that attackers would be cut down by shots from two sides as well as from in front. By reason of the zig-zags it could not be raked from either end.
All around the high ground back of the barricade, trees were laid, and brush arranged so that the warriors might, if driven, pass back from covert to covert, until they reached the huts of the women and children and old men, at the river, behind. Here a hundred canoes were drawn up, on the bank, in readiness.
But the Red Sticks of Chief Menewa had no thought of flight. They were one thousand. Their prophets had assured them over and over that the medicine of the Creek nation was strong, at last; that the Great Spirit was fighting for them; that the bullets of the Americans would have no effect, and that the Americans themselves would die before the barricade was reached. The cloud would come and help the Creeks, with hail—hail like hominy mortars!
On March 24 "Old Mad Jackson," just appointed by President Madison to be major-general in the United States army, set out against "Crazy-war-hunter" Menewa at Tohopeka.
The way was difficult, through dense timber, swamps and cane-brakes. Alabama, in these days, had been only thinly settled by white people.
He had three thousand men: a part of the 39th U. S. Infantry, a thousand Tennessee militia, six hundred friendly Creeks and Cherokees. He had two cannon: a six-pounder and a three-pounder.
His chief assistant was General John Coffee of Alabama, who had formerly been his business partner. Major Lemuel P. Montgomery, a Virginian of Tennessee, commanded one battalion of the regulars. He was six feet two inches, aged twenty-eight, and "the finest looking man in the army." Young Sam Houston, who became the hero of Texas independence, was a third lieutenant. Head Chief William Macintosh, Menewa's rival, led the Creeks. Chief Richard Brown led the Cherokees.
In the evening of March 26 bold General Jackson viewed the Red Sticks' fort, and found it very strong. He was amazed by the skill with which it had been laid out. No trained military engineers could have done better.
But his Indian spies saw everything—they saw the line of canoes drawn up in the brush along the river bank behind, at the base of the bend; and General Jackson decided to do what the Red Sticks had not expected him to do.
Early in the next morning, March 27, he detached General Coffee, with seven hundred mounted men, the five hundred Cherokees and the one hundred Creeks, to make a circuit, cross the river below the bend, and come up on the opposite side, behind the Horseshoe. This would cut off escape in canoes.
With the remainder of his soldiers he advanced to the direct attack upon the breast-works. He planted his two cannon. At ten o'clock he opened hot fire with the camion and with muskets.
Chief Menewa's Red Sticks were ready and defiant. They answered with whoops and bullets. Their three prophets, horridly adorned with bird crests and feathers and jingling charms, danced and sang, to bring the cloud. The balls from the cannon only sank into the damp pine logs, and did no damage. The musket balls stopped short or hissed uselessly over.
For two hours Old Mad Jackson attacked, from a distance. He had not dared to charge—the prophets danced faster, they chanted higher—the Red Sticks had been little harmed—they whooped gaily—they had faith in their Holy Ground.
But suddenly there arose behind them a fresh hubbub of shots and shouts, and the screams of their women and children; the smoke of their burning huts welled above the tree-tops. General Coffee, with his mounted men, had completely surrounded the bend, on the opposite side of the river; his Indians had swum across, had seized the canoes, had ferried their comrades over by the hundred, the soldiers were following—and now the Menewa warriors were between two fires.
At the instant, here came Mad Jackson's troops to charge the barricade.
That was a terrible fight, at the breast-works. Chief Menewa encouraged his men. The test of the Holy Ground protected by the Great Spirit and the prophets had arrived.
The battle was to decide whether the Creek nation or the American nation was to rule in Georgia and Alabama, and the Red Sticks made mighty defense. While they raged, they looked for the cloud in the sky.
So close was the fighting, that musket muzzle met musket muzzle, in the port-holes; pistol shot replied to rifle shot; and bullets from the Red Sticks were melted upon the bayonets of the soldiers.
Major Lemuel Montgomery sprang upon the top of the barricade. Back he toppled, shot through the head. "I have lost the flower of my army," mourned General Jackson, tears in his eyes.
Lieutenant Houston received an arrow in his thigh; and later, two bullets in his shoulder.
Lieutenants Moulton and Somerville fell dead.
Again and again the white warriors were swept from the barricade by the Red Sticks' arrows, spears, tomahawks and balls. Others took their places, to ply bayonets and guns—stabbing, shooting. The uproar in the rear grew greater, and many of the Red Sticks behind the breast-works were being shot in the back; the voices of the prophets had weakened; no cloud appeared in the sky, bearing to the whites death from the Great Spirit.
Beset on all sides, Chief Menewa's men began to scurry back for their timber shelters, to fight their way to the river. But no one surrendered.
Having won the barricade, and cut off the escape of the Red Sticks in the opposite direction, the white general halted the further attack. He sent a flag of truce forward, toward the jungle.
"If you will stop fighting, your lives will be spared," he ordered the interpreter to call. "Or else first remove your women and children, so they will not be killed."
But the anxious eyes of warrior and prophet had seen the Spirit cloud rising, at last, into the sky; high pealed their whoops and chants again; a volley of bullets answered the truce flag.
The white soldiers re-opened with musket balls and grape-shot. The Cherokee and Creek scouts, fighting on their side, tried to ferret out the hiding places. Alas, the cloud proved to be only a little shower, and then vanished. The Great Spirit had deserted the prophets.
The American bullets thickened. With torches and blazing arrows the jungle was set afire. Roasted from their coverts, the Red Sticks had to flee for the river. When they fled, the rifles of the Tennessee sharp-shooters caught them in mid-stride, or picked them off, in the river.
Chief Menewa was bleeding from a dozen wounds. He made desperate stand, but the cloud had gone, the fire was roaring, Head Prophet Monahoe was down dead, dead; the Great Spirit had smitten him through the mouth with a grape-ball, as if to rebuke him for lying. There was only one prophet left alive. Him, Menewa angrily killed with his own hand; then joined the flight.
He plunged into the river. His strength was almost spent, and he could not swim out of reach of the sharp-shooters' bullets. The water was four feet deep. So he tore loose a hollow joint of cane; and crouching under the water, with the end of the cane stuck above the surface, he held fast to a root and breathed through the cane.
Here he stayed, under water, for four hours until darkness had cloaked land and river, and the yelling and shooting had ceased. Then, soaked and chilled and stiffened, he cautiously straightened up. He waded through the cane-brake, hobbled all night through the forest, and got away.
But he had no army. Of his one thousand Red Sticks eight hundred were dead. Five hundred and fifty-seven bodies were found upon the Horseshoe battle-field. One hundred and fifty more had perished in the river. Only one warrior was unwounded. Three hundred women and children had been captured—and but three men. The Red Sticks of the Creek nation were wiped out.
Of the whites, twenty-six had been killed, one hundred and seven wounded. Of the Cherokee and Creek scouts, twenty-three had been killed, forty-seven wounded.
Chief William Macintosh also had fought bravely, but he had not been harmed.
The Red Sticks now agreed to a treaty of peace with the United States; and Chief Menewa, scarred from head to foot, was the hero of his band. "One of the bravest chiefs that ever lived," is written after his name, by white historians. In due time he again opposed Chief Macintosh, and won out.
For in 1825 Macintosh was bribed by the white people to urge upon his nation the selling of the last of their lands in Georgia. He signed the papers, so did a few other chiefs; but the majority, thirty-six in number, refused.
Only some three hundred of the Creeks were parties to the signing away of the land of the whole nation. The three thousand other chiefs and warriors said that by Creek law, which Chief Macintosh himself had proposed, the land could not be sold except through the consent of a grand council.
As the nation owned the land, and had built better towns, and was living well and peacefully, the council decided that Chief Macintosh must be put to death—for he was a traitor and he knew the law.
Chief Menewa was asked to consent; he ruled, by reason of his wisdom and his scars. Finally he saw no other way than to order the deed done, for the Creek law was plain.
On the morning of May 1 he took a party of warriors to the Chief Macintosh house, and surrounded it. There were some white Georgians inside. He directed them to leave, as he had come to kill only Chief Macintosh, according to the law.
So the white men, and the women and children, left. When Chief Macintosh bolted in flight, he was shot dead.
The Georgia people, who desired the Creek land, prepared for war, or to arrest Menewa and his party. But the President, learning the ins and outs of the trouble, and seeing that the land had not been sold by the Creek nation, ordered the sale held up. The Creeks stayed where they were, for some years.
Menewa went to war once more, in 1836, and helped the United States fight against the Seminoles of Florida. In return for this, he asked permission to remain and live in his own country of the Creeks. But he was removed, with the last of the nation, beyond the Mississippi to the Indian Territory.
There, an old man, he died.
The two small nations of the Sacs and the Foxes had lived as one family for a long time. They were of the Algonquian tongue. From the northern Great Lakes country they had moved over to the Mississippi River, and down to Illinois and Iowa. Their number was not more than six thousand. They were a shave-head Indian, of forest and stream, and accustomed to travel afoot or in canoes.
The Foxes built their bark-house villages on the west side of the Mississippi, in Iowa's "great nose." They called themselves Mus-qua-kees, or the Red Earth People. They said that they had been made from red clay. Their totem was a fox; and the French of the Great Lakes had dubbed them Foxes—had asserted that, like the fox, they were quarrelsome, tricky and thievish. As warriors they were much feared. They had lost heavily.
The Sacs built opposite, on the Illinois shore, from Rock River down. They called themselves Saukees, from their word O-sa-ki-wug, or Yellow Earth People. They were larger and better looking than the Foxes, and not so tricky; but their bravery was never doubted.
These two nations together drove out the other Indians in this new country. They whipped even the Sioux, who claimed the northern Iowa hunting grounds; they whipped the Omahas, Osages and Pawnees of the west, the Mascoutins to the south, and the Illinois tribes. They were here to stay.
While the men hunted and fished and went to war, the women raised great crops of beans, squashes, melons, potatoes and Indian corn, and gathered the wild rice of the lakes.
Among the Sac leaders was Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak—Big-black-breast, or Black-hawk. Like Little Turtle of the Miamis he had not been born a chief; but he was of the Thunder clan, the head clan of the Sacs.
His father was Py-e-sa, a warrior of the rank of braves, and keeper of the tribal medicine-bag. His grandfather was Na-na-ma-kee, or Thunder—also a brave.
Black-hawk was born in 1767, in Sauk-e-nuk, the principal Sac village, where Rock Island, Illinois, now stands, north of the mouth of the Rock River.
He won the rank of brave when he was only fifteen years old. He did this by killing and scalping an Osage warrior, on the war-trail against these head-takers. After that he was allowed in the scalp-dances.
He went against the Osages a second time. With seven men he attacked one hundred, and escaped carrying another scalp. When he was eighteen, he and five comrades pierced the Osage country across the Missouri River, and got more scalps. When he was nineteen, he led two hundred other braves against the Osages, and killed five Osages with his own hand.
By his deeds he had become a chief.
In a battle with the Cherokees, below St. Louis, his father Pyesa fell. Young Black-hawk was awarded the medicine-bag—"the soul of the Sac nation."
In the early spring of 1804 a man of the Sac band then living on the Missouri, near St. Louis, to hunt and trade, killed a white man. He was arrested. The Sacs and Poxes held a council and chose four chiefs to go to St. Louis and buy their warrior's freedom with presents. This was the Indian way.
The chiefs selected were Pa-she-pa-ho, or Stabber, who was head chief of the Sacs; Quash-qua-me, or Jumping Fish; Ou-che-qua-ha, or Sun Fish; and Ha-she-quar-hi-qua, or Bear.
They went in the summer of 1804 and were gone a long time. When they returned, they were wearing new medals, and seemed ashamed. They camped outside of Saukenuk for several days, before they reported in council. The man they had been sent to get was not with them.
Finally, in the council they said that they had signed away a great tract of land, mostly on the west side of the Mississippi above St. Louis, in order to buy the warrior's life; they had been drunk when they signed—but that was all right. However, when they had signed, the warrior was let out, and as he started to come to them, the soldiers had shot him dead.
They still were not certain just what land they had signed away. That made the council and people angry. Black-hawk called the chiefs fools. They had no right to sell the land without the consent of the council. After this, the "Missouri band" of the Sacs kept by themselves, in disgrace.
It was too late to do anything more about the treaty. The United States had it. An Indian gets only one chance—and Head Chief Pashepaho himself had put his mark on the paper. The United States has two chances: the first, on the ground; the second, when the paper is sent to Washington.
Later it was found that Pashepaho and the others had signed away all the Sac and Fox lands east of the Mississippi River! That was how the treaty might be made to read. The payment for many millions of acres was $2,234.54 down, in goods, and $1,000 a year, in other goods.
But there was one pleasing clause. As long as the United States held the land, the Sacs and Foxes might live and hunt there. Any white men who tried to come in were to be arrested and put off.
At any rate, although Black-hawk raged and said that the treaty was a false treaty, it stood. The United States officials who had signed it were men of honest names, and considered that they had acted fairly. But Black-hawk never admitted that.
The United States was to erect a trading post, up the Mississippi, for the convenience of the Sacs and Foxes. In 1808 soldiers appeared above the mouth of the Des Moines River, on the west side of the Mississippi, in southeastern Iowa, and began to build.
This turned out to be not a trading post but a fort, named Fort Belle Vue, and afterward, Fort Madison.
The Sacs and Foxes, and their allies, the Potawatomis and Winnebagos, planned to destroy it, and made attacks.
Black-hawk was sore at the Americans. He listened to the words of Tecumseh and the Prophet, accepted the presents of the British agents who came to see him, and with two hundred warriors marched to help the British in the War of 1812. The British traders had been more generous with the Indians than the American traders. Now the British father at the Lakes saluted him as "General Black-hawk."
Only Black-hawk's band went. All the other Sacs and Foxes paid attention to the talk of Keokuk, the Watchful Fox, who was the Sac peace chief.
Like the great Cornstalk, he said to the people that if they were bound to go to war, they should first put all the women and children "into the long sleep, for we enter upon a trail that has no turn."
He was called a coward by the Black-hawk band; but the other Sacs and Foxes stayed where they were.
"General" Black-hawk fought beside General Tecumseh. He asserted that he was in the big battle when Tecumseh was killed. When he found that the Indians had nothing to gain in the war, he came home. He had done wrong to go at all.
Then he learned that a young man whom he had adopted as a son had been murdered, while hunting, by bad whites. They had seized him, tied him, killed him and scalped him. The young man had not been to war, and Black-hawk could see no reason for the killing. So he set forth in revenge, and fought a battle with the United States Rangers.
He remained unfriendly. It all dated back to the year 1804, and the treaty signed by Pashepaho, by which the Sacs had lost their country.
They loved this country. They especially loved Rock Island, in the Mississippi—where today is located a Government arsenal.
It was indeed a beautiful island for them. It bore grapes and nuts, and they called it their garden. In a cave there, a kind spirit dwelt, who blessed the land of the Indians. The spirit had white wings, like a swan. But in 1816 the United States built Fort Armstrong right on top of the cave, and the good spirit flew away, never to come back. The guns of the fort frightened it.
Black-hawk himself had another favorite spot, upon a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River and his village of Saukenuk. Here he liked to sit. It is still known as Black-hawk's Watch Tower.
After Fort Armstrong was built, and the United States was again at peace with the other white nations, settlers commenced to edge into this Sac country of western Illinois. Although by another treaty, which Black-hawk himself had signed, the treaty of 1804 was re-pledged by the Sacs and Foxes, this all was United States land, and no settlers had any rights to it.
The Indians were unable to put the settlers off, and trouble arose. Once Black-hawk was taken, in the forest, by settlers who accused him of shooting their hogs; they tore his gun from him, and beat him with sticks.
This was such a disgrace to him, that he painted a black mark on his face, and wore the mark for almost ten years. Only a scalp could wipe it off.
The white trespassers kept coming in. They respected nothing. They even built fences around the corn fields of the principal Sac village, at the mouth of Rock River; they ploughed up the grave-yard there; they took possession of Black-hawk's own lodge; and when in the spring of 1828 the Black-hawk people came back from their winter hunt, they found that forty of their lodges had been burned.
Up to this time none of the land had been put on the market by the United States. But the Indian agent was trying to persuade the Sacs to move across the Mississippi, into Iowa. That was for their own good. The white settlers were using whiskey and every other means, to get the upper hand.
Chief Keokuk agreed with the agent. He was not of the rank of Black-hawk and the Thunder clan, but he had fought the Sioux, and was of great courage and keen mind and silver tongue. He was an orator; Black-hawk was a warrior.
So the Sacs split. Keokuk—a stout, heavy-faced man—took his Sacs across into the country of the Foxes. Black-hawk's band said they would be shamed if they gave up their village and the graves of their fathers.
Black-hawk visited some white "chiefs" (judges) who were on Rock Island. He made complaint. He said that he wore a black mark on his face; but that if he tried to avenge the black mark, by striking a white man, then the white men would call it war. He said that the Sacs dared not resent having their lodges burned and their corn fields fenced and their women beaten, and the graves of their fathers ploughed up.
"Why do you not tell the President?"
"He is too far off. He cannot hear my voice."
"Why do you not write a letter to him?"
"It would be written by white men, who would say that we told lies. Our Great Father would rather believe a white man, than an Indian."
The two judges said that they were sorry for the Sacs, but could do nothing.
Now in 1829 the settlers were so anxious to keep the Sac lands at the mouth of the Rock River, that the Government put these on the market. This would dispose of Black-hawk's people, for they would have no village. Whether the other lands were sold, did not matter.
It was done while Black-hawk and his men and women were hunting. On their return to plant their crops, they learned that their village and grave-yard had been sold to the whites—the most of whom were already there.
So the white people had won out. They in turn asked protection, of the Government, from "General Black-hawk" and his band. The Government listened, and ten companies of regular troops were sent to Rock Island in a steamboat, to remove the Sacs, "dead or alive," to the west side of the Mississippi.
A council was held with Black-hawk at Fort Armstrong, on Rock Island. Black-hawk rose to speak. He said that the Sacs never had sold their lands; it had been a mistake, and that they were bound to keep their village.
"Who is this Black-hawk?" retorted General Edmund P. Gaines, the commander of the troops. "Is he a chief? By what right does he appear in council?"
Black-hawk wrapped his blanket around him and strode angrily out of the council room. But the next morning he made answer.
"My father, you asked yesterday, who is 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 these 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."
More troops were called, until there were twenty-five hundred. But seeing so many soldiers marching, Black-hawk took all his people and camped across the Mississippi, under a white flag.
After this Black-hawk was required to sign another treaty, which made him say that he had tried to enlist the Potawatomis, Winnebagos and Kickapoos in a war against the United States. It did not mention the fact that for a dozen and more years the whites had been warring upon him by seizing his lands and ploughing his fields and burning his lodges.
The paper also set him down below the other chiefs, who had left their lands. It set him below Keokuk, and the Fox chiefs—and this hurt him deeply. All the Sacs and Foxes laughed at the idea of Keokuk, and his lowly clan, being placed above Black-hawk and the Thunder clan.
In these years of trouble, the Black-hawk band had killed or abused no white settlers. The so-called "war," on their part, had been a war of words and fences. Now they soon were to take up the hatchet.
They had been expelled over the river in this year 1831 too late for planting crops. The white settlers declined to share with them, from the fields at the village of Saukenuk. One night some of the Sacs crossed "to steal roasting-ears from their own fields," as they said. They were shot at by the settlers, and driven off.
This made more bad feeling.
Black-hawk had sent his head warrior, Nah-po-pe, or Soup, up to Canada, to ask council from the British "father" there. He had been "General Black-hawk" in the British army, and thought that he deserved help.
But the United States and Great Britain had been at peace many years. The British father told Nahpope that if the Sacs never had sold their land, of course they had a right to live upon it. That was all.
On the way back, Nahpope stopped to see Wa-bo-kie-shiek, or White Cloud, who was half Sac and half Winnebago, and a great medicine-man or prophet. He had a village at his Prophet's Town, thirty-five miles up the Rock River, in Illinois.
White Cloud pretended to rival the Open Door of the Shawnees. He fell into a trance, and cut several capers, and spoke a message from the Great Spirit. Let Black-hawk go to war. The Great Spirit would arouse the Winnebagos and the Potawatomis and the British, and the Americans would be driven away! White Cloud said this out of his own heart, which was black toward the Americans.
He invited Black-hawk to visit him and the Winnebagos and the Potawatomis, raise a summer crop and talk with the Great Spirit.
Much rejoiced, Nahpope hastened to tell the news to his chief. When Keokuk heard it, he advised Black-hawk to stay at home. The prophet White Cloud was a mischief maker and a liar.
Black-hawk was inclined to listen, and to wait until he was more certain of the other nations who might join with him. But the young men of his band were hot. Unless he did something, Keokuk would appear to be stronger than he. His people looked to him to get back their village and their grave-yard. The black mark on his face had not been wiped off.
None of Keokuk's Sacs or the Foxes would help him. So in April of 1832 he took his men and their families and started up the river from Fort Madison, Iowa, for Rock River. The warriors were on horses, the women and children in canoes.
By the last treaty that he had signed, Black-hawk had promised not to cross to the east side of the Mississippi without the permission of the United States. Now he said that he was going up the Rock River, to the country of the Winnebagos, his friends, to visit among them and plant corn and beans.
On the way up the Rock River he was ordered back, by word from General Henry Atkinson, commander at Fort Armstrong.
Black-hawk replied that he had a right to travel peacefully, the same as white persons. He was going to the Winnebago country, for the summer.
The general sent another word, that if Black-hawk did not turn around, soldiers would make him turn around.
Black-hawk replied that he was at peace and would stay at peace unless the soldiers attacked him. He told his men not to fire first.
Pretty soon he met some Winnebagos and Potawatomis. They said that their nations never had sent him any message talking war. They wished no trouble with the United States. Wabokieshiek had lied.
So Black-hawk decided to give his guests a dog-feast, and then return home. He was an old man of sixty-five, and he was too weak to fight alone. He was getting tired.
He had made camp one hundred miles up the Rock River, near Kishwaukee, a few miles below present Rockford, Illinois. By this time, early in May, all Illinois was alarmed; the regulars and militia were on his trail. They gathered at Dixon, about forty miles down the river from his camp.
Major Isaac Stillman took two hundred and seventy-five mounted militia, to scout for Black-hawk. They arrived at Sycamore Creek, within eight miles of him, and did not see his camp. But Black-hawk knew that they were there.
He sent out three young men with a white flag, to bring the American chiefs to the camp, for a council; then they would all go down-river together. He sent out five young men to follow the three, and see what happened.
Only three of the five came back. The three with the white flag had been taken prisoners, and the soldiers had chased the others and shot two.
Black-hawk prepared for war. He had but forty men with him; the rest were out hunting. Presently here came all the white soldiers, galloping and yelling, to ride over him. They were foolish—they seemed to think that the Sacs would run.
But Black-hawk was old in war. He laid an ambush—his forty warriors waited, and fired a volley, and charged with the tomahawk and knife, and away scurried the soldiers like frightened deer.
They fled without stopping forty miles to Dixon's Ferry. They reported that they had been attacked by fifteen hundred savages. They left all their camp stuff. Fourteen soldiers had been killed—but no Indians, except those sent by Black-hawk to treat for peace.
"Stillman's Run," the battle was called.
Black-hawk sat down to smoke a pipe to the Great Spirit, and give thanks. Two of the flag-of-truce party came in. They had escaped. The third young man had been shot while in the soldiers' camp.
The Black-hawk band took the blankets and provisions left in the soldiers' camp, and proceeded to war in earnest. Of what use was a white flag? They sent away their families. Some Winnebagos, hearing of the great victory, enlisted.
Now Black-hawk was much feared. General Atkinson fortified his regulars and militia, at Dixon's Ferry. More volunteers were called for, by the governor of Illinois. The Secretary of War at Washington ordered one thousand additional regulars to the scene, and directed General Winfield Scott himself, the commander of the United States army in the East, to lead the campaign.
For a little war against a few Indians there were many famous names on the white man's roll. Among the regulars were General Scott, later the commander in the war with Mexico; Colonel Zachary Taylor, who had defended Fort Harrison from Tecumseh—and probably Black-hawk—in the war of 1812, and who was to be President; Lieutenant Jefferson Davis, who became president of the Confederate States; Lieutenant Albert Sydney Johnston, who became a Confederate general; Lieutenant Robert Anderson, who commanded Fort Sumter in 1861; and among the volunteers was Captain Abraham Lincoln.
Black-hawk had about five hundred braves, mainly Sacs and Foxes, with a few Winnebagos and Potawatomis; but when twenty-five hundred soldiers were chasing him through the settlements, he stood little show.
After several skirmishes, and one or two bad defeats, his people were eating horse-flesh and bark and roots. To save them, he planned to go down the Wisconsin River, in southwestern Wisconsin, and cross the Mississippi.
He put his women and children and the old men on rafts and in canoes. They started—but soldiers fired into them, from the banks, killed some and drove the rest into the forest. Many died there, from hunger.
Black-hawk and his warriors, and other women and children, had cut across by land. When they came to the mouth of the Bad Axe River, at the Mississippi above the Wisconsin, the armed steamboatWarriormet them. Sioux were upon the western bank.
Black-hawk decided to surrender. He again raised the white flag, and called out to the captain of theWarriorthat he wished a boat sent to him, so that he might go aboard and talk peace.
Perhaps the Winnebago interpreter on theWarriordid not translate the words right. At any rate, the captain of theWarriorasserted that Black-hawk was only trying to decoy him into ambush. He waited fifteen minutes, to give the Indian women and children that much time to hide; then he opened on the white flag with canister and musketry. The first cannon shot "laid out three." In all, he killed twenty-three.
Black-hawk fought back, but he could not do very much against a steamboat in the river.
So he had been unable to surrender, or to cross the Mississippi. His people were frightened, and sick with hunger and wounds. The next morning, August 2, he was working hard to get them ready to cross, when General Atkinson's main army, of four hundred regulars and nine hundred militia, fell upon him at the mouth of the Bad Axe.
The Indian women plunged into the Mississippi, with their babes on their backs—some of them caught hold of horses' tails, to be towed faster; but the steamboatWarriorwas waiting, sharp-shooters on shore espied them, and only a few escaped, into the hands of the Sioux.
In two hours Black-hawk lost two hundred people, men and women both; the white army lost twenty-seven in killed and wounded.
This finished Black-hawk. He got away, but spies were on his trail, and in a few weeks two Winnebago traitors captured him when he gave himself up at Fort Crawford, Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.
He expected to die. He had turned his medicine-bag over to the Winnebago chief at the village of La Crosse, Wisconsin—and he never got it back.
He made a speech to the Indian agent, General Joseph Street, at Prairie du Chien. He said: