Black Hawk Remembers Village Life Along the Mississippi

Black Hawk was a Sauk Indian who lived in a village at the junction of the Rock and Mississippi Rivers in Illinois. After the Louisiana Purchase, Sauk and other tribal leaders signed a treaty that ceded Indian lands east of the Mississippi River to the United States government.  Indians were allowed to stay on the territory as long as it remained the property of the federal government. Eventually Black Hawk's refusal to abandon his homelands to American settlers led to the Black Hawk War in 1832.  Defeated, the chief was forced to sign a treaty ceding more Indian land to the United States. He told his life story the following year to a government interpreter. Edited by a local newspaperman, it was the first Indian autobiography published in the United States.

Here, for the first time, I touched the goose quill to the treaty—not knowing, however, that, by that act, I consented to give away my village. Had that been explained to me, I should have opposed it, and never would have signed their treaty…

What do we know of the manner of the laws and customs of the white people?  They might buy our bodies for dissection, and we would touch the goose quill to confirm it, without knowing what we are doing.
 
….At this time we had very little intercourse with the whites, except our traders. Our village was healthy, and there was no place in the country possessing such advantages, nor no hunting grounds better than those we had in possession. If another prophet had come to our village in those days, and told us what has since taken place, none of our people would have believed him! What! to be driven from our village and hunting grounds, and not even permitted to visit the graves of our forefathers, our relations, and friends?

This hardship is not known to the whites. With us it is a custom to visit the graves of our friends, and keep them in repair for many years. The mother will go alone to weep over the grave of her child! The brave, with pleasure, visits the grave of his father, after he has been successful in war, and re-paints the post that shows where he lies! There is no place like that where the bones of our forefathers lie, to go to when in grief. Here the Great Spirit will take pity on us!

But, how different is our situation now, from what it was in those days! Then we were as happy as the buffalo on the plains—but now, we are as miserable as the hungry, howling wolf in the prairie! But I am digressing from my story. Bitter reflection crowds upon my mind, and must find utterance.