Black Hawk War

Black Hawk War conflict between the Sac and Fox and the United States in 1832. After the War of 1812, whites settling the Illinois country exerted pressure on the Native Americans. A treaty of 1804, which had no real claim to validity, provided for removal of the Sac and Fox W of the Mississippi. A Native American leader, Black Hawk (1767-1838), who was born in the Sac village near the site of present Rock Island, Ill., and who had fought for the British in the War of 1812, denounced the treaty and resisted removal. Years of intermittent skirmishing followed. In 1831 the whites used force to impose a new treaty that compelled the Native Americans to retire from their lands. In Apr., 1832, Black Hawk, with some 400 braves and their families, returned to Illinois. Not receiving the support he expected, he admitted defeat, but when one of the peaceful emissaries he sent was shot down in cold blood, the outraged Black Hawk successfully attacked a larger white force, then retired into what is now Wisconsin. A large force of volunteers was gathered under Gen. Henry Atkinson . The last battle of the war took place on the Bad Axe River, where Black Hawk was attacked by these troops and a Sioux war party. Trapped, he displayed a white flag, but this was ignored and almost all of his band, including women and children, were wiped out. Black Hawk himself escaped, surrendered to the Winnebago, was turned over for imprisonment, and was released in 1833 to return to the pitiful remnant of his tribe and his family in Iowa. Lorado Taft's colossal statue (1911) near Oregon, Ill., has come to be known as the Black Hawk Monument.

Bibliography: See his autobiography (1833; ed. by D. Jackson, 1955); C. Cole, I Am a Man: The Indian Black Hawk (1938).

Black Hawk War (1832) the final armed resistance of the Indian tribes of the Old Northwest to the encroachment of white settlers on their lands east of the Mississippi River. The conflict began in April 1832 when some 2,000 Sauk (Sac) and Mesquakie (Fox) Indians led by the Sauk chief, Black Hawk, disavowed an 1804 treaty and moved from Iowa east across the Mississippi into northwestern Illinois. The movement of Black Hawk's band led to the mobilization of militia forces and the deployment of the U.S. 6th Infantry, commanded by Col. Henry Atkinson, from Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, into Illinois in pursuit of the Indians. Fighting began on May 14, 1832, when the Indians trying to parley were attacked by militiamen. Throughout the summer of 1832, Black Hawk's followers raided white settlements and were pursued by the Army and the militia. They were finally cornered and decisively defeated at the mouth of the Bad Axe River on August 2.

Black Hawk War (1832) A war against the Sauk and Fox Native Americans. Between the LOUISIANA PURCHASE and the 1830s, there was steady pressure from White settlers to remove the remaining Native Americans east of the Mississippi to the new territory, and Native American land rights were eaten away by a series of enforced treaties. In 1831, the Sauk and Fox Native Americans, led by Chief Black Hawk, were forced by the local militia to retreat across the Mississippi into Missouri. In the following year, threatened by famine and hostile Sioux, the Sauk and Fox recrossed the river to plant corn. When they refused to comply with the local military commander's order to leave, a brief war broke out in which the starving Sauk and Fox were gradually driven back, before being trapped and massacred near the mouth of the Red Axe River in early August. Black Hawk's defeat and death allowed the final loss of Native American land rights east of the Mississippi in favour of the White settlers.