Redefining the Legacy of a Warrior and Critic: Black Hawk and the Quad Cities

By Jason Pacanowski '19, Plainfield, Ill., business administration-marketing, English-writing emphasis; Senior Inquiry project

Anyone who has spent time in or around the Quad Cities has likely seen the name or face of Black Hawk, the legendary Sauk warrior, somewhere around town. For someone who died nearly two hundred years ago, his presence in the region is nearly ubiquitous; roadways, parks, and businesses in the area all grace his name, and the image of the resplendent Native American Chief clothed in traditional garb has stared down countless passers-by of any of the numerous Black Hawk Banks for years. As time has passed, the memories of his status as a warrior fighting for his home, a critic of the treatment of Native Americans by whites, and as a pervading figure in the negotiation of Native American cultural identity have faded as Black Hawk came to be regarded as a cultural symbol for the Quad Cities. The fact that someone like Black Hawk, with a legacy once thought of as problematic and complex for whites, has now become a cultural symbol for the area that settlers first took from his people is emblematic of the serious redefinition that his legacy has undergone in the years since his death. Despite his status as a familiar cultural icon, Black Hawk’s history as a warrior who fought against the United States and as a critic of white culture presents a complex legacy that does not fit in with the kind of 20^th century narrative of the idealized Native American or the pacified modern symbol of the Quad cities represented in local literature like George Cram Cook’s The Spring.

Before any discussion can be had about Black Hawk as a cultural symbol or author, one must understand his role as a warrior fighting against the United States that first became defined by his participation in the war of 1812 fighting for the British. Patrick Jung, in his essay Toward the Black Hawk War, described the sentiment of Native peoples during this time as an important precursor toward Black Hawk’s eventual involvement in the 1832 conflict named after him, saying that “from at least the 1790s onward, the Sauk and to a lesser degree the Fox developed a set of anti-American attitudes that ensured their participation on the side of the British during the war of 1812,” a sentiment that was heavily influenced by the treacherous nature of white people’s interactions with Native Americans and the massive influx of settlers moving into the area surrounding the then-western border of the United States (Jung 28). In his autobiography, Black Hawk points to an 1804 treaty as one of the major precursors to his tribe’s involvement in the war on the side of the British, saying that, “by that treaty, all our country, east of the Mississippi, and south of the Jeffreon, was ceded to the United States” by four members of the tribe who had been “kept drunk the greater part of the time” that they were negotiating it (Black Hawk 19). Jung remarks on the irregularity of this treaty, saying that “land-cession treaties normally involved the entire tribal leadership, not a five-man delegation”, and that “the available evidence suggests that the delegates believed the treaty ceded only a small tract of land north of St. Louis where no permanent villages stood; they certainly did not believe they had sold any lands north of the Rock River” (Jung 30). This act of deceptions was merely the first of many more to come.

As tensions built up in the region between Native Americans looking to maintain their claim to their homelands, the Americans making moves towards expanding their territory westward such as building forts, and the British looking to protect their holdings in Canada from American imposition, pressure was increasing on Black Hawk, the war chief of the Sauk tribe. The question of war breaking out was increasingly looking like a question of when, rather than if. When rumors reached Black Hawk that war between the British and Americans was now inevitable, he remarked to readers with his own emphases that “I had not made up my mind whether to join the British band or remain neutral. I had not discovered one good trait in the character of the Americans that had come to the country! They made fair promises, but never fulfilled them! Whilst the British made but few—but we could always rely upon their word!” (Black Hawk 22). One of these broken American promises served as the first instance of Black Hawk striving to remain peaceful until the behavior of white Americans forced him to do otherwise. American traders refused to honor the word of President James Madison who promised the Sauk tribe that they would be able to purchase goods on credit to prepare for the winter, causing Black Hawk to “seethe with discontent” and declare for the British (Jung 40). The alliance produced a fair amount of military success that included the expulsion of American forces from strategically-placed forts as well as the successful defense of the Saukenuk village. However, the alliance between Black Hawk’s band and the British would be cut short, as “continued [political] instability in Europe” led the British to seek a diplomatic end to the conflict that “only required the United States to return to the status quo antebellum and make peace with the tribes” (Jung 45). Despite a measure of military success against the United States, the Native American combatants of the war had gained stunningly little. It was due to this military success, however, that the “anti-American members” of the combative tribes such as Black Hawk had “became the ascendant voices in the tribal councils” (Jung 45-46). The ascendancy of Black Hawk’s anti-American ideals combined with the learned expectation of military success would prove significant in the war to come.

Just as a deception by Americans had pushed Black Hawk beyond his ability to remain a peaceful nonparticipant in the war of 1812, so too did a deception push Black Hawk and his band of warriors to war again in 1832. Unbeknownst to Black Hawk, the treaty he had signed at the end of the war of 1812 dictated that whenever the United States decided it was time to do so, Black Hawk and the Sauk tribe would be forced to relinquish all claims on their native lands and remove themselves across the Mississippi river into Iowa. In 1828, the United States did just that, issuing orders to the Sauk tribe to vacate their lands. While the majority of the Sauk tribe complied with this request, casting their lot with the diplomatically-minded Sauk leader Keokuk, Black Hawk and a group of warriors could not abide by what they say as yet another deception by the Americans. In 1831, they made their first move against this incursion by the United States by crossing the Mississippi from Iowa back into Saukenuk village. Black Hawk informs readers of his autobiography his logic behind this move, saying that “as myself and my band had no agency in selling our country…we could not be forced away” (Black Hawk 61). General Edmund P. Gaines of St. Louis refused to negotiate any change in the financial compensation for the land, ordering Black Hawk off the land without honoring even the stipulation that the Sauks could collect their own corn for the coming winter. It was this act from Gaines, along with information that Black Hawk had received from one of his closest advisors, Napope, that irrevocably pushed his band past the point of being able to maintain peace.

In his autobiography, Black Hawk details the advice he received from his advisor, saying that Napope told him at this juncture “that all the different tribes…would fight for us, if necessary, and the British would support us” (Black Hawk 68). It was with this expectation of both incoming British and Native American support that Black Hawk and his band broke off from Keokuk’s majority that had acquiesced to American commands, moving north up the Rock River. Jung details this important moment, saying that “as Black Hawk traveled up the Rock River, Napope’s promises began to unravel. Other tribes had no intention of supporting him, and no British goods were waiting at Milwaukee. Tragically, Black Hawk decided to turn back just as his warriors made contact with the Illinois Militia on May 14, 1832. With this event, known as the battle of Stillman’s run, the Black Hawk War began” (Jung 51). After his warriors forced the grossly unorganized militia to retreat, Black Hawk—knowing he was outnumbered and at a severe disadvantage—requested peace from his pursuers. The request, however, was unmet. “I had resolved upon giving up the war—and sent a flag of peace to the American war chief—expecting, as a matter of right, reason and justice, that our flag would be respected…Yet, instead of this honourable course which I have always practiced in war, I was forced into WAR, with about five hundred warriors, to contend against three or four thousand!” (Black Hawk 78). This refusal to grant his request for a peaceable solution would serve as the final example of Black Hawk striving for peace until the actions of white people forced him and his band into war. With his request refused, Black Hawk and his band attempted a desperate escape back across the Mississippi River into Iowa when they were intercepted by American forces. The resulting confrontation is known as the Battle of Bad Axe, but can more accurately be described as a massacre. Despite attempts by the group to surrender, American forces killed an estimated four hundred warriors, women, children, and elderly, captured Black Hawk, and shipped him to a prison camp in St. Louis. Over the next few months, Black Hawk would be the subject of much public interest as he was taken on a tour of the eastern United States as a captive, all at the bequest of President Andrew Jackson. Looking to both convince the public of his success managing the problem of Indian removal as well as to convince Black Hawk of the futility of his resistance against such a large and powerful nation, this tour served as the stepping stone towards Black Hawk’s growth from just a famous Native American warrior to someone who would eventually hold a true literary and cultural legacy. With the conclusion of the last armed conflict ever to be fought between Native Americans and the United States, the cultural frontier had begun its shift from battles fought over territory to battles fought over the Native American’s place in modern society, and Black Hawk’s soon-to-come autobiography would play one of the first key roles.

After returning from his tour in which he learned, among many other things, the importance of written word to the culture of white people, Black Hawk set about the creation of his autobiography. This biography was revolutionary in a number of ways, but the most immediate aspect of it that stood out was the criticisms it had to offer about the treatment of Native peoples and Indian removal in general. During this time period, ethnocentric narratives regarding the issue of dealing with Native Americans, like President Andrew Jackson’s 1837 farewell address in which he deemed removal to be the only “hope that [Native Americans] will share in the blessings of civilization” (Morris), pervaded heavily in the United States. The conflicts with and removal of Native Americans were seen by those somewhat sympathetic to their plight as an inevitability in the cultural advancement of America or, from those who subscribed to the more aggressive social Darwinist perspective, an inferior culture being overtaken by a superior one. Black Hawk’s autobiography challenged both of these narratives with its biting criticisms of whites on the basis of a multitude of factors, one of the most prominent being the deceptive manner in which white people would interact with Natives. The providing of alcohol to Native Americans to the point of detriment was essential to many of these kinds of deceptions. Black Hawk states that “The white people brought whisky into our village, made our people drunk, and cheated them out of their horses, guns, and traps! This fraudulent system was carried to such an extent that I apprehended serious difficulties might take place, unless a stop was put to it” (Black Hawk 56). Even when admonished by tribe leaders such as Black Hawk that the imported alcohol was causing ruin amongst the Natives as essential goods, pelts, and winter food stores were traded for it, the corrupting influence of peddling alcohol to a culture of people wholly unfamiliar with its ruinous effects could not be curbed.

Another way in which Black Hawk criticized whites in a way not ever heard before in the ethnocentrically-dominated discourse of Native-settler relations was for their hypocritical tendencies in the face of their Christian religion. Upon his return to his own people after his extended eastern tour, Black Hawk tells readers that “from my intercourse with the whites, I have learned that one great principle of their religion is, ‘to do unto others as you wish them do unto you!’…the settlers on our frontiers and on our lands, seem never to think of it, if we are to judge by their actions” (Black Hawk 90). With one of the most prominent justifications for the westward expansion of the United States being that it was the path God had ordained for the nation, Black Hawk’s criticisms of white people on the basis of this very religion cut to the core of his problems with their beliefs. With this criticism, he points out the idea of expanding westward in order to secure a new homeland for settlers and greater prosperity for the nation in general ran counter to this so-called golden rule; namely, that in doing so, whites were stealing the very same thing from the Native Americans like Black Hawk who were already there.

The third, and perhaps most radical criticism of whites that Black Hawk had to offer was on what he saw as their inherently violent nature. Black Hawk tells readers that “Our people were treated badly by the whites on many occasions. At one time, a white man beat one of our women cruelly, for pulling a few suckers of corn out of his field, to suck, when hungry! At another time, one of our young men was beat with clubs by two white men for opening a fence which crossed our road, to take his horse through. His shoulder blade was broken, and his body badly bruised, from which he soon after died!” (Black Hawk 57). The radical nature of these accusations comes not strictly from what Black Hawk accuses the whites of doing, but from the fact that existing in a perpetual state of violence and war was the main criticism many white people had to offer about Native Americans. “War was their native element,” says William Salter when talking about Native Americans in his heavily ethnocentric account of the settlement of Iowa, published in 1903; “the ideal of savage life” (Salter 185). Black Hawk presents a startingly different case here. At best, white people are no less violent than these so-called “Indian savages”; at worst, they are looked down upon by the supposedly more war-like race as hopelessly, inherently, evilly violent people. In either case, this kind of criticism coming from a Native American was unprecedented in American literature up to this point in history. Laura Mielke encapsulates this point in her article Native to the Question, saying that “Time and again [Black Hawk] reverses the known order of savagery and civilization; Native Americans, who practice forbearance, prize their families, value emotion, and revere burial grounds, follow more closely the recognized Christian ethic than do their Christian enemies” (Mielke). By offering these kinds of criticisms, Black Hawk was one of the pioneers in establishing a Native American perspective on the literary discourse surrounding westward expansion and Indian removal. His direct criticisms of the behavior of whites put him outside the literary norms of the subject that existed at the time, and left readers to grapple with ideas that challenged the narrative that his people were an inferior group suffering from a more or less inevitable disappearance.

After his autobiography was published, Black Hawk’s history as a warrior who fought against the United States and as an author who was highly critical of the majority group of its citizens presented a deeply complex legacy that would have to undergo much redefinition before he would come to be regarded as a pacified and familiar cultural symbol of the Quad Cities. One of the major steps of this process was a renewal of interest in Native American culture and history that occurred on a national level around the turn of the 19^th century in the United States. Worried about the effects that modern, industrialized life might have on America and its people, a broad element of society had come to embrace Native American culture as a sort of pastoralized ideal of American life. “Instead of envisioning Indians as the archnemesis of civilization,” Clyde Ellis states, “middle-class Americans were embracing Indian lore for serious reasons and often in serious ways”, thinking that “Indian culture might be the ‘disinfectant’ for the modern world” (Ellis 4). Rapid industrialization and urbanization in the period after the Civil War had radically transformed America: agriculture’s share of the labor force had “dropped from 48 percent in 1870 to 27 percent in 1920,” with 51.2 percent of American citizens living in towns of 2,500 or more by 1920. A radical change had occurred in a remarkably short period of time, and many Americans had deep anxieties about what sort of effects this new kind of life would have on the nation. These anxieties played out through the process of a societal redefinition of Native American legacy that reflected the issues weighing heavy on many American’s minds, shifting mainstream opinion on them from that of inferior savages to a something of a cultural ideal that would have something to teach modern Americans.  

Amidst the process of mainstream America redefining Native American’s legacies on a national level, so too was the legacy of Black Hawk undergoing a process of redefinition on the local level. As a city like Davenport underwent the same kind of rapid industrialization and urbanization that Ellis holds up as precursors to a renewed interest in the Native American lifestyle, many of its citizens saw their own representative of the new idea of the idealized Native American as Black Hawk. Michael Tavel Clarke, in his article detailing the resurgence of historical interest in Black Hawk and Native Americans in general in the Illinois and Iowa area, said that “by 1900, fearing the loss of the region’s ‘ancient’ history and the social cohesion it provided, various individuals and groups worked to preserve its memory…even if that meant re-inscribing it on a landscape that would have appeared wholly alien to the people whose lives were being commemorated” (Clarke 2). Black Hawk’s legacy as a warrior who fought against the United States and as a vocal critic of the majority group of its citizens presented a much more problematic legacy for historical revivalists to grapple with than did most agents of renewed interest in Native American culture. For Black Hawk to become the local symbol of Native Americans and their culture, these issues had to be addressed. Clarke illustrates how historical revivalists faced this dilemma when putting up markers at prominent historical sites around Illinois when he says, “Honoring a man who had ‘invaded’ the state, fought a war against its citizens, and who had been permanently banished from it seems unlikely to cultivate civic pride. Nor would the markers promote ‘better citizenship’ if they appeared too sympathetic to Black Hawk and portrayed the Illinois settlers as the aggressors. The creators of these markers could not ignore Black Hawk, but they wanted to bring him into their Illinois history on their own terms, not validate a potentially troubling counter-narrative” (Clarke 244). Rather than address head-on the problematic legacy of Black Hawk in terms of the new narrative on Native Americans as well as the historical iniquities of the process of Indian removal, revivalists of Native culture chose to gloss over these issues so as to be able to use the pacified, non-controversial idea of Black Hawk as a means towards preserving the “history” of the area and the “social cohesion” that came with it.

The process of redefining Black Hawk’s legacy into that of a pacified symbol of the Quad Cities was also being carried out in literature coming out of the area. One example of literature that participated in this process was Davenport author George Cram Cook’s The Spring. The first act of this play focuses on a near-fatal attack committed on Black Hawk by a group of white scouts near his village of Sauk-e-nauk, particularly from a man named Elijah Robbins. The depiction of the white scouts initially falls in line with Black Hawk’s portrayal of his encounters with white settlers in his autobiography, making them out to be the aggressors whose actions push Black Hawk past the point of inaction. However, the way in which Black Hawk chooses to respond to this aggression is where historical accuracy ends, and the redefinition of a warrior and his troublesome legacy begins. After Elijah Robbins twice attacks Black Hawk and is twice disarmed, he is pressured by his son, daughter, and the village crier to inflict punishment on this man; however, he refuses to heed these suggestions, saying that “The Father of us both did not save my life from him to have me take his life” (Cook 21). This initial response echoes a lesson from his autobiography that Black Hawk says he wishes white men would learn from his people: “to use forbearance when injured” (Black Hawk 57). Black Hawk’s nonviolent response to the acts of the white aggressor speak to this sense of forbearance, but the next step that George Cram Cook has his depiction of Black Hawk take crosses the line from things the man might reasonably have done to something designed to redefine who he was in order to pacify him to modern audiences. After telling his daughter, son, and village crier that he will not commit violence against this man, Black Hawk takes things a step forward, offering Robbins a chance to smoke from the sacred peace Pipe of the Sauk nation and telling the crier to proclaim to all the village, “Hear, oh men and women of the Sauks, Elijah Robbins is your brother—adopted into the Sauk nation as the son of Black Hawk” (Cook 25). While Black Hawk’s forbearance not to commit a violent act against his would-be aggressor loosely fits in with what he had to say in his autobiography, his willingness to adopt as a son the man who had shortly ago tried to murder him in cold blood and told him to his face that he “did not think of him as a man”, but only “as—a savage” goes beyond any reasonable action to assign to his character (Cook 22). For a man who throughout his autobiography showed himself to be willing to commit to violence when he felt that the actions of whites left him no choice otherwise to be portrayed as willing to adopt a representation of these aggressors as his own son is emblematic of the kind of pacifistic redefinition that Black Hawk’s legacy was subject to during the time of the resurgence in interest in Native American culture. 

For Black Hawk to become the familiar symbol seen all over the Quad Cities that he is today, his history as a warrior who fought against the Unites States and as a vocal critic of the white people who settled into his homeland that is supported by his own autobiography had to be reconciled. His legacy represented an imperfect canvas on which historical revivalists and authors like George Cram Cook had to paint the picture of an idealized, pacified Native American. Historical revivalists worked with this canvas by glossing over Black Hawk’s participation in war against white settlers, presenting him as much as possible as a generic Native Chief whose biggest significance to the area was merely that it was where his tribe was from. Literary revivalists like Cook depicted Black Hawk as a pacifist willing to forgive the transgressions of whites no matter what injustice they committed against him, even when his own autobiography seems to contradict these claims. Understanding how Black Hawk’s legacy was redefined during the time of renewed interest in Native Americans during the turn of the 19^th century is key to understanding how his name and image became such a ubiquitous presence around the Quad Cities.

Works Cited

In order of appearance:

Jung, Patrick J. “Toward the Black Hawk War: The Sauk and Fox Indians and the War of 1812.” Michigan Historical Review, vol. 38, no. 1, Spring 2012, pp. 27–52. EBSCOhost, doi:10.5342/michhistrevi.38.1.0027.

Hawk, Black. Life of Black Hawk, or Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak. Edited by J. Gerald. Kennedy, Penguin Books, 2008.

Morris, Michael. “Georgia and the Conversation over Indian Removal.” Georgia Historical Quarterly, vol. 91, no. 4, Winter 2007, pp. 403–423. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=27955256&site=ehost-live.

“Iowa in Unorganized Territory of the United States.” Annals of Iowa, vol. 6, no. 3, Oct. 1903, pp. 185–205. EBSCOhost, doi:10.17077/0003-4827.2935.

Mielke, Laura L. “‘native to the Question’: William Apess, Black Hawk, and the Sentimental Context of Early Native American Autobiography.” American Indian Quarterly, vol. 26, no. 2, Spring 2002, pp. 246–270. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1353/aiq.2003.0023.

ELLIS, CLYDE. “'More Real than the Indians Themselves": The Early Years of the Indian Lore Movement in the United States.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, vol. 58, no. 3, Sept. 2008, pp. 3–22. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ahl&AN=41552523&site=ehost-live.

TAVEL CLARKE, MICHAEL1. “The New Modernist Studies, Anthropology, and N. Scott Momaday’s The Way to Rainy Mountain.” Texas Studies in Literature & Language, vol. 59, no. 3, Fall 2017, pp. 385–420. EBSCOhost, doi:10.7560/TSLL59306.

Cook, George Cram. The Spring, a Play. E. Benn Limited, 1925.