Fitzroy never met his protégés again; but, in 1842, Captain Sulivan, who was cruising off the island, fell in with a British whaling skipper, and he told him that his men had seen a native woman who spoke excellent English. This could have been no other than Fuegia. CHAPTER VIII THE END OF THE "BLACK HAWK" WAR Some allowance ought surely to be made for a man who is condemned to go through life with such a name as Muckkertamesheckkerkerk; and, to do the United States Government justice, the gentleman so styled seems to have been treated with a good deal of patience and lenity. "Black Hawk" (to give him at once the name by which he is better known in American history) was an Indian chief who contrived to be as much a thorn in the flesh of the white rulers of his country as--let us say--some of the Welsh princes were in that of our Plantagenet kings. He was born in 1767, and by the time he was fifteen had so distinguished himself in war and in hunting that he became a recognised brave of his tribe--the Sac and Fox. Up till the year 1804 the new republic could afford to ignore the deeds and misdeeds of this renowned patriot, for he confined most of his energies to warfare with the Cherokees and Osages--sub-tribes of the Iroquois; but, as white civilisation continued to push westward, it became necessary either to conciliate or to subdue those who stood in the way of its progress. At first conciliation did not appear difficult. General Harrison invited Black Hawk--now a man of four-and-thirty, and the recognised champion of all the Algonquin Indian tribes--to appear at St. Louis, in order to discuss the question of boundaries, and to enter into a treaty which would be of mutual benefit. Black Hawk came, and with him a host of tributary chiefs--Shawnees, Blackfeet, Sacs and Foxes, etc. The American General's proposals were fair and to the point. The redskins were to renounce all claim to about seven hundred miles of land east of the Mississippi, in return for an annual payment of a thousand dollars. A couple of hundred pounds as rental for a strip of land some eight hundred miles long sounds ridiculous enough to us, unless we bear in mind that the Indians were merely asked to keep to the other side of the river; they were not giving up towns or houses or cultivated lands; they were receiving what--to them--meant a very substantial income, in return for their migrating to far better hunting-grounds in Iowa and Minnesota. Black Hawk solemnly agreed to the contract, with--we must believe--every intention of keeping his word.