Unluckily, General Harrison and his officers had rather lavish notions of hospitality; and when Black Hawk's decision was made known to the other chiefs, most of them were a great deal too drunk to know what they were agreeing to. The money was paid regularly enough, and, for some few years, whatever breaches of the treaty there were, were so trifling that the Government could easily wink at them. Black Hawk went about his hunting and his civil warfare and conducted himself as a respectable savage should. Then he got into bad hands. As the troubles of our own armies in India and the Soudan have shown, it is no uncommon thing to find peaceable men stirred to fighting frenzy by some maniac who makes it his business to cause as much strife as possible in the name of religion. A great prophet had arisen among the Indians--a Shawnee, in whose hands poor Black Hawk was wax; and who gave the redskins no rest till they crossed the river in a body, and swept eastwards as far as Michigan, driving the handful of white settlers back and back to the towns from which they had come. This was in 1811. In the following year, now thoroughly persuaded that he and all the chiefs and all the white subscribers to the treaty were drunk when it was signed, and that it was no longer binding, Black Hawk pressed on into Michigan as far as Detroit. This was more than human patience could stand; the white citizens turned out, and drove away the Indians with such slaughter that their leader was only too glad to draw off. For four years he confined his attacks to petty farm raids, and, in 1816, signed another treaty, which was followed by fourteen years of comparative peace, though Black Hawk and a few of his supporters refused to retire across the river again. By 1830 the States Government, realising its folly in having allowed any deviation from the strict terms of the agreement, obliged Black Hawk to sign another, by which every acre of land east of the river became white property. It was now that the real trouble began. The Indian chief was growing old, losing his former promptness of action, and becoming more and more a slave to the Shawnee prophet's counsels. During the fourteen years that he had been practically defying the Government, he and his immediate adherents had begun to farm a little; and just now their crops were ripening, and harvest-time was almost due. When the order came for him to leave the neighbourhood he lost his head or his temper, refused to stir, and threatened with death anyone who dared to interfere with him. A week later he returned from his hunting to find some white labourers calmly ploughing up his crops and parcelling out his land. There was a brief scuffle, and the whites were obliged to flee, and thus opened the last period of the war.