Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black HawkBlack Hawk, Sauk chief
History
Autobiography of Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk
Black Hawk, Sauk chief
Black Hawk War, 1832; Black Hawk, Sauk chief, 1767-1838; Sauk Indians -- Biography
Some time after this occurrence, one of my camp cut a bee tree and
carried the honey to his lodge. A party of white men soon followed him,
and told him the bee tree was theirs, and that he had no right to cut
it. He pointed to the honey and told them to take it. They were not
satisfied with this, but took all the packs of skins that he had
collected during the winter, to pay his trader and clothe his family
with in the spring, and carried them off.
How could we like a people who treated us so unjustly? We determined to
break up our camp for fear they would do worse, and when we joined
our people in the spring a great many of them complained of similar
treatment.
This summer our agent came to live at Rock Island. He treated us well
and gave us good advice. I visited him and the trader very often during
the summer, and for the first time heard talk of our having to leave our
village. The trader, Colonel George Davenport, who spoke our language,
explained to me the terms of the treaty that had been made, and said
we would be obliged to leave the Illinois side of the Mississippi, and
advised us to select a good place for our village and remove to it in
the spring. He pointed out the difficulties we would have to encounter
if we remained at our village on Rock river. He had great influence with
the principal Fox chief, his adopted brother, Keokuk. He persuaded him
to leave his village, go to the west side of the Mississippi and build
another, which he did the spring following. Nothing was talked of but
leaving our village. Keokuk had been persuaded to consent to go, and was
using all his influence, backed by the war chief at Fort Armstrong and
our agent and trader at Rock Island, to induce others to go with him. He
sent the crier through our village, to inform our people that it was the
wish of our Great Father that we should remove to the west side of the
Mississippi, and recommended the Iowa river as a good place for the
new village. He wished his party to make such arrangements, before they
started on their winter's hunt, an to preclude the necessity of their
returning to the village in the spring.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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