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
A short time after this, a party of Foxes went up to Prairie du Chien
to avenge the murder of their chiefs and relations, which had been
committed the summer previous, by the Menomonees and Sioux. When they
arrived in the vicinity of the encampment of the Menomonees, they met
with a Winnebago, and inquired for the Menomonee camp. They requested
him to go on before them and see if there were any Winnebagoes in it,
and if so, to tell them that they had better return to their own camp.
He went and gave the information, not only to the Winnebagoes, but to
the Menomonees, that they might be prepared. The party soon followed,
killed twenty-eight Menomonees, and made their escape.
This retaliation which with us is considered lawful and right, created
considerable excitement among the whites. A demand was made for
the Foxes to be surrendered to, and tried by, the white people.
The principal men came to me during the fall and asked my advice. I
conceived that they had done right, and that our Great Father acted very
unjustly in demanding them, when he had suffered all their chiefs to be
decoyed away, and murdered by the Menomonees, without ever having made a
similar demand of them. If he had no right in the first instance he had
none now, and for my part, I conceived the right very questionable, if
not an act of usurpation in any case, where a difference exists between
two nations, for him to interfere. The Foxes joined my band with the
intention to go out with them on the fall hunt.
About this time, Neapope, who started to Malden when it was ascertained
that the great war chief, General Gaines, was coming to remove us,
returned. He said he had seen the chief of our British Father, and asked
him if the Americans could force us to leave our village. He said: "If
you had not sold your land the Americans could not take your village
from you. That the right being vested in you only, could be transferred
by the voice and will of the whole nation, and that as you have never
given your consent to the sale of your country, it yet remains your
exclusive property, from which the American government never could force
you away, and that in the event of war, you should have nothing to fear,
as we would stand by and assist you."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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