"This pipe was given me a few years after you were born, Auguste, by Jumping Fish, who even then was one of the civil chiefs of the Sauk and Fox. It is the sign of an agreement between our family and the Sauk and Fox, fully understood and freely entered into by both sides." Auguste looked in wonderment from Pierre to Elysee, and Grandpapa nodded solemnly. Elysee said, "We had spent years exploring the more unsettled parts of the Illinois Territory, and we had decided that here was the land we wanted as our family seat in the New World. In 1809 we bought this land for a dollar an acre at the Federal land office in Kaskaskia. Thirty thousand dollars. The Federal government claimed that the Sauk and Fox had signed a treaty a few years earlier with Governor William Henry Harrison, selling fifty-one million acres, including all of northern Illinois, to the United States for a little over two thousand dollars, a shockingly paltry sum." Pierre said, "But we knew that the Sauk and Fox disputed that claim." Auguste said, "Yes, Black Hawk says Harrison cheated the Sauk and Fox. He says the chiefs who signed the treaty were drunk and could not speak English or read or write it, and did not know what they were agreeing to when they made their marks. He says that anyway those chiefs had no permission from the tribe to sell any land." "Exactly," said Elysee. "And we wanted to live in peace with the Sauk and Fox. And that was why your father went to Saukenuk. We hoped to make reasonable payments for the land we would live on to those from whom it had been taken." Pierre said, "I was still there with your mother, by my own choice, when war broke out in 1812, and then they required me to stay with them. You were already two years old. After the war, and after I left them, I sent the Sauk and Fox chiefs what they asked for--thirty thousand dollars, partly in coin and partly in trade goods, knives, steel axes, tin pots and kettles, blankets and bolts of cloth, rifles and barrels of gunpowder, bags of bullets. So, we paid for this land twice over. Despite that, I think it is far more valuable still than all the money we spent for it. The chiefs recognize our right to live on the land and use it. And Jumping Fish gave me this calumet, and I gave him a fine Kentucky long rifle with brass and silver inlay on the barrel and stock." Auguste nodded eagerly. "Yes, yes, I've seen it. Jumping Fish uses it to shoot the first buffalo every winter to start the hunt." "And I gave Black Hawk the compass your war chief still treasures, from which I received my Sauk name." "Yes." Auguste looked across Pierre's bed and out the windows, of costly clear glass shipped from Philadelphia, that gave a view south across grass-covered prairie. Once all that prairie belonged to my people, he thought. As if knowing his thoughts, Pierre said, "I did not say the Sauk and Fox sold us the land. I said they recognized our right to use it. Do you understand?"