France and Spain, both with colonial possessions to the west, while gratified to see England stripped of her possessions, were suspected of aiding the design of the British to restrict American settlements to the shores of the Atlantic. Spain claimed exclusive ownership of the Mississippi and commerce upon her waters by Americans was prohibited. The “dark and bloody ground” of Kentucky, long the scene of carnage, was made the first scene of British intrigue, where the atrocities of the Indians were the most frightful in history. The tribes of Ohio and Indiana, which were in the league, penetrated the settlements of the whites, deluging the land with the blood of innocent women and children. The Government, hopelessly involved with debt and graver questions of state, could offer the struggling settlers no relief, and thus alone they were forced to stand in hourly fear of butchery. They grew to look for no help save in their own resources, and yearly meeting with defiance, a pioneer community of militant husbandmen gradually grew and moved westward; instinctively taught to rush to arms upon the breaking of a twig or the rustle of a leaf in defense of their defenseless loved ones in the cabin. When, therefore, Black Hawk lent a willing ear to the British agent, accepted his presents and performed his murderous behests, which he did, he should have expected the awful consequences of defeat and annihilation which followed his years of hypocrisy, and accepted the Government’s final requital with gratitude, or at least Indian stolidity, instead of snarling at his fate and constantly bewailing the elevation of others over him who had loyally stood by the Americans and their Government in perilous times. He invited destruction and was destroyed. The attention of the student is directed to this phase of Black Hawk’s character as it develops in these pages down to his defeat, August 2d, 1832.