He refused to cross the Mississippi because he was meanly jealous of Keokuk and his influence and because of his hatred of the Americans, and not because of fealty to any principle. He considered every argument of his friends to mean that his removal meant his absorption as an attraction. Removal west, with Keokuk above him, meant desuetude and dry rot for his schemes. He preferred being a small quarreler to being none at all, and he remained. The Indian inclosures were made with stakes driven into the ground, to which poles were transversely laid and tied with strips of bark. When the crop of 1830 had been planted within these enclosures, or otherwise, the Indians left for a summer hunt. Returning when the corn was in the milk, it was gathered and their horses were turned into the fields. The aftermath of those meagerly cropped fields was uninviting while the ripening grain of the whites was near at hand, and, without any ceremony, the slight fences were trampled down and the grain of the white man more or less consumed or destroyed. A casual glance at this state of things would disclose no premeditation on the part of the Indians to molest the whites, but the whites complained and seem to have proven beyond all doubt that the Indians, finding they could harass the whites by these tactics, carried them a little further, until they secretly drove horses into the fields and upon various occasions killed the live stock of the whites. The correspondence entire upon the subject, as found in public document No. 2 of the proceedings of the Twenty-second Congress, first session, is scattered along through this chapter. These depredations continued until autumn, when Black Hawk and his band departed on their winter’s hunt. By way of experiment, a compromise for the year 1830 was attempted whereby the whites and Indians were to try to live together in peace, but the antagonistic natures of both made success impossible and the attempt was abandoned, with the determination by the whites that if Black Hawk annoyed them in their future efforts to develop their farms his actions would be met with resistance and his removal by force demanded of the authorities. In the spring of 1831 the Indians returned to find the whites prepared to resist them. Black Hawk’s wick-a-up was occupied. This act brought his contention to a climax, as might have been expected, by openly attempting the destruction of property. This he did without molesting the owner, adroitly provoking the Americans to menace and possibly force him to assume an attitude of defense of Indian rights and the “graves of his fathers.” On April 30, 1831, the following letter was sent to Governor Reynolds, setting forth grievances, and signed by a numerical force which should command attention from any executive: “April 30, 1831. “His Excellency, the Governor of the State of Illinois: