It was a fraud upon the simple Indians: the old treaty was a great lie, and the signatures it purported to have, made with marks and primitive devices, were not attached in good faith, and were not the names of honest Sacs. No: he would go over the river, he would have his own; the voice of the Great Spirit was in the air wherever he went; it was in his lodge through all the night-time, and it said "Go;" and Black Hawk must needs rise up and tell the people what the voice said. 1 Schoolcraft's History of the Indian Tribes. It was by such arguments as these that Black Hawk easily persuaded the Sacs. But hostilities by the Sacs alone would be a hopeless adventure. He must find allies. He looked first to their kindred, the Foxes, who had precisely the same cause of war with the Sacs, and after them to the Winnebagoes, Sioux, Kickapoos, and many others. That Black Hawk was a wise and valiant leader, all the Indians conceded; and his proposals were heard by some of the tribes with eagerness, and by all of them with respect. At one time his confederacy embraced nine tribes,--the most formidable in the North-west, if we exclude the Sioux and the Chippewas, who were themselves inclined to accede. Early in 1831, the first chief of the Chippewas exhibited a miniature tomahawk, red with vermilion, which, having been accepted from Black Hawk, signified an alliance between them; and away up at Leech. Lake, an obscure but numerous band showed some whites a few British medals painted in imitation of blood, which meant that they were to follow the war-paths of Black Hawk. In 1831 Black Hawk had crossed the river in small force, but had retired before the advance of Gen. Gaines, commanding the United States post at Rock Island. He then promised to remain on the other side, and to keep quiet for the future. But early in the spring of 1832 he re-appeared with greater numbers, pushed straight into the Rock-river Valley, and said he had "come to plant corn." He was now sixty-seven years of age: he thought his great plots were all ripe, and his allies fast and true. They would fight a few bloody battles, and then he would sit down in his old age and see the corn grow where he had seen it in his youth. But the old chief reckoned too much upon Indian fidelity: he committed the fatal error of trusting to their patriotism instead of their interests. Gen. Atkinson, now in command at Rock Island, set the troops in motion: the governor issued his call for volunteers; and, as the Indians by this time had committed some frightful barbarities, the blood of the settlers was boiling, and the regiments were almost instantly filled with the best possible material. So soon as these facts became known, the allies of Black Hawk, both the secret and the open, fell away from him, and left him, with the Sacs and the Foxes, to meet his fate.