Native American Heritage Month – Sauk removal

 

 

http://www.apstudynotes.org/us-history/topics/indian-removal/

This is a quote from the above link.  My comments follow the quote.

“The Sac (Sauk), and Fox tribes of Illinois and Wisconsin were also affected by the Indian Removal Act. One Sac chief signed a treaty abandoning Indian lands east of the Mississippi, and he moved the tribes to Iowa. Chief Black Hawk, however, along with a faction from the tribes, revolted against forced removal from the land of their ancestors. In 1832, they returned to their Illinois lands and conducted a campaign of raids and ambushes. The United States Army responded and violently suppressed what the government considered an Indian insurrection. Black Hawk was captured and imprisoned in St. Louis in 1833. Among the regular army troops involved in this action was Lieutenant Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, while Captain Abraham Lincoln served with the Illinois volunteers. Thirty years later these two men would head the Confederate and Union governments during the Civil War”

Chief Black Hawk’s autobiography gives a bit more information on the above mentioned treaty.   Black Hawk sent two braves, one of which may have been a chief to St. Louis to speak with the white man’s government and military.   There had been problems between white settlers moving on Sauk territory.  Whites stole from the crop of the Sauk.  Naturally there was fighting, as the Sauk were defending their homeland.   The government officials got the two Sauk tribal members drunk and got them to agree to give up the territory east of the Mississippi, around the present day Rock Island area.   Black Hawk did not recognize the treaty as being honest because the two were intoxicated by the deceitful white men.  He also stated they did not have the authority to enter into a treaty without the approval of the Sauk tribal leaders.

The white man’s government stole the land from the Sauk and forced them across the river into Iowa.  Also, the raids the quote above speaks of, was the Sauk, led by Black Hawk back across the Mississippi to reclaim the land that was theirs and stolen from them.

A great deal can be written with different words and interpretations according to how the author wants to portray the story, even,  especially history.    Many history books have a different  accounting of the facts, it all depends on what the writers want the reader to believe.