Life of Black Hawk

Content Warning: This section references racist and violent actions committed by white people and the nations of the United States, France, Spain, and Great Britain.

Black Hawk’s account illustrates the causes that led him to war with the United States. The text illuminates the fragile nature of the treaties between the tribes and the American government and the early forms of Indigenous resistance to colonial expansion. It also illustrates the misleading and deceptive deals created by the white settlers. The Sauk participated in the fur trade and had contact mostly with the white traders. During that period, they had established trading relations with the French, the Spanish, and the British. Things changed after the Americans gained power. Although they dealt with severe colonialism before American independence, it worsened when America became the main force behind resettlement.

Colonialism had a profound impact on the lives of Indigenous peoples. Black Hawk mentions the repercussions of colonial contact: “Why did the Great Spirit ever send the whites to this island, to drive us from our homes, and introduce among us poisonous liquors, disease and death?” (23). Colonial expansion impacted the Sauk’s ability to sustain themselves. As the settlers occupied land, they excluded the Sauk from their fields. Black Hawk notes: “[F]amilies of whites had arrived at our village, and destroyed some of our lodges, and were making fences and dividing our corn-fields for their own use” (54-55). Black Hawk mentions that the white people had no right to come and live in Sauk land. Due to the settlers, the Sauk lost one of their main sources of food, as they could no longer plant corn. Soon, the tribe became hungry. Violent confrontations between Indigenous people and the settlers occurred often. Black Hawk mentions that a white man beat a Sauk woman cruelly as she tried to take “a few suckers of corn out of his field, to suck, when hungry” (56). Abuse of alcohol also became a problem for the Sauk. White officials offered whiskey to the Sauk during treaty negotiations to make them easy to convince, exploiting the Indigenous people’s intolerance to alcohol. As settlements multiplied, the Indigenous people were developing alcohol addictions. Black Hawk notes that several Sauk hunters that would sell their furs to settlements for whiskey and would return “with their families, almost naked, and without the means of getting any thing for them” (51). These encounters illustrate the exploitation of the Sauk people at the hands of the white settlers. Essentially all contact with white people is harmful to the Sauk people in this narrative; even the substances they bring with them are poisonous. For example, white people used alcohol as a means against the tribes. Black Hawk explains:

The white people brought whisky into our village, made our people drunk, and cheated them out of their horses, guns, and traps! This fraudulent system was carried to such an extent that I apprehended serious difficulties might take place, unless a stop was put to it (56).

As a result, they were also losing their ability to hunt. Lack of provisions was a key reason for the tribe’s inability to continue defending itself against colonization. The appearance of white settlers is completely destructive to the Sauk people and their way of life.

As a Sauk leader, Black Hawk followed several forms of resistance. However, colonialism also caused a rift within the tribe. Ke-o-kuck, another Sauk leader, thought that a compromise would be in the tribe’s best interest. Black Hawk notes: “We were a divided people, forming two parties” (61). The key principle of Indigenous resistance was the reverence for the land. Black Hawk’s main motive in supporting the British during the War of 1812 was the hope of maintaining his homeland and defending it against American expansion. The Treaty of 1804, by which the Sauk ceded their homeland to the United States, was the beginning of the tribe’s struggle. In his account, Black Hawk resents the injustice and foregrounds the responsibility of the white settlers: “I will leave it to the people of the United States to say, whether our nation was properly represented in this treaty?” (19). Throughout the narrative, Black Hawk insists that he never agreed to cede his homeland. He also embraced the strategy of nonviolent resistance. Black Hawk defended the tribe’s rights to American agents, but due to the tribe’s struggle with provisions he momentarily considered accepting removal. As the United States did nothing to help the tribe sustain itself, Black Hawk’s determination grew. However, he stresses that “[his] object was not war” (66). He exemplifies various forms of resistance against colonialism and indicates that war was a last resort. The emphasis of the tribe was on the land, and as the white settlers were destroying the land, and the Sauk culture in the process, Black Hawk and his people attempted to resist simply by remaining where they were. The white settlers then resorted to violence.

Before the outbreak of the Black Hawk War, the leader adopted a strategy of nonviolent resistance, ordering his warriors to not respond to the threats of the soldiers: “I now resolved to remain in my village, and make no resistance, if the military came, but submit to my fate!” (63). However, as the US army killed the men, Black Hawk sent to negotiate peace; he resolved to defend his homeland and nation being “forced into war” (78). Even after the tribe’s defeat in the war, Black Hawk never fully accepted the loss of his homeland. As a prisoner of the United States, Black Hawk still criticized white culture and did not accept the white way of life. To the end, Black Hawk maintained an Indigenous consciousness, and his will to write his own story illustrates a form of cultural resistance. He exemplifies various forms of resistance in this narrative, and his story is itself a fight against white colonialism. His goal is to tell his own story, resisting the narrative control imposed by white settlers on the Sauk people. He distrusted and rejected white people’s values: “I have no faith in their paths—but believe that every man must make his own path!” (50). An insightful leader, Black Hawk understood that colonial expansion would continue even after the tribe’s removal: “I am […] afraid, that in a few years, they will begin to drive and abuse our people. I may not live to see it, but I feel certain that the day is not distant” (94). Despite the losses his tribe suffered, Black Hawk wanted to counter the colonial mindset with his narration and assert his own historical and cultural experience.