Part 6 (1/2)
”Would you know where I was born? I will tell you. It was at the Sac village on Rock River. This was, according to white man's reckoning, in the year 1767, so that I am fifty years old, and ten and seven.
”My father's name was Py-e-sa; the father of his father was Na-na-ma-kee, or Thunder. I was a brave, and afterwards a chief, a leading war-chief, carrying the medicine bag. I fought against the Osages. Did I fear them? No. Did I often win the victory? I did.
”The white men of America said to the Sacs and Foxes, to the Sioux, the Chippewas, and Winnebagoes, 'Go you to the other side of the Mississippi;' and they said, 'Yes.' But I said, 'No: why should I leave the place where our wigwams stand, where we have hunted for so many moons, and where the bones of our fathers have rested?
Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Hawk, will not go.'
”My heart told me that my great white father, the chief of America, would not do wrong; would not make me go to the other side of the river. My prophet also told me the same. I felt my arm strong, and I fought. Never did the hand of Black Hawk kill woman or child. They were warriors that Black Hawk fought with.
”Though I came down from the chief Na-na-ma-kee, yet my people would not let me dress like a chief. I did not paint myself; I did not wear feathers; but I was bold and not afraid to fight, so I became a brave.
”The Osages were our enemies, and I went with my father and many more to fight. I saw my father kill an enemy, and tear away the scalp from his head. I felt determined to do the same. I pleased my father; for, with my tomahawk and spear, I rushed on an enemy. I brought back his scalp in my hand.
”I next led on seven of our people against a hundred Osages, and killed one. After that, I led on two hundred, when we killed a hundred, and took many scalps. In a battle with the Cherokees my father was killed. I painted my face black, and prayed to the Great Spirit, and did not fight any more for five years; all that I did was to hunt and to fish.
”The Osages had done us great wrong, so we were determined to destroy them. I set off, in the third moon, at the head of five hundred Sacs and Foxes, and one hundred Ioways. We fell upon forty lodges. I made two of their squaws prisoners, but all the rest of the people in the lodges we killed. Black Hawk killed seven men himself. In a battle with the Cherokees, I killed thirteen of their bravest with my own hand.
”One of our people killed a pale-face American, and he was put in prison; so we sent to St. Louis, to pay for the killed man, and to cover the blood. Did the pale faces do well? No, they did not; they set our man free, but when he began to run they shot him down; and they gave strong drink to our four people, and told them to give up the best part of our hunting ground for a thousand dollars every twelve moons. What right had they to give our men strong drink, and then cheat them? None.
”American white faces came, with a great, big gun, to build a fort, and said it was to trade with us. They treated the Indians ill: we went against the fort. I dug a hole in the ground with my knife, so that I could hide myself with some gra.s.s. I shot with my rifle and cut the cord of their flag, so that they could not pull it up to fly in the air; and we fired the fort, but they put out the fire.
”One of our people killed a white, and was taken. He was to die, but asked leave to go and see his squaw and children. They let him go, but he ran back through the prairies next day, in time to be shot down. He did not say he would come back, and then stay; he was an Indian, and not a white man. I hunted and fished for his squaw and children when he was dead.
”Why was it that the Great Spirit did not keep the white men where he put them? Why did he let them come among my people with their fire-drink, sickness, and guns? It had been better for red men to be by themselves.
”We went to a great English brave, Colonel Dixon, at Green Bay: there were many Pottawatomies, Kickapoos, Ottowas, and Winnebagoes there.
The great brave gave us pipes, tobacco, new guns, powder, and clothes.
I held a talk with him in his tent; he took my hand. 'General Black Hawk,' said he, and he put a medal round my neck, 'you must now hold us fast by the hand; you will have the command of all the braves to join our own braves at Detroit.' I was sorry, because I wanted to go to Mississippi. But he said, 'No; you are too brave to kill women and children: you must kill braves.'
”We had a feast, and I led away five hundred braves to join the British. Sometimes we won, and sometimes we lost. The Indians were killing the prisoners, but Black Hawk stopped them. He is a coward who kills a brave that has no arms and cannot fight. I did not like so often to be beaten in battle, and to get no plunder. I left the British, with twenty of my braves, to go home, and see after my wife and children.
”I found an old friend of mine sitting on a mat in sorrow: he had come to be alone, and to make himself little before the Great Spirit: he had fasted long, he was hardly alive; his son had been taken prisoner, and shot and stabbed to death. I put my pipe to my friend's mouth; he smoked a little. I took his hand, and said 'Black Hawk would revenge his son's death.' A storm came on; I wrapped my old friend in my blanket. The storm gave over; I made a fire. It was too late; my friend was dead. I stopped with him the remainder of the night; and then my people came, and we buried him on the peak of the bluff.
”I explained to my people the way the white men fight. Instead of stealing on each other, quietly and by surprise, to kill their enemies and save their own people, they all fight in the sunlight, like braves; not caring how many of their people fall. They then feast and drink as if nothing had happened, and write on paper that they have won, whether they have won or been beaten. And they do not write truth, for they only put down a part of the people they have lost.
They would do to _paddle_ a canoe, but not to _steer_ it. They fight like braves, but they are not fit to be chiefs, and to lead war parties.
”I found my wife well, and my children, and would have been quiet in my lodge; for, while I was away, Kee-o-kuk had been made a chief: but I had to revenge the death of the son of my old friend. I told my friend so when he was dying. Why should Black Hawk speak a lie? I took with me thirty braves, and went to Fort Madison; but the American pale faces had gone. I was glad, but still followed them down the Mississippi. I went on their trail. I shot the chief of the party with whom we fought. We returned home, bringing two scalps. Black Hawk had done what he said.
”Many things happened. Old Wash-e-own, one of the Pottawatomies, was shot dead by a war chief. I gave Wash-e-own's relations two horses and my rifles to keep the peace. A party of soldiers built a fort at Prairie du Chien. They were friendly to us, but the British came and took the fort. We joined them; we followed the boats and shot fire-arrows, and the sails of one boat were burned, and we took it.
”We found, in the boats we had taken, barrels of whiskey: this was bad medicine. We knocked in the heads of the barrels, and emptied out the bad medicine. We found bottles and packages, which we flung into the river as bad medicine too. We found guns and clothes, which I divided with my braves. The Americans built a fort; I went towards it with my braves. I had a dream, in which the Great Spirit told me to go down the bluff to a creek, and to look in a hollow tree cut down, and there I should see a snake; close by would be the enemy unarmed. I went to the creek, peeped into the tree, saw the snake, and found the enemy.
One man of them was killed, after that we returned home: peace was made between the British and Americans, and we were to bury the tomahawk too.
”We went to the great American chief at St. Louis, and smoked the pipe of peace. The chief said our great American father was angry with us, and accused us of crimes. We said this was a lie; for our great father had deceived us, and forced us into a war. They were angry at what we said; but we smoked the pipe of peace again, and I first touched the goose quill; but I did not know that, in doing so, I gave away my village. Had I known it, I would never have touched the goose quill.
”The American whites built a fort on Rock Island; this made us sorry, for it was our garden, like what the white people have near their big villages. It supplied us with plums, apples and nuts, with strawberries and blackberries. Many happy days had I spent on Rock Island. A good spirit had the care of it; he lived under the rock, in a cave. He was white, and his wings were ten times bigger than swan's wings: when the white men came there, he went away.
”We had corn and beans and pumpkins and squashes. We were the possessors of the valley of the Mississippi, full seven hundred miles from the Ouisconsin to the Portage des Sioux, near the mouth of the Missouri. If another prophet had come to us in those days, and said, 'The white man will drive you from these hunting grounds, and from this village, and Rock Island, and not let you visit the graves of your fathers,' we should have said, 'Why should you tell us a lie?'
”It was good to go to the graves of our fathers. The mother went there to weep over her child: the brave went there to paint the post where lay his father. There was no place in sorrow like that where the bones of our forefathers lay. There the Great Spirit took pity on us. In our village, we were as happy as a buffalo on the plains; but now we are more like the hungry and howling wolf in the prairie.