The Black Hawk War Including a Review of Black Hawk's Life.

In 1832 an aging Sauk leader led his people back across the Mississippi to reclaim their homeland, and the brief, tragic war that followed helped seal the fate of Native peoples in the region. Frank Everett Stevens set out to record it in full.

What it's about

Stevens's history recounts the Black Hawk War of 1832, the conflict between the United States and a band of Sauk, Fox, and allied peoples led by the war chief Black Hawk, who sought to return to lands in Illinois that treaties had ceded. The book traces the causes of the war, the movements and engagements of the campaign, the militia and regular forces involved, and the pursuit that ended in the band's defeat. Included is a review of Black Hawk's own life and character.

Themes

The account grapples with the collision of settler expansion and Native homeland, the misunderstandings and broken agreements that precipitated the fighting, and the human cost borne above all by Black Hawk's followers. It attends to the frontier society of the time, the young men who served, and the leader whose name the war carries. Loss and displacement shadow the narrative.

Why it still matters

The Black Hawk War was a turning point in the removal of Native peoples from the upper Mississippi and touched the lives of figures who would loom large in later American history. Stevens's thorough compilation preserves the events, personalities, and documents of the conflict, making it a valuable resource for historians and genealogists of the frontier. It keeps an important story from fading.

Who it's for

For readers of American frontier and Native American history, for students of the early republic, and for those researching the peoples and events of the upper Mississippi in the nineteenth century.

Sources and references

Verified references for this edition: Open Library.