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THE RED MEN OF IOWA.

CHAPTER XIII.

SKETCH OF BLACK HAWK.

Early Life--Not a Chief by Birth--Exploits as a Young Warrior--His Father, Pyesa--Death of Pyesa--Black Hawk Assumes the "Medicine Bag"--Aids in attacks on Fort Madison--Speech Before Gen. Street--Black Hawk as a Prisoner--At Jefferson Barracks--Taken to Washington--Speech to the President--In Fortress Monroe--Address to Col. Eustis--In Norfolk, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York--Speeches--Receives Presents--Taken to Albany and Buffalo--Visit from the Senecas--Replies to a Speech of the Seneca Chief--Arrives at Fort Armstrong--Ceremonies Of Liberation--Speeches in Council--Humiliation--Surrenders the Scepter--Goes Again with a Delegation to Washington--Residence in Iowa--His Family--Home on the Des Moines--Attends a Celebration of the Fourth at Fort Madison--Responds to a Toast--Feeling Toward Keokuk--Declining Days--Death--Interment--Remains Stolen--Recovered--Placed in a Museum at Burlington--Finally Consumed by Fire. MANY incidents in the life of Black Hawk have necessarily been given in our chapter on the Black Hawk War, but the reader may desire to know something more of him. For years he was the grand central figure in the border struggle which resulted in the white man gaining a foothold on territory now constituting the great State of Iowa. Old people remember when the name of the great Sac warrior and chieftain was on all tongues from the Atlantic to the extreme borders of civilization in the West. Iowa being the final scene in the drama of his life career, the reader will not desire us to leave him in the hands of his captors. Therefore, we shall give some facts of his earlier

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SKETCH OF BLACK HAWK.

life, and then follow the humbled warrior to the end of his humiliation.

His Indian name was Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiah, interpreted as meaning Black Hawk. He was by birth a Sac, and was born at the principal village of that tribe on Rock River, Illinois, in the year 1767. His father's name was Py-e-sa, and that of his grandfather was Na-na-ma-kee, or Thunder. Black Hawk was not a chief by birth, but very early in life won distinction by several acts of bravery in warfare against the enemies of the Sacs and Foxes. At the age of fifteen he wounded an enemy, for which he was promoted to the rank of a brave, and permitted to wear feathers. He was also soon after allowed to take part in the scalp-dance, having in an expedition against the Osages succeeded in killing and scalping one of the enemy. He distinguished himself in several other expeditions against the same enemy, and at the head of his warriors gained several victories. After gaining a victory which arrested for a time the intrusions of the Osages upon the territory of the Sacs, he accompanied his father, Py-e-sa, in an expedition against the Cherokees to avenge the murder of some of the Sac women and children by the former. The party met a strong force of the Cherokees on Merrimack River, below St. Louis. A battle was fought in which Py-e-sa was killed, but the Cherokees were compelled to retreat, with the lose of twenty-eight warriors, the Sacs losing but seven. Black Hawk now took possession of the "medicine-bag," which had been in the keeping of his father, Py-e-sa, and for some five years refrained from taking any part in war. In 1800, at the head of five hundred Sacs and Foxes, and one hundred Iowas, who

Pages 210 - 211

Chapter Fourteen

Introductory Page| Portrait of MA-KA-TAI-ME-SHE-KIA-KIAH (Black Hawk)| Title Page| Page 2|

Preface (pages 3 - 6)| Illustrations (page 7)| Contents (pages 8 - 17)

Chapter One| Chapter Two| Chapter Three| Chapter Four| Chapter Five

Chapter Six| Chapter Seven| Chapter Eight| Chapter Nine| Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven| Chapter Twelve

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