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Reflections
U.S. troops begin pursuit of Black Hawk’s band : Reflections : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisU.S. troops begin pursuit of Black Hawk’s band
| by Roger Matile
| 5/10/2007
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Despite the U.S. Army and the Illinois Militia had forcing the Sauk and Fox tribes to abandon their ancestral village site on the Rock River in 1831, the members of the British Band, including the experienced warrior Black Hawk, harbored a burning desire to return east of the Mississippi to live.
In support of the old warrior’s wishes, the Winnebago Prophet sent messengers to invite Black Hawk and his band to come east in 1832 and live in the Prophet's village.
The Winnebago Prophet, reportedly half Sauk and half Winnebago, was the chief of a small village located about 40 miles from the mouth of the Rock River. The Indians operated a ferry used by whites traveling to the lead mines on the Fever River-Galena area. The Prophet apparently had a large religious following among the Winnebago, and also had influence among the Sauk and Fox.
Little is known of the Prophet's teachings, other than that he advocated a return to moral purity and away from white cultural influences. He also reportedly had visions, including (unfortunately for Black Hawk and his band) the heavenly assurance that all the Indian tribes of the region would go to war if trouble developed with the Americans.
Black Hawk and the other leaders of the British Band repeatedly told Thomas Forsyth, U.S. Indian Agent to the related Sauk and Fox tribes—and anyone else who would listen—that they did not consider the cession of 1804 that had stripped them of their lands legal, and that they intended to peacefully reoccupy their old homeland.
Hearing that the Prophet had invited Black Hawk and his band back to Illinois, U.S. Army Gen. Henry Atkinson left Jefferson Barracks at St. Louis by steamboat on April 8, 1832 to intercept Black Hawk with the aim of keeping the old warrior from reoccupying his old village—which in any case was not Black Hawk’s intention.
Unfortunately, both for Atkinson and for the Indians, Black Hawk's band had already crossed the Mississippi on April 5, near the mouth of the Iowa River at a place called the Upper Yellow Banks and was headed to the Prophet’s village. Atkinson didn't learn of the crossing until April 10 when he arrived at the Des Moines River.
At the time the band of Sauk and Fox crossed the Mississippi, it probably consisted of about 1,000 men, women, and children. Estimates of the numbers vary widely, from under 1,000 to more than 2,000. Forsyth, writing after the war ended, estimated that 368 of the band had been warriors—men and boys capable of bearing arms. Traveling with the Sauk and Fox were a number of Kickapoos, including about 100 warriors. About 100 other mixed Sauk and families, including some 50 warriors joined the band at the Prophet's village.
The only high ranking member of the Sauk chiefs’ council to join Black Hawk's band was Napope, who was recognized by the rest of the Sauk and Fox nations to be the principal chief of Black Hawk’s British Band.
Napope appears to have been a slippery individual who uncritically transmitted many of the Winnebago Prophet's fantasies to Black Hawk. It was Napope who came back from Canada in 1831 with the fantastic story that in the event of war with the Americans, the British would intervene on the Indians’ behalf. In the event, Napope deserted his wives, children, and comrades as soon as they were attacked by American military forces. Pleading innocent after the war in an eerie portent of 21st Century political-speak, Napope commented: "For myself, I have no vices—I do not smoke or drink and I cannot think what could have led me into such bad roads as I have been traveling as I now find."
Although the real leaders of the band were Black Hawk, the Prophet, and Napope, the formal organizational chart of the group would have shown nine chiefs (the Prophet, Napope, Pamisseau, Weesheet, Chakeepashipabo, Checokalako, loway, Pamaho, and Towaunonne) and five war captains (Black Hawk, Menacou, Makatauaupuat, Pashetowat, and Kinnekonnesaut).
After crossing the Mississippi on April 5, the band headed up the river’s east bank, women and children in canoes with the heavy baggage, and the men on horseback. On April 13, they turned up the Rock River, where on April 20, they arrived at the Prophet's village. There they planned to plant crops and permanently settle.
During the trip, there were no hostile incidents. In fact, it wasn’t until April 25 that an official representative of Gen. Atkinson contacted the band. Atkinson’s demand that the Indians return across the Mississippi was rejected, the Indians saying they were peaceful, but would not return to the west. They wanted to plant their crops and live in Illinois as close to their old lands as possible.
But while Black Hawk and his band prepared to peacefully live in Illinois, events, fanned by political gamesmanship and frontier panic were fanning the flames of war. There’s nothing as dangerous during an election year as a politician with the power to call up troops, something the hapless members of Black Hawk’s British Band would learn the hard way.
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