1832.

HISTORY OF BLACK HAWK WAR.

961

sonal deportment he was grave and melancholy, with a disposition to cherish and brood over the wrongs he supposed he had received from the Americans. He was thirsting for revenge upon his enemies, and at the same time his piety constrained him to devote a day in the year to visit the grave of a favorite daughter buried on the Mississippi river, not far from Oquaka. Here he came on his yearly visits, and spent a day by the grave, lamenting and bewailing the death of one who had been the pride of his farnihy, and of his Indian home. "With these feelings was mingled the certain and melancholy prospect of the extinction of his tribe, and the transfer of his couutry to the possession of a hated enemy; whilst he and his people were to be driven, as he supposed, into a strange country, far from the graves of his fathers and his children.

"Black Hawk's own account of the treaty of 1804, is as follows: He says that some Indians of tbe tribe were arrested and imprisoned in St. Louis for murder; that some of the chiefs were sent down to provide for their defense; that whilst there, and without the consent of the nation, they were induced to sell the Indian country; that when they came home, it appeared that they had been drunk most of the time they were absent, and could give no account of what they had done, except that they had sold some laud to the white people, and had come home loaded with presents and Indian finery. This was all that the nation ever heard or knew about the treaty of 1804.

"Under the belief that the treaty was void, he resisted the order of the government for the removal of his band west of the Mississippi. He was industriously engaged in securing followers, and gained many accessions to his party. Like Tecumthe, he, too, had his Prophet, whose influence over the superstitious savages was not without effect.

"In 1830, an arrangement was made by the Americans, who had purchased the land above the mouth of Rock river, and tbe Indians that remained   Black Hawk himself being at their head   to live as neighbors; the latter cultivating their old fields. In the spring, after planting, the Indians left according to their custom, for their summer hunt, and returned in time to gather their corn. They alleged, that during their absence, some depredations had been committed on their property, and Black Hawk was highly incensed. In the fall he left with bis band for the winter bunt, and in tbe spring of 1831, he recrossed the river, with his women and children, and three hundred warriors of the British band, together with some allies from the Pottawattamie and Kickapoo nations, to