JUNE 16:

 June 16, 1832: Battle of Pecatonica, Wisconsin: As a part of the "Black Hawk Wars," Kickapoo Indians kill five settlers at Fort Hamilton, Wisconsin, today. The Kickapoos will be chased to the Pecatonica River by Gen.Henry Dodge and 30 militiamen. During the subsequent fighting, three soldiers, and 11 Kickapoos will be killed.
 

BACKGROUND:
 

Words Spoken: Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak (Black Hawk)

"Blackhawk is an Indian. He has done nothing for which an Indian ought to feel ashamed."

"How smooth must be the language of the whites, when they can make right look like wrong, and wrong like right."

"We have men among us, like the whites, who pretend to know the right path, but will not consent to show it without pay! I have no faith in their paths, but believe that every man must make his own path!"
 

*****
 

From http://www.rootsweb.com/~wilafaye/pg20-24.htm
 
 

In the spring of 1832, Black Hawk and his band of Sauks recrossed the Mississippi from the West and moved slowly northward from the mouth of Rock River.Uneasiness pervaded the mining region. The miners suspected that the Winnebago might be in league with the Sauks in an attempt to seize the territory they had recently released to the government. 'I am convinced', wrote Henry Dodge to a friend, 'that we are not to have peace with this banditti collection of Indians until they are killed up in their dens. They watch from the high points of timber our movements in daylight, and at night pass through the prairies from one point of timber to another, and communicate with the main body which are in the swamps of Rock River."
 

*****
 

From http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/blackhawk/page2b.html
 

The two months after the Battle of Stillman's Run (May 14, 1832) were a period of great activity and great uncertainty. In Washington, President Andrew Jackson and Secretary of War Lewis Cass made preparations to send more federal troops to the scene. In Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, and Missouri, hundreds of men turned out for militia and volunteer companies that had to be organized, armed, and sent wherever they were needed. From their camp at the mouth of the Kishwaukee, Black Hawk's band of Sauks, Foxes, Kickapoos, Winnebagoes, and Potawatomis moved north into the swampy region known as the "trembling lands" around Lake Koshkonong in southern Wisconsin. There, Black Hawk hoped to find food for his starving people and at least temporary relief from the pursuit. But, from their bases at Dixon's Ferry and Galena, Illinois, respectively, Gen. Atkinson and Col. Henry Dodge continued to send out troops in search of Black Hawk's trail.

In this period of activity and uncertainty, one of the few things that neither Black Hawk nor Atkinson did, however, was to send messengers to try to resolve the crisis peacefully. After Stillman's Run, both men apparently decided that the time for negotiating would come after Black Hawk's band had returned, or been driven, back across the Mississippi.

Throughout these two months, armed groups, native and white, moved across the countryside. Many of these groups were only loosely, if at all, supervised by Black Hawk, Atkinson, or Dodge. Under these violent and chaotic conditions, conflicts between natives and whites flared up across northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin, often miles from the main camps of the army and Black Hawk's band. Some of these clashes involved as many as a couple of hundred men on each side, others as few as a couple of dozen.

Within a week after the Battle of Stillman's Run, a group of Potawatomis, who may not have been connected with Black Hawk's band at all, attacked a white settlement at Indian Creek. They apparently had seized upon the unsettled conditions in the region to settle old scores. In the Indian Creek Massacre (May 20), fifteen whites--men, women, and children--were killed, scalped, and mutilated. Two teenage girls, Rachel and Sylvia Hall (ages 17 and 15) were taken away, unharmed, as captives. For the next eleven days, they would remain captives, spending most of this time at Black Hawk's camp, where they were well treated by the Sauk women. With the help of the Winnebagoes and their agent Henry Gratiot, the Hall sisters were ransomed for ten horses, wampum, and corn. In 1838, they published an account of their captivity.

At the Battle of the Pecatonica (June 16) in southwestern Wisconsin, it was Kickapoos, again at best loosely under Black Hawk's supervision, involved in the fighting. Two days earlier, they had attacked a group of settlers, killing five. On June 16, they ambushed another settler. From nearby Fort Hamilton, Col. Dodge set off in pursuit and quickly trapped the Kickapoos in a bend of the Pecatonica River. All eleven of the Kickapoos were killed and scalped by Dodge's soldiers. Two days later, part of a group of about eighty Sauk warriors engaged in a battle with men from Capt. Adam Snyder's Illinois militia company at a small settlement known as Kellogg's Grove, near modern Kent, Illinois. Three militia men and six Sauks died in the fighting
 

*****
 

From From http://members.tripod.com/~RFester/bhawk.html
 

In the year 1767, in the village of Saukenuk, located a few miles north of the confluence of the Rock River with the Mississippi River in northwestern Illinois, a child was born. This was Ma-ca-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, which means "Black Sparrow Hawk" in the Algonquin language of the Sauk. Whites would later call him Black Hawk. He would become one of the most fearsome yet respected Native American (sic) warriors to be born in what is now the state of Illinois.

Sometime in early historic times, the Sauk, feeling pressure from the French and Chippewa, migrated southward out of central Wisconsin, into southwestern Wisconsin, Northwestern Illinois, and northeastern Iowa. Some settled at the rapids of the Mississippi, near what is today Keokuk, Iowa. Another group settled near the mouth of the Rock River in Illinois. A third group settled on the Osage and Missouri Rivers in the late 1700s. The Sauk were allied with the Meskwaki (known to whites as the Fox) and often lived among them and vice versa. Principal native enemies of the Sauk included the Minnesota Sioux (Santee Dakota and Yankton Nakota), Osage, and Chippewa.

At the age of just fifteen, Ma-ca-tai-me-she-kia-kiak joined a raid against the Osage. He succeeded in killing and scalping an enemy warrior, which entitled him upon return to Saukenuk to join in the scalp dance. At this early age, Black Hawk had become a Sauk warrior. A short time later, he led seven Sauk warriors in an attack against an encampment of 100 Osages. Ma-ca-tai-me-she-kia-kiak killed an enemy, then escaped without losing a man. In a very short time, he became one of the most influential warriors in the Nation.

In 1804, certain Sauk and Meskwaki leaders signed a disasterous treaty. By its terms, the Sauk and Meskwaki forfeited all of their lands adjaecent to the Mississippi River in both Illinois and Iowa. Most of the Sauk and Meskwaki people were outraged. White settlers soon began to move into the disputed area. Conflict seemed inevitable.

When the War of 1812 began, Blackhawk and the Sauk fought for the British, no doubt viewing them as the lesser of two evils. Blackhawk's warriors won battles at Campblell's Island and Credit Island, but the British were ultimately defeated. With that defeat, the hope that the influx of white settlers could be checked was forlorn at best.

The Sauk now lived in Iowa, having been forced west by the Americans. But the settlers wanted more land. In 1828, President John Adams demanded that the Iowa lands of the Sauk be sold. And when the Sauk returned from their winter hunt that same year, they discovered that their lands had once again been sold. Faced with the hostile Lakota, Dakota and Nakota nations to the west, the Sauk faced east and sought to reoccupy their old lands. In April, 1832, the Sauk re-crossed the Mississippi and returned into Illinois. In August, they were attacked by white militia. Blackhawk led the resistance which was initially successful. His principal rival among the Sauks, Keokuk, remained aloof from the conflict. As a historical footnote, Abraham Lincoln, later to become the 16th President of the United States, and Jefferson Davis, later to become President of the Confederate States of America, both fought against the Sauk in the Blackhawk war. Likewise the 12th President, Zachory Taylor, also fought against the Sauk.

Ma-ca-tai-me-she-kia-kiak's warriors were constantly outnumbered by Federal troops and milita. In addition to these forces, Sioux and Winnebago Indians served with the Federal troops. For fifteen weeks, Ma-ca-tai-me-she-kia-kiak and the Sauk warriors held them at bay. Finally the Sauk were cornered and defeated at the Battle of Bad Axe on August 2nd, 1832.

Ma-ca-tai-me-she-kia-kiak and his son (Whirling Thunder) were made prisoners and shown around the country by President Andrew Jackson as spoils of war. The rest were removed to "Indian Territory" to the west.

Ma-ca-tai-me-she-kia-kiak died on October 3, 1838, at the age of 71. Still the whites would not let him rest. His grave was robbed and his body stolen. It was later recovered, but instead of being respectfully re-buried, the body was shipped to Burlington, Iowa, where it was kept in a museum. In 1855, the museum burned and the body was destroyed. At last Ma-ca-tai-me-she-kia-kiak was out of reach of those who would exploit and abuse him.