Tecumseh and the British Alliance
By 1811, Tecumseh of the Shawnees was attempting to establish a confederacy of Indian peoples, its center located where the Tippecanoe River meets the Wabash River in Indiana. Although Black Hawk shared with Tecumseh strong anti-American feelings and a decided preference for the British, he did not at that time join the Shawnee leader. As Tecumseh was traveling farther south trying to recruit allies, William Henry Harrison led a force of approximately 1,000 men toward the Shawnee stronghold. On November 7,1811, the Indians attacked Harrison’s force. Harrison lost 68 men to about 50 Indian fatalities, but when the battle was over, he held the field, claiming victory. This encounter
Would help propel Harrison and his future vice-presidential running mate, John Tyler, to victory in the presidential election almost 30 years later under the slogan of “Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too.” Harrison claimed that the British had armed Tecumseh—a claim that helped justify an attack on the Shawnee and, if not true, would at least become prophetic. Certainly, after the Battle of Tippecanoe, Tecumseh had no doubt about the wisdom of solidifying an alliance with the British.
Black Hawk, while still not allied with Tecumseh, participated in a raid on Fort Madison, located at the site of the present town of Fort Madison, Iowa, in the far southeastern corner of the state, on September 5, 1812. The attack was a joint Winnebago-Sauk effort that lasted for four days. Attempts to set the fort on fire failed, and the attackers withdrew after having lost one Winnebago and killed one soldier and two woodcutters who were attacked at the beginning of the siege when they left the fort without being aware of the force that had surrounded it.
Black Hawk records in his autobiography that shortly after this attack on Fort Madison, he learned of an impending war between the United States and Britain. For years, a number of tribes, including the Sauk, had traveled annually to Fort Malden at Amherstburg in Canada to receive gifts. In fact, the route across Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan had become known as the Great Sauk Trail. The British, in turn, were receiving intelligence about U. S.-Indian tensions, including Indian grievances that might play into Britain’s hands in its uneasy relationship with its southern neighbor.
The United States, which was only three decades removed from securing its independence from Great Britain, also worried over the role that Indian tribes might play in any future confrontation with Britain. In 1812, several Sauk chiefs were invited to accompany William Clark—of Lewis and Clark fame, and later Territorial Governor of Missouri (1813-1820) and Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the upper Michigan and Missouri River regions (1822-1838)—to Washington, D. C. There they met with President James Madison. According to Black Hawk, who did not make the trip, Madison urged the Sauk to remain neutral in any conflict between the United States and Britain. The returning Sauk believed that they had been promised credit at Fort Madison for guns, ammunition, and other goods necessary to carry out their winter hunting. Consequently, the Sauk decided to remain at peace.
That decision would quickly change when the Sauk arrived at Fort Madison in preparation for the winter season. The trader insisted that he had no authorization to extend credit, leaving the Sauk in a precarious position regarding their ability to engage in a successful hunt that was necessary for their very survival.
While the Sauk tried to determine what to do, they learned of the arrival down the Mississippi of a British trader named Edward La Gouthrie. He presented the Sauk with gifts of tobacco, pipes, and wampum (shell beads made into strings or belts and used mainly for communication). La Gouthrie also gave the Sauk, on credit, the goods that they needed for the winter. He further urged
Black Hawk to gather a large number of warriors and go to Robert Dickson, who was at Green Bay with 12 boatloads of guns, ammunition, and supplies. Dickson (whose named is spelled Dixon in Black Hawk’s autobiography) was a British trader recruiting Indians as allies of the British in their war against the United States, known to history as the War of 1812.
Black Hawk gathered together a party of 200 men and set off for Green Bay. For Black Hawk, the deciding factor in choosing to ally himself with the British was what he saw as U. S. deceit in reneging on the offer of credit promised by President Madison.
Black Hawk’s Sauk joined with a number of other groups at Green Bay, including bands of Ottawa, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, and Winnebago. Dickson armed the Indian forces and treated Black Hawk with great respect, referring to him as General Black Hawk and awarding him a medal, British flag, and formal commission in writing. Dickson’s promises, as Black Hawk remembered them, included assurances that the British would help drive the Americans out of Indian lands, and that after defeating the U. S. soldiers at Detroit the Sauk could return to fight the army along the Mississippi.
Black Hawk's Entrance into the War
Black Hawk left Green Bay in charge of some 500 warriors. They passed Chicago and the deserted Fort Dearborn and joined the British army south of Detroit. On January 22, 1813, the British under Henry Procter and their Indian allies engaged U. S. forces under General James Winchester in the Battle of Frenchtown on the River Raisin just west of Lake Erie in the southeastern corner of Michigan. Winchester’s troops fought well, earning Black Hawk’s respect. In fact, Winchester initially was victorious but failed to establish a perimeter defense after his early success, and a counterattack ultimately overwhelmed his troops.
Winter brought a lull in the hostilities, and Black Hawk remained with the British near Detroit. By May 1, he was participating in an assault by a 5,000-strong British and Indian force against Fort Meigs on the Maumee River in northern Ohio. Again General Procter (who had been promoted from colonel to brigadier general after his River Raisin victory) led the combined army, this time facing General William Henry Harrison. The Indian allies were led by Tecumseh.
The attackers surrounded the fort, but U. S. reinforcements arriving by boat attacked the British artillery. They forced the British back but in turn were surrounded, with most of the 800 soldiers being captured and many forced to run the gauntlet. Approximately 40 were killed during the torturous run until Indian leaders brought their men under control. Black Hawk claimed to have stopped the killing because he considered it cowardly to kill unarmed prisoners, although Tecumseh is more likely to have actually brought the carnage to a halt.6 As the siege of the fort dragged on, however, Black Hawk and his Sauk eventually tired of the inconclusive effort and left. Procter finally withdrew his forces on May 9.
Black Hawk participated in another attack on Fort Meigs in July, and an assault on Fort Stephenson at Lower Sandusky, Ohio, on August 2. Both of these efforts were led by Procter, and both were unsuccessful, with a frontal attack on Fort Stephenson producing a large number of British casualties. Black Hawk praised the British soldiers’ courage but thought that the tactic of attacking openly was foolish.
Precisely when Black Hawk left the British to return to Saukenuk is unclear. His autobiography seems to state that Black Hawk took 20 of his braves and left for home while the British were preparing to abandon their attempt to capture Fort Stephenson. Other accounts place him at the Battle of the Thames, which occurred on October 5, 1813.7 The Thames River runs through southeast Ontario, Canada, above Lake Erie. It was in this engagement, a major victory by Harrison over the British, that Tecumseh died.
The day before the battle, Tecumseh, according to his biographer Allan W. Eckert, had a premonition of his death and gave away some of his most prized possessions, including a tomahawk to Black Hawk, who subsequently fought near Tecumseh during the battle. Not long before his death, Black Hawk apparently spoke of being in the battle. Benjamin Drake, in his biography of Black Hawk published around the time of his subject’s death, cites two individuals recalling Black Hawk telling them of his involvement in the Battle of the Thames, one in a newspaper article and another in a letter to the biographer. The newspaper account recalls Black Hawk reminiscing about “being at the right hand of Tecumthe, when the latter was killed at the battle of the Thames.”8
Black Hawk returned home sometime in 1813 but did not completely abandon his support of the British. When the British captured the fort at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin (then in the Michigan Territory), in 1814, they invited Black Hawk to join them once more in waging war against the United States. Black Hawk left to do that and quickly caught up to several boats carrying U. S. soldiers to Prairie du Chien. The boats, under the command of Major John Campbell, had stopped at the Sauk camp just the night before and been welcomed, but that was prior to the British invitation. When one of the boats ran aground, Black Hawk and his warriors fired on the men and set the boat afire. Another boat returned to rescue the stranded soldiers. When the Sauk explored the cargo on the beached boat, they discovered several barrels of whiskey. Black Hawk, who strongly opposed use of whiskey by his people and the distribution of it by traders, dumped the contents into the river. Not surprisingly, the defeat of the reinforcements was a cause for rejoicing by the British at Prairie du Chien.
In early September, the British came down the Mississippi by boat and unloaded, according to Black Hawk, “a big gun,” leaving several soldiers in charge of its use. There may actually have been several pieces of artillery.9 The Sauk prepared a site from which to fire the gun or guns and did not have to wait long. That evening eight U. S. boats under the direction of Zachary Taylor—another Black Hawk adversary who would later become President of the United States (in 1849)—arrived but were driven off by the Sauk and
The British gunners. Taylor then took his detachment downriver and constructed Fort Johnson near the current Warsaw, Illinois; however, he abandoned the fort after just a few weeks.
End of the War and the Treaty of 1816
The war between Britain and the United States formally ended on Christmas Eve 1814. Unfortunately, the news did not travel fast enough to prevent the Battle of New Orleans, a bloody victory by Andrew Jackson’s forces over the British on January 8, 1815, during which the British suffered some 2,000 casualties.
Although the War of 1812 was over, Black Hawk found himself in a battle against a party of soldiers in the spring of 1815. Known as the Battle of the Sink Hole, the encounter looked ominous for Black Hawk and his men, who numbered close to 20. Surrounded, they took refuge in a sinkhole, and some of the Sauk began singing their death songs. Despite their apparent advantage, the soldiers then withdrew, having lost two men—Captain James Craig and Lieutenant Edward Spears—and having killed just one of Black Hawk’s men.
The U. S. government, having made peace with the British, invited the Sauk and other Indian nations to make peace as well. Consequently, in September 1815 the Sauk began to make their way toward Portage des Sioux a few miles above the mouth of the Missouri River. When a Sauk chief fell ill, however, the party paused while the Fox representatives continued onward. When the chief subsequently died, the Sauk, seeing his death as a cautionary sign against continuing the voyage, returned to Saukenuk. As a result, the Sauk from Saukenuk did not sign the treaties of September 13 and 14, 1815, although the Sauk living along the Missouri River did sign the agreements.
The following year, the Sauk were summoned to another treaty signing. William Clark, the territorial governor of Missouri, awaited them at St. Louis, where the Sauk were accused of having committed serious crimes. The Sauk chiefs denied the accusations but signed the treaty on May 13,1816. Although not a chief, Black Hawk also signed, only later coming to understand that the treaty effectively gave away Saukenuk and much else by reaffirming the Treaty of 1804. A few days before, on May 10, construction had begun on Fort Armstrong, situated on Rock Island, an island that served as the Sauk garden, supplying them with such delicacies as strawberries, blackberries, plums, and apples. The Sauk believed that a good spirit lived underneath the area where the fort was built, but Black Hawk notes in his autobiography that the construction drove the spirit away, with a bad spirit replacing it.
At some point, apparently over the next few years, Black Hawk lost a son and a daughter to death. Nevertheless, the Sauk continued with their seasonal migrations between Saukenuk and their winter hunting grounds in relative peace. The treaties of 1804 and 1816 receded from their consciousness as no one tried to take their village away from them. According to the treaties they had yielded the area to the Americans, yet in practice it still seemed to be thoroughly theirs despite the presence of Fort Armstrong.
World History
