Black Hawk Purchase And The Opening of Iowa Territory

 

Chief Keokuk signing the Black Hawk Purchase

It ended at the Bad Axe River in August 1832.

Black Hawk and his followers were trying to cross the Mississippi. They were tired, hungry, and running. U.S. troops caught them at the river. What followed wasn’t much of a battle.

It was a massacre.

Soldiers fired from the shore. A steamboat moved into position and opened fire. People tried to swim across. Many didn’t make it. Men, women, and children were shot in the water or cut down on the shore.

By the time it was over, hundreds were dead.

That ended the war.

Black Hawk escaped with a small group and headed north, but he didn’t get far. Ho-Chunk men captured him and turned him over to U.S. forces.

He was taken to Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis and held there as a prisoner.

While he was in custody, the future of his people was being decided.

Chief Keokuk In The Black Hawk War

When Black Hawk crossed back into Illinois with his band, it lit a fuse. Panic spread fast. Settlers ran. Militias formed. War was coming whether or not anyone wanted it.

Keokuk didn’t join him, even though a lot of his people expected it. Black Hawk was a war leader with a following, and tradition said you stood with your own. Keokuk saw it differently. He warned his band that this was a fight they couldn’t win. The Americans had too many soldiers and guns.

Hs decision to keep his band out of the war split the Sauk Nation. Some followed Black Hawk, but most stayed with Keokuk. It wasn’t a popular call, but it held.

While the fighting moved north and west, Keokuk stayed put. He worked with U.S. officials, kept his people from getting pulled in, and did what he could to keep things from getting worse.

When it was over, Black Hawk’s band was shattered. Keokuk’s people were still there.

That didn’t mean they won. The Americans still took their land, but they weren’t wiped out in a lost war.

Chief Keokuk And The Price of Survival

Keokuk (George Catlin, 1834-1836)

Keokuk was born into chaos.

Everything around him was collapsing — the land, the treaties, the tribes themselves. The frontier was spilling over its banks, and white cabins were rising like weeds along every river bend. The whiskey flowed cheaply and steadily. Guns changed hands faster than words. The Americans were coming, whether or not anyone liked it.

He was born somewhere near Rock River, back when the Sac and Fox still owned the world between the Mississippi and the Des Moines. He grew into a tall, broad man with a deep voice and steady eyes. He fought young, killed early, and learned fast. In his first battle, he killed a Sioux warrior with a spear while on horseback. The elders feasted him that night and named him a brave.

That was how it started — his first taste of power, his first applause. He liked both.

By the time the War of 1812 came, Keokuk understood glory was good, but survival was better. Black Hawk didn’t. The old warrior and his “British Band” went off to fight for the King, leaving the tribe’s villages empty and exposed. When they came back, they found Keokuk sitting in the council lodge as a chief.

Abraham Lincoln Frontier Ranger Black Hawk War

Abraham  Lincoln. Lincoln laughed it off when he described his experiences during the Black Hawk War and compared it to  swatting flies. 

"Did you know I am a war hero?” asked Lincoln. “Yes,  sir. In the days of the Black Hawk War, I fought, bled, and  came away... I had a good many bloody struggles with  mosquitos, and although I never fainted from loss of blood,  I can truly I say was often very hungry.”

Even though he never fought a battle in his short stint  as a warrior, Lincoln saw the aftermath. He helped bury five  men killed and scalped in the battle of Kellogg’s Grove.