Black Hawk

Black Hawk

Black Hawk, oil painting by George Catlin, 1832; in the National Museum of American Art, …

(credit: Courtesy of National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.)

(born 1767, Sauk Sautenuk, Va.—died Oct. 3, 1838, village on the Des Moines River, Iowa, U.S.) Sauk Indian leader. Long antagonistic to whites, Black Hawk was driven into Iowa from Illinois in 1831. Defying the government orders to vacate villages along the Rock River in Illinois, he led a faction of Sauk and Fox Indians back across the Mississippi River the following year. This act led to the brief but tragic Black Hawk War of 1832. He himself survived the final battle, a massacre. The ruthlessness of the war so affected neighbouring Indian groups that by 1837 most had fled far west, leaving most of the Northwest Territory to white settlers.

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Black Hawk (b. Makataimeshekiakiak) (1767–1838) Sauk and Fox war chief; born in present-day Illinois. A fierce opponent of the spread of white settlers, he attempted to form a pan-Indian alliance to repossess ancestral lands but was defeated in what was called the "Black Hawk War" (1832). Released from prison in 1833, he toured several eastern cities and dictated his autobiography.