Boys' Book of Indian Warriors Part 23

The Red Sticks now agreed to a treaty of peace with the United States; and Chief Menewa, scarred from head to foot, was the hero of his band.

"One of the bravest chiefs that ever lived," is written after his name, by white historians. In due time he again opposed Chief Macintosh, and won out.

For in 1825 Macintosh was bribed by the white people to urge upon his nation the selling of the last of their lands in Georgia. He signed the papers, so did a few other chiefs; but the majority, thirty-six in number, refused.

Only some three hundred of the Creeks were parties to the signing away of the land of the whole nation. The three thousand other chiefs and warriors said that by Creek law, which Chief Macintosh himself had proposed, the land could not be sold except through the consent of a grand council.

As the nation owned the land, and had built better towns, and was living well and peacefully, the council decided that Chief Macintosh must be put to death--for he was a traitor and he knew the law.

Chief Menewa was asked to consent; he ruled, by reason of his wisdom and his scars. Finally he saw no other way than to order the deed done, for the Creek law was plain.

On the morning of May 1 he took a party of warriors to the Chief Macintosh house, and surrounded it. There were some white Georgians inside. He directed them to leave, as he had come to kill only Chief Macintosh, according to the law.

So the white men, and the women and children, left. When Chief Macintosh bolted in flight, he was shot dead.

The Georgia people, who desired the Creek land, prepared for war, or to arrest Menewa and his party. But the President, learning the ins and outs of the trouble, and seeing that the land had not been sold by the Creek nation, ordered the sale held up. The Creeks stayed where they were, for some years.

Menewa went to war once more, in 1836, and helped the United States fight against the Seminoles of Florida. In return for this, he asked permission to remain and live in his own country of the Creeks. But he was removed, with the last of the nation, beyond the Mississippi to the Indian Territory.

There, an old man, he died.

CHAPTER XV

BLACK-HAWK THE SAC PATRIOT (1831-1838)

THE INDIAN WHO DID NOT UNDERSTAND

The two small nations of the Sacs and the Foxes had lived as one family for a long time. They were of the Algonquian tongue. From the northern Great Lakes country they had moved over to the Mississippi River, and down to Illinois and Iowa. Their number was not more than six thousand. They were a shave-head Indian, of forest and stream, and accustomed to travel afoot or in canoes.

The Foxes built their bark-house villages on the west side of the Mississippi, in Iowa's "great nose." They called themselves Mus-qua-kees, or the Red Earth People. They said that they had been made from red clay. Their totem was a fox; and the French of the Great Lakes had dubbed them Foxes--had a.s.serted that, like the fox, they were quarrelsome, tricky and thievish. As warriors they were much feared.

They had lost heavily.

The Sacs built opposite, on the Illinois sh.o.r.e, from Rock River down.

They called themselves Saukees, from their word O-sa-ki-wug, or Yellow Earth People. They were larger and better looking than the Foxes, and not so tricky; but their bravery was never doubted.

These two nations together drove out the other Indians in this new country. They whipped even the Sioux, who claimed the northern Iowa hunting grounds; they whipped the Omahas, Osages and p.a.w.nees of the west, the Mascoutins to the south, and the Illinois tribes. They were here to stay.

While the men hunted and fished and went to war, the women raised great crops of beans, squashes, melons, potatoes and Indian corn, and gathered the wild rice of the lakes.

Among the Sac leaders was Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak--Big-black-breast, or Black-hawk. Like Little Turtle of the Miamis he had not been born a chief; but he was of the Thunder clan, the head clan of the Sacs.

His father was Py-e-sa, a warrior of the rank of braves, and keeper of the tribal medicine-bag. His grandfather was Na-na-ma-kee, or Thunder--also a brave.

Black-hawk was born in 1767, in Sauk-e-nuk, the princ.i.p.al Sac village, where Rock Island, Illinois, now stands, north of the mouth of the Rock River.

He won the rank of brave when he was only fifteen years old. He did this by killing and scalping an Osage warrior, on the war-trail against these head-takers. After that he was allowed in the scalp-dances.

He went against the Osages a second time. With seven men he attacked one hundred, and escaped carrying another scalp. When he was eighteen, he and five comrades pierced the Osage country across the Missouri River, and got more scalps. When he was nineteen, he led two hundred other braves against the Osages, and killed five Osages with his own hand.

By his deeds he had become a chief.

In a battle with the Cherokees, below St. Louis, his father Pyesa fell.

Young Black-hawk was awarded the medicine-bag--"the soul of the Sac nation."

In the early spring of 1804 a man of the Sac band then living on the Missouri, near St. Louis, to hunt and trade, killed a white man. He was arrested. The Sacs and Poxes held a council and chose four chiefs to go to St. Louis and buy their warrior's freedom with presents. This was the Indian way.

The chiefs selected were Pa-she-pa-ho, or Stabber, who was head chief of the Sacs; Quash-qua-me, or Jumping Fish; Ou-che-qua-ha, or Sun Fish; and Ha-she-quar-hi-qua, or Bear.

They went in the summer of 1804 and were gone a long time. When they returned, they were wearing new medals, and seemed ashamed. They camped outside of Saukenuk for several days, before they reported in council. The man they had been sent to get was not with them.

Finally, in the council they said that they had signed away a great tract of land, mostly on the west side of the Mississippi above St.

Louis, in order to buy the warrior's life; they had been drunk when they signed--but that was all right. However, when they had signed, the warrior was let out, and as he started to come to them, the soldiers had shot him dead.

They still were not certain just what land they had signed away. That made the council and people angry. Black-hawk called the chiefs fools.

They had no right to sell the land without the consent of the council.

After this, the "Missouri band" of the Sacs kept by themselves, in disgrace.

It was too late to do anything more about the treaty. The United States had it. An Indian gets only one chance--and Head Chief Pashepaho himself had put his mark on the paper. The United States has two chances: the first, on the ground; the second, when the paper is sent to Was.h.i.+ngton.

Later it was found that Pashepaho and the others had signed away all the Sac and Fox lands east of the Mississippi River! That was how the treaty might be made to read. The payment for many millions of acres was $2,234.54 down, in goods, and $1,000 a year, in other goods.

But there was one pleasing clause. As long as the United States held the land, the Sacs and Foxes might live and hunt there. Any white men who tried to come in were to be arrested and put off.

At any rate, although Black-hawk raged and said that the treaty was a false treaty, it stood. The United States officials who had signed it were men of honest names, and considered that they had acted fairly.

But Black-hawk never admitted that.

The United States was to erect a trading post, up the Mississippi, for the convenience of the Sacs and Foxes. In 1808 soldiers appeared above the mouth of the Des Moines River, on the west side of the Mississippi, in southeastern Iowa, and began to build.

This turned out to be not a trading post but a fort, named Fort Belle Vue, and afterward, Fort Madison.

The Sacs and Foxes, and their allies, the Potawatomis and Winnebagos, planned to destroy it, and made attacks.

Black-hawk was sore at the Americans. He listened to the words of Tec.u.mseh and the Prophet, accepted the presents of the British agents who came to see him, and with two hundred warriors marched to help the British in the War of 1812. The British traders had been more generous with the Indians than the American traders. Now the British father at the Lakes saluted him as "General Black-hawk."

Only Black-hawk's band went. All the other Sacs and Foxes paid attention to the talk of Keokuk, the Watchful Fox, who was the Sac peace chief.

Like the great Cornstalk, he said to the people that if they were bound to go to war, they should first put all the women and children "into the long sleep, for we enter upon a trail that has no turn."

He was called a coward by the Black-hawk band; but the other Sacs and Foxes stayed where they were.

"General" Black-hawk fought beside General Tec.u.mseh. He a.s.serted that he was in the big battle when Tec.u.mseh was killed. When he found that the Indians had nothing to gain in the war, he came home. He had done wrong to go at all.

Then he learned that a young man whom he had adopted as a son had been murdered, while hunting, by bad whites. They had seized him, tied him, killed him and scalped him. The young man had not been to war, and Black-hawk could see no reason for the killing. So he set forth in revenge, and fought a battle with the United States Rangers.

He remained unfriendly. It all dated back to the year 1804, and the treaty signed by Pashepaho, by which the Sacs had lost their country.