Black Hawk Quotes


We did not expect to conquer the whites. I took up the hatchet to revenge the injuries which my people could no longer endure. Had I borne them without striking, my people would have said - "Black Hawk is a woman; he is too old to be a chief; he is no Sauk.


Context

In April 1832, Black Hawk led his warriors into Illinois to recapture their ancestral lands. The attempt was thwarted by American Army and Navy forces, and Black Hawk surrendered. Several months later he was sent East to meet with President Andrew Jackson. At that meeting, Black Hawk told the President:


Citations

Black Hawk, 1767-1838, Sac and Fox Indian Chief, Autobiography

Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations

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The French had launched a sneak attack on the English settlement at Schenectady, NY. The English had not provided enough security to Schenectady and now considered withdrawing from the upstate area. Contrary to the popular conception of all the Indians being invaded by the Whites and fighting it, here these Indians were urging the English to hang on and stay in the area. The Mohawk were one of the tribes of the Iroquois confederation which were very sophisticated, somewhat democratice, and very powerful economically and militarily. To them, the English were good trading partners and unlike the French tended to conform with Iroquis norms, rules and mores. It also illustrated the closeness of the alliance of these Indians with the English against the French in the French & Indian Wars.


Two months earlier, Jinnah and the Muslim League had, behind the scenes, orchestrated and abetted vicious, murderous, terrorist attacks on Sikhs by Muslim tribesman brought into the Punjab for the purpose." Master Tara Singh


He was a brutal, sadistic war criminal who was assassinated by one of his many enemies in 2000 before he could be brought to trial.


The Indian allies of the French scalped some American colonists which for some whites was akin to the modern reaction to terrorist atrocities. The British and Americans then justified the scalping of their Indian allies as simple retaliation. While Indians had scalped before the whites ever came, the whites accelerated the practice. There was an economic element to scalping. The French “paid” their Indian allies in arms, blankets, trinkets and alcohol by the scalp as it was a crude way of “performance measurement.” Not to be outdone, the English adopted the same custom with the French allied Indians as targets. In North Carolina, for example, the “volunteer” rangers were paid the enormous rate of 10 pounds a scalp.


Oliver was the judge who tried the British Soldiers after the Boston Massacre. Most Americans believe that scalping was an Indian barbarity. Although it was new to the European colonists who came to America, they quickly adopted the practice and had similar cultural and macho symbols associated with scalps. This is one of the many eyewitness descriptions of the Whites and their scalping. The barbarity was practiced by White and Indian alike.


First Published American Indian Author. His last public speech. He was referring to a horrible massacre of Christian Indians and the polarizing effect that such conflicts had. Whosoever publicly castigated a massacre of whites or Indians would be met by accusations of condoning the massacres of the other side and ignoring the inevitable and natural seeking of retaliation for future protection and revenge.


Black Hawk
Black Hawk
  • Born:
  • Died: October 3, 1838
  • Nationality: Sauk
  • Profession: War Captain; Band Leader

Black Hawk, born Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, was a band leader and warrior of the Sauk Native American tribe in what is now the Midwest of the United States. Although he had inherited an important historic sacred bundle from his father, he was not a hereditary civil chief. Black Hawk earned his status as a war chief or captain by his actions: leading raiding and war parties as a young man and then a band of Sauk warriors during the Black Hawk War of 1832.