With his usual carelessness of fact, Black Hawk omitted to mention the payments down in money and trade which were made and which in those days were not regarded as trifling. He made no mention of subsequent and additional payments and annuities, neither did he credit the Government for the use and occupation of those same lands for over a quarter of a century after they had been ceded. He omitted entirely that he had never kept a treaty in his life until he was finally crushed and driven from power at the point of the bayonet, and he forgot to omit the further fact that all the Sac and Fox Indians, save Black Hawk and his immediate followers, recognized that treaty as just in 1808, when a delegation visited Fort Madison to ascertain if its erection was in violation of it. Schoolcraft, Vol. VI, page 393, made a very sensible observation regarding the sales by Indians of their lands: “But while any section of their territories abounded in game, the Indians elected to retire thither, and bestowed but little attention on either grazing or agriculture. There was, therefore, a singular concurrence in the desire of the emigrants to buy and in the willingness of the Indians to sell their lands.”
At no time had the Illinois lands been valuable to the Sacs for hunting, the streams and forests of Iowa having always been sought for their annual hunts. There can be no doubt that this feature had its influence exactly as Schoolcraft, the friend always to the Indian, has stated.
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[Illustration: GROUND PLAN OF FORT MADISON.]
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ERECTION OF FORT MADISON–RUMORS OF INDIAN ATTACK–BLACK HAWK JOINS TECUMSEH–RETURNS TO HIS VILLAGE–ATTACKS FORT MADISON–THE SIEGE.
The object of the expedition of Lieutenant Pike, in 1805-6-7, was, among other things, to select suitable locations for military reservations, Indian posts and forts. One of the last named he located at the head of the Des Moines Rapids, immediately above the mouth of the river of that name, on the west bank of the Mississippi.