elds,
and the home of my people. I fought for it. It is now yours; keep it
as we did. It will bear you good crops.

"I once was a great warrior. I am now poor. Keokuk put me down, but
do not blame him. I am old. I have looked upon the Mississippi since
I was a child. I love the Great River. I look upon it now. I shake
hands with you, and I hope you are my friends."

These were some of his words.

He was seventy-one when he died; a spare, wrinkled old man with sharp,
fiery face and flashing eye. He picked out his grave--at a place about
half a mile from his cabin, where, he said, he had led his Sacs in a
great battle with the Iowas.

All his people, and the neighboring whites, mourned him. He was buried
sitting up, clad in the uniform given him at Washington, by the
Secretary of War. He wore three medals, from President Jackson,
ex-President John Quincy Adams, and the City of Boston. Between his
knees was placed a cane presented to him by Henry Clay, the statesman;
at his right side was placed a sword presented to him by President
Jackson.

All his best things were buried with him. They included tobacco, food
and moccasins, to last him on a three days' journey to spirit land.

The grave was covered by a board roof. A United States flag, and a
post with his name and age and deeds, were erected over him. A picket
fence twelve feet high was built around the grave.

He left an old wife--the only wife that he had ever taken. He thought
a great deal of her. He rarely drank whiskey, he fought it among his
people; he was opposed to torture; he had treated prisoners kindly; he
had waged war in defense, as he believed, of his own country; and
altogether he had been a good man in his Indian way.

His bones were dug up by a white doctor, and strung on a wire to
decorate an office in Illinois. Black-hawk's sons did not like this,
and had the bones brought back. They were stored in the historical
collection at Burlington, where in 1855 a fire burned them.

Black-hawk probably did not care what became of his old bones. He was
done with them. The white race had over-flowed the land that he loved,
and the bones of his fathers, and he had ceased fighting.

CHAPTER XVI

THE BIRD-WOMAN GUIDE (1805-1806)

SACAGAWEA HELPS THE WHITE MEN

This is the story of one slight little Indian woman, aged sixteen, who
opened the trail across the continent, for the march of the United
States flag.

When in M