hat treaty, so long as it remained the property
of the United States: that as early as 1823-4 the whites had intruded
upon the land on Rock river around the principal village of the Sacs and
Foxes--the United States neglecting to have these intruders removed, as
by the treaty they were solemnly bound to do: that these whites
frequently beat the Indian men, women, and children with sticks,
destroyed their corn fields, distributed whiskey among them, cheated
them out of their furs and peltries and on one occasion, when the
Indians were absent on a hunting excursion, set fire to some thirty or
forty of their lodges, by which many of them were totally destroyed.

These outrages were perpetrated before a single acre of the land upon
Rock river, had been sold by the United States, and when in fact, the
regular frontier settlements of Illinois, had not approached within
fifty miles of the Sac village. Consequently they were committed in
express violation of the most solemn treaties and of the laws of the
United States, for the protection of the Indians. In 1829, clearly with
a view, on the part of those who brought about the measure, of evading
the force of that article of the treaty of 1804, which permitted the
Indians to live and hunt upon these lands, so long as they remained the
property of the United States, a few quarter sections were sold, on Rock
river, including the Sac village. New insults and outrages were now
offered to the Indians, and they were again ordered to remove, not from
the quarter sections which had actually been sold, but to the west side
of the Mississippi. Against this, they remonstrated and finally refused,
positively, to be driven away. The results of this refusal have already
been shown in the narration which has been made of the events following
upon the "actual invasion" of the state of Illinois, in the spring of
1831. But it has been said that these Indians endeavored to form an
alliance with some of the neighboring tribes to defend their lands.
There is no doubt that Black Hawk labored to persuade Keokuk and the
Sac Indians residing with him, to return to the east side of the
Mississippi and assist in defending their village. His effort to unite
with him, in alliance against the United States, the Winnebagoes,
Pottawatamies and Kickapoos, was probably for the same object, though
the case is not so clearly made out. Mr. Schoolcraft in his "Narrative"
speaks of a war message having been transmitte