it did not keep the white men where he
put them? Why did he let them come among my people with their
fire-drink, sickness, and guns? It had been better for red men to be
by themselves.

"We went to a great English brave, Colonel Dixon, at Green Bay: there
were many Pottawatomies, Kickapoos, Ottowas, and Winnebagoes there.
The great brave gave us pipes, tobacco, new guns, powder, and clothes.
I held a talk with him in his tent; he took my hand. 'General Black
Hawk,' said he, and he put a medal round my neck, 'you must now hold
us fast by the hand; you will have the command of all the braves to
join our own braves at Detroit.' I was sorry, because I wanted to go
to Mississippi. But he said, 'No; you are too brave to kill women and
children: you must kill braves.'

"We had a feast, and I led away five hundred braves to join the
British. Sometimes we won, and sometimes we lost. The Indians were
killing the prisoners, but Black Hawk stopped them. He is a coward who
kills a brave that has no arms and cannot fight. I did not like so
often to be beaten in battle, and to get no plunder. I left the
British, with twenty of my braves, to go home, and see after my wife
and children.

"I found an old friend of mine sitting on a mat in sorrow: he had come
to be alone, and to make himself little before the Great Spirit: he
had fasted long, he was hardly alive; his son had been taken prisoner,
and shot and stabbed to death. I put my pipe to my friend's mouth; he
smoked a little. I took his hand, and said 'Black Hawk would revenge
his son's death.' A storm came on; I wrapped my old friend in my
blanket. The storm gave over; I made a fire. It was too late; my
friend was dead. I stopped with him the remainder of the night; and
then my people came, and we buried him on the peak of the bluff.

"I explained to my people the way the white men fight. Instead of
stealing on each other, quietly and by surprise, to kill their enemies
and save their own people, they all fight in the sunlight, like
braves; not caring how many of their people fall. They then feast and
drink as if nothing had happened, and write on paper that they have
won, whether they have won or been beaten. And they do not write
truth, for they only put down a part of the people they have lost.
They would do to _paddle_ a canoe, but not to _steer_ it. They fight
like braves, but they are not fit to be chiefs, and to lead war
parties.

"I found my wife well, and my children,