The last full scale Indian war on the eastern side of the Mississippi
occurred in 1832. The Black Hawk War resulted in the end of a Sauk
Indian culture in northwestern Illinois that had lasted hundreds of
years. Despite multiple treaties with various effects on different
tribes, the Michingan Territorial Militia and elments of the United
States Army essentially massacred Black Hawk's Sauk tribe at the mouth
of the Bad Axe River where it empties into the Mississippi River - in
what is now De Soto, Wisconsin.
Near the end of the Black Hawk War in June, 1832, the Sauks, led by
Black Hawk, attempted to escape from Wisconsin into the Iowa Terriotry
to maintain their tribe. Several years prior to this, Black Hawk and the
tribe had been forced into eastern Iowa Territory by treaties not of
his making. Black Hawk's tribe claimed lands of southwestern Wisconsin
and northern Illinois where they had resided for many years.
Unfortunately due to settlement by white squatters after the British -
American War of 1812, westward expansion of the United States following
the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and decrees of the US government, white
Americans in the area believed the Rock River Basin land no longer
belonged to Black Hawk's tribe. They therefore disregarded any
ownership rights of Native Americans.
Though lasting only a matter of months, the Black Hawk War only added
more fuel to the fire in the relations between the Native peoples and
whilte settlers and in many ways, was a precursor to the predations of
the Indian Wars that followed for most of the next 60 years across
America's expanding territory.
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