THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 23 



October, 1832. Mr. Irving saw them in 1832 at that point, and thus 

 describes them : 



From Saint Louis I went to Fort Jefferson Barracks, to see Black Hawk, the Indian 

 warrior, and his fellow prisoners — a forlorn crew — emaciated and dejected. The re- 

 doubtable chieftain himself a meager old man upwards of seventy. He has, however, 

 a fine head, a Roman style of face, and a prepossessing countenance. 



Black Hawk, sometimes the Black Sparrow, was by birth a Sac. He 

 was the great-grandson of a Sac called Nana-makee, or Thunder, and 

 bis father's name was Pyesa. He was born about 1767, on Rock Eiver, 

 in now Illinois, and was then, in 1832, about sixty-six years of age. He 

 was not a chief by birth. At the age of fifteen he was admitted to the 

 rank of a brave, having wounded an enemy ; afterwards he killed a brave, 

 and took part in a war-dance. Before he was twenty his exploits against 

 the Osages had made him famous as a warrior. He took part against 

 the American Government in the war of 1812, and was the associate of 

 Colonel McKee, Colonel Dixon, and Simon Girty. He was called by 

 the British " General Black Hawk." 



After peace in 18.15, and the building of the fort on Eock Island in 

 1816, in the midst of the Sac and Fox IsTation, Black Hawk, with what 

 was known as the " British Band " of his nation, became sullen and 

 morose. They did not relish the building of the fort and having to 

 abandon the beautiful island. 



The Sac and Fox believed that a good spirit had the care of Rock 

 Island, and that the spirit lived in a cave in the rocks immediately 

 under the place where the fort was built. He is said to have been often 

 seen by the Indians, and was white, with wings resembling those of a 

 swan, but ten times larger. They were careful to make no noise in that 

 part of the island which he inhabited, for fear of disturbing him. He 

 had never been seen since the building of Fort Armstrong, and is sup- 

 posed to have been driven away by the din of the drums and cannon, 

 or by the boisterous mirth of the garrison. 



Mr. Catlin wrote of Black Hawk : 



The Black Hawk is the man to whom I have alluded as the leader of the Black 

 Hawk war, who was defeated by General Atkinson, in 1832 ; and held a prisoner of 

 war, and sent through Washington and other Eastern cities, with a number of others, 

 to be gazed at. 



This man, whose name has carried a sort of terror through the country where it has 

 been sounded, has been distinguished as a speaker or counselor rather than as a war- 

 rior ; and I believe it has been pretty generally admitted that Nah-pope and the 

 Prophet were, in fact, instigators of the war, and either of them with much 

 higher claims for the name of warrior than Black Hawk ever had. 



When I painted this chief, he was dressed in a plain suit of buckskin, with a string 

 of wampum in his ears and on his neck, and held in his hand his medicine-bag, which 

 was the skin of a black hawk, from which he had taken his name, and the tail of 

 which made him a fan, which he was almost constantly using. (Page 211, vol. 2, 

 Eight Years.) 



The Black Hawk war grew out of murders on the frontier about 

 1824. Then there were differences between the Sacs and Foxes and 



