Jessica Crabtree

Black Hawk and his son Whirling Thunder
Oil painting by John Wesley Jarvis, 1833: from the collection of the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa.

Black Hawk was one of the most important resistance leaders of the Sauk & Fox Indians, part of the Algonquian peoples of the Great Lakes/Upper Midwest region. The conflict named for him, the Black Hawk War of 1832, was fought like so many others over fraudulent seizures of Native American homelands. It resulted in the forced relocation of many Sauk as part of a large-scale program of Indian removals which included the notorious “Trail of Tears.”

After the war, the captive Black Hawk and his son, among others, were taken on a circuit show and exhibited to crowds of curious onlookers, often met with mocking and hostility. On the Midwestern frontier where the relationship between white settlers and Native Americans was a volatile issue, their presence was greeted with riots and lynch mobs. It is said that the public in some places began to object to the shameful display after seeing how both Black Hawk and his son endured the exhibits with such dignity.

During his captivity Black Hawk was interviewed for a biography which sold widely, and sat for several portraits, including the one shown above. He was eventually allowed to return to his people in what is today Iowa, where he died in 1838.

Jim Thorpe, the renowned Native American athlete and Olympic medalist, was of Sauk and Fox ancestry and descended from the same clan as Black Hawk. He is reported to have said that he was as proud of that as of any of the medals he had won.