This statue of Black Hawk, head man of the Sac and Fox who were residents way out east in Wisconsin (and farther east then that earlier), sits in a park I stumbled upon on my way back home from Chicago. The think about him is that he eventually got angry with the white liars and determined to fight to regain the land where the old ones, his ancestors were buried.
Black Hawk made war while Keokuk, another Sac chief, determined the best course of action for his people, 200 years ago now, was cooperation. There were, after all, just too many whites, and Keokuk knew it. Black Hawk fought, he lost hundreds of his people, and was sentenced to life across the river in a place eventually called Iowa..
Somewhere near Rock Island, I got off the freeway to find the park that commemorated his life. My first teaching job out of college was spent at Blackhawk High School, South Wayne, WI. I loved it. I've long ago tried to know what I could about the man whose face adorned the front page of our student newspaper.
Like Crazy Horse, Black Hawk was a fighter, would only back down once he noticed that the Mississippi River ran too thick with his people's blood.
I wanted that picture up there, but the grounds were just full of butterflies, magnificent flying machines outfitted with so much grandeur they almost hurt the eye. These shots are all from the Black Hawk State Historic Site.
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2 comments:
Jim Thorpe, a member of the Sak-Fox. tribe, born in 1887, a student from Carlisle Indian School in Penn. whose founder James Pratt coined the phrase, "kill the Indian, save the man" went on to participate in the 1912 Olympics in Switzerland. He went on to win Gold medals in the Pentathlon and the decathlon. The latter while wearing two different shoes, one to small and the other too big, because some one had stolen the ones he normally wears.
Don't be surprised if the info you just gave me ends up in the Small Wonders format sometime soon. Thanks!!
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