Black Hawk 1767-1838
Native American leader

Born in Saukenuk, a village of the Sauk people in Illinois, he became a Sauk chief and opposed US expansion into his people's ancestral lands, though he was unable to prevent members of the Sauk and Fox tribes from signing a treaty that ceded all of their lands east of the Mississippi to the USA. He sided with the British in the War of 1812 and fought US forces until 1815. In the ensuing decade he and his people were forced to move westward, but they kept revisiting their homeland. Their effort to plant crops there in 1832 led to a conflict with federal troops and began the Black Hawk War, which lasted from April to August of that year. Black Hawk and his followers were finally defeated at Bad Axe River in Wisconsin, and he was captured and imprisoned. After his death his bones were displayed in an Iowa museum.