Description

Black Hawk or Black Sparrow Hawk (Sauk Makataimeshekiakiak) (1767-1838) was a leader and warrior of the Sauk American Indian tribe in what is now the United States. Although he had inherited an important historic medicine bundle, he was not a hereditary civil chief of the Sauk, but was an appointed war chief. He was generally known in English as Black Hawk. During the War of 1812, he fought on the side of the British. Later he led a band of Sauk and Fox warriors against settlers in Illinois and present-day Wisconsin in the 1832 Black Hawk War. After the war he was captured and taken to the eastern U. S. where he and other British Band leaders toured several cities. Near the end of his captivity in 1833, he told his life story to a government interpreter, which was edited by a local reporter and became the first Native American autobiography published in the United States, entitled Autobiography of Maka- tai-me-she-kia-kiak; or, Black Hawk.