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. After the War ended, he signed a peace treaty in 1816 that re-affirmed the treaty of 1804, a provision of which he later protested ignorance. 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.