We are apt to regard the agriculture of the Indians as of small moment, but the Sauks and Foxes cultivated three thousand acres on the peninsula between the Rock and the Mississippi. Black Hawk said it was eight hundred acres, but the measurement of the cornfields shows that the area was nearly four times that. Of this the Foxes, who were much the smaller and weaker tribe, farmed five hundred acres; they also occupied considerable land on the opposite side of the Mississippi, where the city of Davenport now stands. These lands were all fenced with posts and rails, the latter being held in place by bark withes. The barrier was sufficient to keep the ponies out of the corn, but their lately acquired razor-back hogs gave them more trouble. The work of preparing a field for their planting involved much labor. The women heaped the ground into hills nearly three feet high, and the corn was planted in the top for many successive years without renewing the hills. Accordingly a field was much more easily prepared on the mellow bottom lands than on the tough prairie sod. They raised three kinds of corn: a sweet corn for roasting ears, a hard variety for hominy and a softer for meal. They also cultivated beans, squashes, pumpkins, artichokes and some tobacco. The Sauks at one time sold three thousand bushels of corn to the government officials at Fort Crawford for their horses. The Winnebagoes at Lake Koshkonong sold four thousand bushels of corn to General Atkinson when he was pursuing Black Hawk in 1832. The hundreds of acres of corn hills still visible about the latter lake show how extensively that region was inhabited and farmed by the Indians.

Aside from the devastating wars which the tribe carried on with their new enemies west of the great river, whereby their numbers were steadily reduced, no serious shadow fell upon their life at and about Rock Island till the year 1804. A French trader had established himself a few miles below on the Mississippi. The young braves and squaws delighted in visiting his place and were always sure of a dance in the evening. One night in that year an Indian killed one of the habitues of the place, the provocation being unbearable. A few weeks after demand was made that he be given up, and he was at once surrendered and taken to Saint Louis.

Soon after, his relative, Quashquamme, one of the sub-chiefs of the tribe, and four or five other Sauks went to Saint Louis to work for his release. A bargain was made to the effect that a tract of land including parts of Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin and Illinois, comprising fifty million acres, be ceded to the government, the consideration being the cancellation of a debt of $2,400, which the Indians owed trader Choteau, of Saint Louis, and a perpetual annuity of $1,000 thereafter. It was also tacitly agreed that the imprisoned Indian should be released. This part of the program was carried out, but the poor fellow had not gone three hundred feet before he was shot dead. We are sorry to say that General William Henry Harrison was the chief representative of the government in this one-sided treaty, though, of course, he knew nothing of the predetermined killing of the Indian prisoner. This treaty, made without due authority on the part of Quashquamme, was not accepted by the Sauks till 1816, when its ratification was made a side issue in

an agreement which the government negotiated between the Sauks and the Osages or Sioux.

Black Hawk always claimed that he had never consented to the sale of Saukenuk; and it is but fair to Quashquamme to say that he always insisted that his cession of land went only to the Rock-and therefore did not include Saukenuk--and not to the Wisconsin, as the whites asserted. I have been thus explicit, as the disagreement about this treaty led to the final conflict between the Sauks and the whites.

One proposition of the original paper was that the Indians should be allowed to occupy all the territory as aforetime until it was surveyed and sold to settlers. Along in the '20's the frontier line rapidly approached the great river; and about 1823, when still fifty miles distant, squatters began to settle on the Indian lands at Saukenuk. Protest was made against this to the commander of Fort Armstrong (which was built on Rock Island in 1816) and to the government, but without avail.

The squatters, relying for protection on the troops near by, perpetrated outrages of the most exasperating character. They turned their horses into the Indian cornfields, threw down fences, whipped one young woman who had pulled a few corn suckers from one of their fields to eat, while on her way to work, and finally two ruffians met Black Hawk himself one day as he was hunting on the river bottom and accused him of shooting their hogs. He indignantly denied it, but they snatched his rifle from his hand, wrenched the flint out, and then beat the old man with a hickory stick till the blood ran down his back, and he could not leave his house for

days. Doubtless this indignity surpassed all other outrages in the proud old chief's estimation, and we

BLACKHAWK AND THE TWO RUFFIANS

can imagine him sitting in his cabin on the highest ground in the village, looking over the magnificent landscape, brooding upon the blight which had fallen upon the beautiful home of his tribe, and harboring thoughts of revenge. Still he refrained from open resistance till the spring of 1831.

It was the custom of the tribe to spend the winter months hunting and trapping in northeastern Missouri, returning in the spring to Saukenuk. This time they found the whites more aggressive than ever. They had fenced in the most of the cultivated land, plowed over the burying ground, and destroyed a number of houses. They received the Indians with hostile looks, but Black Hawk at last did what he ought to have done at first, ordered the squatters all off the peninsula. He then went to an island where a squatter sold liquor and had paid no heed to his entreaties not to sell to the Indians, and with a party of his braves knocked in the heads of the whisky barrels and poured their contents on the ground. The liquor vendor immediately hurried to Governor Reynolds, of Illinois, with his tale of woe and represented that Black Hawk was devastating the country with torch and tomahawk.

Governor Reynolds at once issued a flamboyant proclamation calling for volunteers, and asked the United States authorities at Saint Louis for aid. A considerable body of regulars was dispatched up the river and reached Saukenuk before the volunteers. Black Hawk told his people to remain in their houses, and not to obey any orders to leave Saukenuk, for they had not sold their home and had done no wrong. But when he saw the undisciplined, lawless and wildly excited volunteers, who came a few days later, he told the people that their lives were in danger and they must go. Accordingly the next morning at an early hour all embarked in their canoes and crossed the Mississippi. They were visited there by the officials, and Black Hawk entered into an agreement to remain west of the river.