A Note on Retaliation and Terminology in *The Life of Black Hawk*

In this twenty page section Black Hawk begins to describe the treatment Native American's suffered at the hands of the Americans. A very confusing part in this section was how Black Hawk refers to people as "British father", "Great chief", or "trader". Some of the time there were footnotes to describe who the people were that Black Hawk was referring to but other times there wasn't. This got a little confusing especially with all the village names he throws at you. He travels a lot so it's hard to keep track of where he is and who he's talking to. This really shows how much Native Americans relied on the advice of their "white" counterparts.

I found it interesting that a lot of the times that Black Hawk was asking people for advice, they were not other Indians. He was constantly traveling to other cities/villages to speak with "Great chiefs" or "traders" to get advice about whether or not to leave his village. I guess he does this because he doesn't have access to the important "whites" trying to take over his village, but in this way he and his tribal mates have easily been taken advantage of before. They trusted the "whites" when
they signed the paper that sold their land, and the "whites" were constantly instigating the Indians and stealing from their lands.

A reoccurring theme I saw in this section were the cultural differences pertaining to war between the Americans and Indians. To the Americans, soldiers are replaceable, while to the Indians they try to preserve life. Black Hawk makes comments that shows he prides himself in not losing many of his soldiers. You can also see the differences as far as negotiations work. Perhaps this is because of the language barriers but the Native Americans seem more level headed. The Americans wanted Black Hawk to leave
his land and didn't really care whether he wanted to or not, because they were just going to take it by force. The Native Americans seem more willing to have peace, by not retaliating when the "whites" do harm to people of their tribe.

~J.A.