A Note on the Ending of *The Life of Black Hawk*

Ending?

I found the ending to Black Hawk very unsatisfying. I felt the book
had a strange change in tone after the Battle of Bad Axe. When Black
Hawk went to visit the Great Father, it seemed that nothing the he or
his chieftains could do was wrong; they all treated Black Hawk with
extreme ‘generosity’ and ‘kindness. Black Hawk marvels at the
ingenuity of building a railroad and says that the white people were
deserving of praise. Suddenly Black Hawk has transformed from being a
tenacious and brave war chief, wondering at the morality of a people
who would preach “do unto others as you would have done to you” and
then take someone else’s land and slaughter their people, into a
cheerful and grateful tourist. Black Hawk had repeatedly emphasized
the importance of seeking vengeance for those who had died at the
hands of an enemy, but after the slaughter of many men and women of
his tribe he seemed all to ready to enter into friendship with the
Americans. He also seems to emphasize in the last pages the
trustworthiness of the Americans, although it is evident that the
Americans were anything but fatherly or trustworthy to his people.
I thought it was interesting that at one point Black Hawk says that the
Americans killed many women and children during battle, and that they
had cowardly allowed Sioux to do the same. Interestingly, he later has
to justify that he never killed white women and children to the American people.

It seemed to me that Black Hawk has criticisms for other aspects
of the white culture, until he is defeated and all of the faults of the
Americans are forgotten. Instead, it is Black Hawk who must prove
himself to the whites. It reminded me of another rare directly critical
passage where Black Hawk says that the whites can commit as many
indiscretions as they want, but will be forgiven if they repent later,
while Indians must be good at all times. In light of that, I think that
this work was not written to be a seething commentary of the injustices
done to the Indians with reconciliation at the end, although at times
Black Hawk does interrupt the rather dry text with questions of morality
and criticisms of the whites. It is clear that even these interjections
are overshadowed by descriptions of the “Good Father”. I think that the
work could function rather as a vindication of the Indian’s goodness in
the eyes of the American reader.

I did not enjoy reading this book overall. I did not expect Black Hawk to
end with solicitations of friendship and gratitude for the way he was
received by the whites after his defeat. It was hard to read the ending
because I felt as though it differed so completely with where I thought
the narrative was going.