The Black Hawk War Including a Review of Black Hawk's Life

About the book

Frank E. Stevens combines an account of Black Hawk's life with treaties, correspondence, military movements, and descriptions of the conflict that bears his name. The book offers extensive historical material, but its organizing language repeatedly judges Indigenous actions from a settler perspective. Readers should therefore distinguish reproduced evidence from the author's explanations and assumptions. The treatment of the 1804 treaty and the growing settlements around Black Hawk's village provides an important setting for the later violence. This is not Black Hawk's own autobiography, nor a neutral replacement for Indigenous testimony. Its value includes the opportunity to examine how a historical narrative constructs responsibility and legitimacy. The text retains references to the printed volume's numerous illustrations without promising that those images are reproduced here.

• Land and conflict
• Historical interpretation
• Treaties and power

Why read it

For critical study of a detailed historical account whose evidence and authorial perspective need to be read separately.

English history by Frank E. Stevens · 1903 text