Black Hawk was an elderly chief that found his people at war on several fronts during the spring of 1832. A book called "Black Hawk" by Kerry Trask is an excellent account of this war in the spring and summer.It recalls the history of the Sauk people and why they had to be constantly on the move for centuries through various other power sources in the upper Midwest.
The Sauks had suffered oppression at the hands of the Sioux,French,and American settlers through the ages and had finally established a sustaining community along the rock river in Illinois. Their village saukenak was a large village of clans that were firmly rooted and finally safe from their enemies but this would not last. American settlers began pouring in and with it the call to open the way and remove the Indians West of the Mississippi. When the Indians crossed over the Illinois militia was called in to track them and got routed by forty Indians.This caused immense panic and people fled and a new leader would wage a brutal war and attempt to exterminate Black hawks tribe. The main reason for the defeat of Black hawk was his inability to unite all the Indians in this region from the Ottawa,Fox, Potawatomi,Winnebago, Ho-Chinks, and Chippewas into a united force that could wage war and sustain themselves for the long run. The Sauks had to also fight the Sioux and the Menominee warriors to the West and these enemy tribes were a main reason why the Sauks were basically unable to move permanently to the West as the U S military had demanded. 
A more competent soldier named Henry Dodge with reinforcements was able to rally the white invaders and destroy the Sauks in the unfortunate battles of Wisconsin Heights and Bad Axe and this is the true tragedy of this war. Kerry Trask reflects in this book the difference of opinion of the Western Settler to the Yankee easterner in attitude of the natives and how generations of stories of hatred of the "savages' basically lead to these Westerners from stealing land. It is easy to expel people from their ancestral homes when you make a profit and enriching yourself through their displacement and perhaps no other Indian war in America shows this than the removal of Indians from Illinois and Wisconsin. Just about every state has its dishonorable Indian war and for Illinois it is the Black hawk War. At least it gave them a cool Indian nickname for their hockey team.
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