How Smooth Their Language: Authenticity and Interculturalism in theLife of Black Hawk

Abstract

Critics seeking a paradigmatic moment in the history of Indian-white encounter will find few more suitable than the following from the life of Black Hawk, the Sauk rebel, U.S. prisoner of war, and subject if not author of theLife of Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak or Black Hawk(1833). The episode, reported by Thomas McKenney and James Hall inThe Indian Tribes of North America(1836–44), occurred after Black Hawk's brief, spectacular resistance to removal had been violently quelled; after he had been taken on a humbling tour of the East; and after his rival, Keokuk, had been installed by the United States as tribal chief. McKenney and Hall pick up the story at the conference where Keokuk's ascendancy is announced:They were then told by major Garland, that the President considered Keokuk the principal chief of the nation, and desired he should be acknowledged as such; he expected Black Hawk would listen, and conform to this arrangement. … From some mistake of the interpreter, Black Hawk understood that he wasorderedto submit to the advice of Keokuk, and became greatly excited. Losing all command of himself he arose, trembling with anger, and exclaimed: “I am a man — an old man. I will not obey the counsels of anyone! I will act for myself; no one shall govern me. …”Keokuk, in a low tone, said to him: “Why do you speak thus before white men? You trembled — you did not mean what you said.