Indian America The Black Hawk War Author:Miriam Gurko In the winter of 1831 a young Frenchman watched as an Indian tribe crossed the Mississippi at Memphis, banished to the west by Andrew Jackson's Removal Act. "It is impossible to conceive the frightful sufferings that attend these forced migrations," wrote Alexis de Tocqueville. "Hunger is in the rear, war awaits them, and misery besets them on... more » all sides."
The brief and disastrous war of Chief Black Hawk against the United States epitomizes the conflict of Indians and whites in America. Heroism and betrayal, stubborn pride and innocent misunderstanding, and beneath it all, an insatiable greed for land marked this encounter as so many others.« less