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From Black Hawk Slept Here

Black Hawk Slept Here is a wiki counterpart to the blog at spokesrider.com. It's about the places where the Sauk leader, Black Hawk, slept. At some of the places he literally slept. At some he slept metaphorically, sometimes in the nightmares of settlers who were moving on to the land that once belonged to his people. In other words, the wiki and blog are also about the settlement-era history of the places that once belonged to Black Hawk and other Native people.

Both the blog and the wiki have a habit of straying from the Black Hawk story to other places associated with settlement-era history or settler-Native interactions, especially if there is something in them that make good bicycling destinations.

Note: This wiki was formerly at hawkroost.com, but the information at that site is being transferred to this one. The transfer began in November 2009.

What is contained in this atlas?

The title of this atlas came from the anecdote recounted in this article:

Black Hawk Slept Here - at the Wight cabin.

Another incident is recounted here:

Black Hawk does business at Marantette's trading post.

Here in this atlas you will also be able to find information about:

• The Black Hawk war of 1832, especially as it affected places in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio.
• Other encounters between Black Hawk and settlers along the Sauk Trail and elsewhere.
• Places of Black Hawk's involvement in the War of 1812
• The marks left on the landscape by the men who served in the Michigan and Indiana militia units that were called up during the 1832 war -- and by their wives and families.
• Places where Black Hawk's contemporaries among the Sauk, Mesquakie, Potawatomi, Odawa, and other Native Peoples interacted with European-American settlers, especially where these interactions illustrate some of the issues of the Black Hawk war.
• Bicycle routes and travels to these places.

Current featured article: Lancaster Township, Wells County, Indiana

Excerpt:

...There is another source of information about some of the details of settlement. The General Land Office records are available online. They tell their own story, and can be used to compare with what is told in some of the old reminiscences.

Figure 1 shows the locations of all the land patents that were issued in Wells County prior to the Black Hawk war. They are all in Wells County, on the Wabash River downstream from Bluffton. They give an idea of what the people who got the first picks considered the best locations to be. The purchasers are color coded as shown in the key, and listed in order of the the first patent that was issued to each person....