Black Hawk

This stirring chronicle of the 1832 Black Hawk War examines the forces struggling for control over the American frontier. The Sauk Nation once occupied one of North America's largest and most prosperous Indian settlements. The hundreds of acres along the Mississippi River were the envy of white Americans who had already begun to encroach upon the rich Indian land. When the conflicts between natives and white squatters turned violent, the Sauks were forced to permanently evacuate the east side of the Mississippi River. In the spring of 1832, the Sauk leader Black Hawk, along with 700 warriors, defiantly crossed the Mississippi from Iowa to Illinois in order to reclaim their ancestral home. The three month conflict, which ended in the massacre of surrendering Sauk fighters, dramatically embodies the Republic's inner conflict between its belief in freedom and its insatiable appetite for new territory. In Black Hawk, Kerry A. Trask gives new and vivid life to the heroic efforts of Black Hawk and his men, illuminating the tragic history of frontier America through the eyes of those who were cast aside in the pursuit of the new nation's manifest destiny.