Black Hawk
Black Hawk is but one amongst several famous Native Americans. Black Hawk has a very colorful past, starting from when he was young and growing into a great warrior for his people. He became a fear of American settlers as he fought back for his lands and eventually became a sort of hero to the settlers and a romantic symbol of the frontier.
Black Hawk was born in 1767, and going with Indian tradition he was trained to hunt and fish at a very young age. By the age of fifteen Black Hawk had already become a “brave”, a brave is a term given to Indian warriors once they kill their first enemy in a battle. In time he earned the title of war chief and but the age of 45 he had already slain at least thirty enemy warriors.
Black Hawk was a very strong willed individual, in some cases he stuck close to his people’s traditions in other cases he broke away from them. It was a common practice of some tribes to drink alcohol, known as firewater, Black Hawk knew that this could not be good for you and decided at a young age never to partake of this tradition. He also broke away from a common practice of his people to hold more then one wife, he became married and kept only the one wife and remained loyal to her all his days. A part of tradition that he chose to stay with was his people’s religious beliefs, many Indians of the time were converting by will or force to Christianity, Black Hawk never gave over to that and stayed traditional to his people.
Through the course of several battles Black Hawk and his people eventually lost their land and were forced to uproot and move to new land. In time Black Hawk decided to take his land back which resulted in more battles amongst the Americans. After several broken peace treaties and running Black Hawk sided with the English against the Americans in the war and eventually became captured.