Content Warning: This section references racist and violent actions committed by white people and the nations of the United States, France, Spain, and Great Britain.

Black Hawk’s account is the first narrative by an Indigenous leader who was also a survivor of forced removal and extermination policies by the United States government.

Black Hawk recounts the struggle of the joined Sauk and Meskwaki (Fox) tribes to resist and impede white settlement into their lands, in a conflict that culminated in the Black Hawk War of 1832. The war ended with the defeat of Black Hawk’s band in the Battle of Bad Axe on August 2, 1832. Black Hawk and Wabokieshiek, a Winnepago prophet, surrendered to the US “Indian” agent, officially ending the war. Black Hawk was a prisoner of war when he decided to write his life story. His narrative is the first account from an Indigenous perspective that opposed white culture and voiced the injustices toward the Indigenous peoples. Most frontier stories before this represented the Anglo-American viewpoint as whites wrote and edited all narratives; these demonized or erased Indigenous Americans.

In 1829, the tribe returned to Illinois to plant their corn, but found their land occupied by white settlers.