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The Blackhawk War BY HENRY LITTLE, 1875
THE SQUATTERS.
In 182? some dozen or fifteen squatters arrived and took possession of that contested land. The squatters were very troublesome to the Indians, by turning their canoes adrift, to be carried down the river, and by cutting and breaking their canoes into pieces, and by annoying the Indians most grievously in diverse ways.
The squatters said that they were going to buy the land when it was brought into market. All the complaints and entreaties of the Indians failed to bring them any satisfaction for the injuries which had been inflicted upon them, to prevent their repetition.
The Indians remonstrated loudly and persistently against the occupancy of their lands by the squatters, but all to no purpose. The Indians said, that if the United States pretended to claim their lands by virtue of that bogus treaty, even then the Indians would have the right to occupy it and hunt upon it, until the land was actually sold by the United States to a third party, and that they would have the right to occupy and use all that portion of the said lands which were not sold. Those squatters had not bought and did not own one square foot of that land; they were only going to buy at some future time.
THE LAND OFFERED FOR SALE.
In 1828 that land was offered at a public sale of the United States land at Springfield, Illinois, at which time the number of squatters, all of whom were going to buy land, had increased to about twenty, but among all that
miserable, beggarly crowd of twenty land pirates who had occupied the Indians' land, and sorely annoyed them under the pretense that they were going to buy, but when the opportunity was offered, only one of them did, or" could buy one-quarter of a section of that land.
Michigan
Page 48
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