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The Blackhawk War BY HENRY LITTLE, 1875
FORCIBLE REMOVAL OP THE INDIANS.
In 1831, three years after their lands were put on the market, General Gaines, with a sufficient military force removed the Sauk tribe of Indians to the west side of the Mississippi river. ' The Indians were much dissatisfied with the treatment which they had received from the whites during the past 27 years, and their lacerated feelings were smarting intensely by the remembrance of those unprovoked injuries of the past, and finally their forcible ejectment from their own lands and from their much loved homes and hunting grounds. The Indians were also much dissatisfied with their new homes which had been assigned them, and their hearts yearned continually for their dear old homes where the dust of their ancestors reposed, on the east side of the "Father of waters. "
THE INDIANS RE-CROSS THE RIVER.
About one year after the Indians had been removed to the west side of the river, they, being unable to content themselves in their new home, resolved to return to their former home, and therefore they, in the spring of 1832, re-crossed to the east side of the river.
When those Indians returned to their old homes upon the east side of the Mississippi they had no thoughts or intentions of making war upon the whites, nor did they for once suspect that the whites would make war upon them.
But those poor, ignorant, simple-minded creatures verily supposed that in compliance with their entreaties, and in view of all the facts, they would regain peaceable possession of what they considered as. being their own land, or, at least, if they failed to obtain a recognition of their ownership of the land, they supposed that they would be permitted to live there without molestation or trouble.
Michigan
Page 49
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