remained the property of the United States, a few quarter sections were sold, on Rock river, including the Sac village.  New insults and outrages were now offered to the Indians, and they were again ordered to remove, not from the quarter sections which had actually been sold, but to the west side of the Mississippi.  Against this, they remonstrated and finally refused, positively, to be driven away.  The results of this refusal have already been shown in the narration which has been made of the events following upon the “actual invasion” of the state of Illinois, in the spring of 1831.  But it has been said that these Indians endeavored to form an alliance with some of the neighboring tribes to defend their lands.  There is no doubt that Black Hawk labored to persuade Keokuk and the Sac Indians residing with him, to return to the east side of the Mississippi and assist in defending their village.  His effort to unite with him, in alliance against the United States, the Winnebagoes, Pottawatamies and Kickapoos, was probably for the same object, though the case is not so clearly made out.  Mr. Schoolcraft in his “Narrative” speaks of a war message having been transmitted to the Torch lake Indians, by Black Hawk, or his counsellors, in 1830, and repeated in the two succeeding years; and adds that similar communications were made to other tribes.  The message, continues Mr. Schoolcraft, was very equivocal.  It invited these tribes to aid the Sacs in fighting their enemies.  Whatever may have been the object, no success attended the effort.  Other motives than that of retaining possession of these lands, may have prompted Black Hawk to seek this alliance.  Being an ambitious, restless man, he may have thought it expedient to do something to keep himself in power with his people.  A military campaign is occasionally a fortunate circumstance for a politician, whether his skin be red or white.  Gunpowder-popularity is of equal importance to the chiefs of the Sacs and the chiefs of the Illini.  An “actual invasion” of a state—­which, in these modern times, is supposed to consist in “levelling deadly weapons” at the inhabitants thereof, and “stealing their potatoes,” is quite a wind-fall to political aspirants.

That the British Band of Sac Indians cherished the feeling of active hostility towards the whites, that has been attributed to them, may well be questioned.  That they were provoked to a feeble assertion of their rights by the injustice of our government and the lawless conduct of the white settlers among them, is unquestionably true.  But it should be recollected, that from the period of their treaty with the United States, in 1816, to their capitulation in 1831, they had not killed one of our people.  For a number of years prior to 1831, the Americans had constantly passed through their country, unarmed, carrying with them large amounts of money and of goods, for the trade at the lead mines:  and yet not one of these travellers, sleeping in the woods and the Indian lodges, had been