The Last Crossing

About the Book

A historian has labeled the decimation of the Sauk nation, “a tawdry debacle.” 1804. The tribe of 6000 lives as a sovereign nation in Saukenuk, a village in northwestern Illinois at the junction of the Rock river and the Mississippi. President Jefferson’s territory governor, William Henry Harrison, dupes five Sauk chiefs into signing a land treaty ceding their homeland and hunting grounds. Sauk war chief Black Hawk declares the treaty invalid: it had not been approved by a full tribal council. A rival chief, Keokuk, bows to the United States; agrees to help the government move the tribe west. A once harmonious community is split into opposing factions. British military supporting Black Hawk’s cause, withdraw their allegiance after the War of l812 defeat. Ilinois militia and the United States Army mobilize to remove Black Hawk’s band by force. But neither they, nor government peace councils; nor gunboats, nor the ultimatums of four Presidents can bend Black Hawk’s resolve to fight rather surrender what he deemed were the Sauks’ ordained rights. Finally, a fifth President, Andrew Jackson, orders full-scale military action to annihilate Black Hawk and his supporters and an army of regulars and militiamen march in a war of no quarter. Here is history, vividly unfolded, laying bare the treachery and violence our forefathers wielded to subjugate the American Indian.