In the preface to The Great Indian Chief of the West: Or Life and Adventures of Black Hawk, Benjamin Drake shared with the reader the hope that his book might “contribute to awaken the public mind to a sense of the wrongs inflicted upon the Indians, and to arouse the Christian statesmen of this land to the adoption of a more liberal, upright and benevolent course of policy towards them.”
Of course, that benevolent course of policy was never adopted. Between the Black Hawk War of 1832 and the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890, numerous wars, campaigns, and massacres took place west of the Mississippi.
Benjamin Drake first published this excellent history on Black Hawk and the war named after him just six years after that war ended. This new edition, which marks the 175th anniversary of the Black Hawk War, reproduces the 1856 edition of Drake’s book, retaining the original punctuation but modernizing the spelling.
