Keokuk, A Wonderful Speech

"Head-men, Chiefs, Braves and Warriors of the Sauks: I have heard and considered your demand to be led forth upon the war-path against the palefaces, to avenge the many wrongs, persecutions, outrages and murders committed by them upon our people.  I deeply sympathise with you in your sense and construction of these terrible wrongs.  Few, indeed, are our people who do not mourn the death of some near and loved one at the hands of the Long Guns*, who are becoming very numerous. Their cabins are as plenty as the trees in the forest, and their soldiers are springing up like grass on the prairies.  They have the talking thunder*, which carries death a long way off, with long guns and short ones*, long knives and short ones,* ammunition and provisions in abundance, with powerful war horses for their soldiers to ride.  In a contest where our numbers are so unequal to theirs we must ultimately fail.  All we can reasonably expect or hope is to wreak the utmost of our vengeance upon their hated heads, and fall, when fall we must, with our faces to the enemy.  Great is the undertaking, and desperate must be our exertions.  Every brave and warrior able to throw a tomahawk or wield a war-club must go with us.  Once across the Mississippi, let no one think of returning while there is a foe to strike or a scalp to take, and when we fall, if our strength permit, let us drag our feeble, bleeding bodies to the graves of our ancestors, and there die, that our ashes may co-mingle with theirs, while our departing spirits shall follow the long trail made by them in their passage to the land of spirits.

"It is my duty as your Chief to be your father while in the paths of peace, and your leader and champion while on the war-path.  You have decided to follow the path of war, and I will lead you forth to victory if the Good Spirit prevails.*  If not, and the Bad Spirit rules, then will I perish at my post of duty.  But what shall we do with our old and infirm, our women and children?  We cannot take them with us upon the war-path, for they would hamper us in our movements and defeat us of our vengeance.  We dare not leave them behind us, doomed to perish of hunger or fall captive to the palefaces, who would murder the old and the young, but reserve our wives and daughters for a fate worse than death itself.

I will lead you forth upon the war-path, but upon this condition:  That we first put our wives and children, our aged and infirm, gently to sleep in that slumber which knows no waking this side the spirit land, and then carefully and tenderly lay their bodies away by the side of our sacred dead, from whence their freed spirits shall depart on the long journey to the happy home in the land of dreams beneath, beyond, the Evening Star.*  For we go upon the long trail which has no turn, from which, in a few short moons, we shall follow them, but they must not follow us.  This sacrifice is demanded of us by the very love we bear those dear ones. Our every feeling of humanity tells us we cannot take them with us, and dare not leave them behind us." (Then turning to Black Hawk, who stood trembling like an aspen leaf and a picture of despair, he said):" To you, venerable Chief, do I appeal for an answer to what I have said.  Your long experience upon the war-path tells you I have spoken the truth; yet, with all your wonderful eloquence, you have urged us to this terrible sacrifice.  Brooding over the oft-repeated wrongs committed by the palefaces upon you and your people, your mind has grown weak, until you have lent a willing ear to the whisperings of evil counselors, who cannot speak the truth, because their tongues are forked, like the viper's.

"They came to you under the guise and pretense of friendship, and by the use of base flattery and hypocrisy gained your confidence, only to lead you into the crooked path of ruin and destruction.  They are enemies of yours and your band, instead of friends.  They first told you the British Father has promised you aid and assistance, in warriors as well as guns, tomahawks, spears, knives, ammunition and provisions, as soon as you should recross the Mississippi at the head of a hostile army.  Why has he not furnished you these things, to enable you to raise, arm and equip your army, ready for war?  This fact proves the whole story a lie, prepared no doubt by Neapope or his cunning brother, Winnesheik, for the sole purpose of deceiving and misleading you and your band.  The British Father is at peace with our Great Father at Washington, and neither knows of or cares for you or your grievances.

The same evil counselors have told you that the moment you shall sound your war-whoop east of the Mississippi all the Indian tribes between that and the Illinois river will rise up as a single warrior and unite with you, and under your banner, to avenge their wrongs upon the white pioneers.  What wrongs have they to avenge?  They are on terms of peace and good-will with these white settlers, and have no cause of com-plaint or grievance whatever.  Yet they have told you that these Indians across the river were not only ready but eager to join you in a general massacre of the frontier inhabitants of Northern Illinois, and are now only waiting your signal fires to be rekindled upon the watch-tower at Saukenuk to begin the slaughter.  If this be true, why are not their great war-chiefs here to-night?  Where are Wauponsee, The Red Devil, Big Thunder Shaata and Meachelle?  Why are they not here in person, or by their representatives, if it be true they are anxious to go upon the war-path with you?  Their absence is proof conclusive that they have no intention or desire to join you in this suicidal undertaking.  You have been deceived—aye, cruelly deceived—by these counselors with a forked tongue, who are leading you into the crooked path of the Bad Spirit, and have no love for you or respect for your gray hairs or good name.

I beseech you, by the noble character you have always borne, by the honors and trophies you have won upon the war-path, by the love you bear your gallant little band, by everything you hold sacred and dear, abandon this wild, visionary and desperate undertaking, and return to your village.  Seed time is here, but your grounds have not been prepared for the planting.  Go back and plant the summer's crop.  Arise to the dignity and grandeur of your honored position as the father of your gallant little band; shake off the base fetters of the Bad Spirit which bind you hand and foot, and turn your feet from the crooked war-path into the path that leads to peace.  In this way only can you save your true and trusty band from certain defeat, if not utter annihilation.  If you still persist in going upon the war-path against the white people, then indeed may we bid farewell to Black Hawk, whose protecting spirit has forsaken him in his old age, and suffered his star of success, which has led him in triumph to an hundred victories on the war-path, to go down behind a cloud, never to rise again; and when the Pauguk comes, his lofty spirit will depart, groping its way doubtingly along the dark and crooked path to the land of dreams, unhonored, unlamented and unwept."