The Black Hawk State Historic Site, in Rock Island, Illinois, occupies much of the historic site of the village of Saukenuk, the home of a band of Native Americans of the Sauk nation. It includes the John Hauberg Museum of Native American Life. The state park is located on a 150-foot (45m) bluff overlooking the Rock River in western Illinois. It is most famous for being the birth place of the Sauk warrior Black Hawk. The disputed cession of this area to the U.S. Government was the catalyst for the Black Hawk War.
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The Sauk nation occupied this site as their principal village, a well-drained area suitable for growing corn, about 1750. The tribe's villagers were successful not only in agriculture but also in catching fur-bearing animals, spending the winters in winter camps down and across the Mississippi collecting furs. The Sauk hunters skinned their catches and sold the peltry to fur traders from the Great Lakes. From 1763 on, these traders were mostly British, and from the 1780s on, most of them were employees or contractors of the Canada-based North West Company. In the spring, the Sauks gathered in sugar camps for maple sugaring before returning to the village (left empty since the fall) to plant crops and bury their dead.
The Saukenuk people's social and economic ties with British Canada not only led to success for its people but kept the hope of British military assistance alive among the Sauk. Some of the Indians would travel each year to British forts on far-away Lake Superior and near Detroit for trading and gift-giving.
The disputed 1804 St. Louis Treaty between Quashquame and William Henry Harrison led to the transfer of Illinois lands to the U.S. Government, including Saukenuk. This treaty was deemed invalid by the Sauk who continued to live at the village.[1]
By 1826, an estimated 4,800 Sauk lived in and around Saukenuk. It was the largest single settlement in the new U.S. state of Illinois. This is how Black Hawk described Saukenuk:
| “ | Our village was situated on the north side of Rock river, at the foot of its rapids, and on the point of land between Rock river and the Mississippi. . . . The land around our village, uncultivated, was covered with blue-grass, which made excellent pasture for our horses. Several fine springs broke out of the bluff, near by, from which we were supplied with good water. The rapids of Rock river furnished us with an abundance of excellent fish, and the land, being good, never failed to produce good crops of corn, beans, pumpkins, and squashes. We always had plenty - our children never cried with hunger, nor our people were never in want. Here our village had stood for more than a hundred years.[2] | ” |
The defeat of the British Canadians in the War of 1812 and the spread of settlers into Illinois and up the Mississippi River doomed the village. In multiple treaties, many of the Sauk had signed land cessions that sold the land under Saukenuk to the new American nation. Part of the tribe established new villages in Iowa and in Missouri nearer their winter hunting grounds.
The campaign of 1832 led to a complete victory for the U.S. Army and the state of Illinois. Many of Black Hawk's followers were killed and the Quad Cities region was completely opened to settlement. However, many white Americans admired Black Hawk's courage in defense of his band's ancestral lands, and the native leader was elevated to the rank of a folk hero.
In historic site. A statue of Black Hawk was raised on the site in 1892, and the Civilian Conservation Corps redeveloped and improved the park in 1934-1942.
The center of the Sauk village of Saukenuk is now the Black Hawk State Historical Site and John Hauberg Museum of Native American Life. However, the village spread out over a much larger area than the boundaries of the current state park. The Rock Island side of the village's site is now partly a large quarry. Many villagers lived south of the Rock River, in what is now Milan, Illinois.
The historic site is served by Illinois Route 5, which intersects with Interstate 74 in nearby Moline, Illinois at exit #4.
The Hauberg Museum specializes in Sauk and Mesquakie cultural objects and artifacts. The museum is located in a lodge constructed in 1934 by the Civilian Conservation Corps and was named after Dr. John Hauberg, a philanthropist from Rock Island. Exhibits include full-size replicas of Sauk winter and summer houses, dioramas depicting Native life typical of the period from 1750 to 1830, trade goods, jewelry and domestic items, and several Black Hawk artifacts, including his tomahawk, two of his clay tobacco pipes, and a bronze bust fashioned from a plaster life mask.
The Singing Bird Nature Center offers educational programs in the northwest section of the park.[3] One section of the building is dedicated to the study of local native birds. The nature center is named after Black Hawk's wife Asshewaqua meaning Singing Bird.[4]
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