RockneCAST

Autobiography of Chief Black Hawk (#267, 26 Nov. 2024)

Summary

In this episode, Rockne Cole delves into the autobiography of Chief Blackhawk, exploring its significance as a primary source of Native American history. He discusses the unique perspective it offers on the Blackhawk War, the life of the Sauk people, and the cultural practices of the time. The conversation highlights the importance of understanding indigenous narratives and the impact of historical events on Native communities. Cole also shares intriguing insights about Blackhawk's legacy, including his connection to the famous athlete Jim Thorpe, and reflects on the complexities of American history.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Chief Blackhawk's Autobiography

02:48 The Significance of Blackhawk's Perspective

06:14 Exploring Sauk Village Life

08:47 The Blackhawk War: Context and Impact

12:10 Blackhawk's Surrender and Aftermath

15:06 Cultural Insights from Blackhawk's Autobiography

18:00 The Role of Runners in Communication

20:51 Blackhawk's Legacy and Connection to Jim Thorpe

23:48 Conclusion and Reflections on History

Duration:: 50m
Broadcast on:: 26 Nov 2024
Audio Format:: other

Want to shop Walmart Black Friday deals first? Walmart Plus members get early access to our hottest deals. Join now and get 50% off a one-year annual membership. Shop Black Friday deals first with Walmart Plus. See terms at walmartplus.com. This episode is brought to you by Autotrader. Look around. What do you see? Cars. Lots of them. And guess what? They're probably on Autotrader. Whether you're into timeless classics or the latest trends. If you see it on the road, you can likely find it on Autotrader. New. Used. Electric. And one day. Maybe even flying cars. See a car? Find it. On Autotrader. Visit autotrader.com to learn more. What is going on, guys? For this episode of The Rock B Cast, I'm going to cover the autobiography of Chief Black Hawk. As many of you know, in my last episode, I did it on Black Hawk the Battle for America for the Heart of America by Carrie A. Trask, a fabulous book covering everything related to the Black Hawk War, the sociology, obviously the history, the relations between the British and the Black Hawk Band, and the United States, all things related to the war itself. For this episode, and it's a great book, I strongly encourage you to read it, but for this episode, I'm going to dive deep into the autobiography of Chief Black Hawk. I'm going to go right to the source. And we're going to cover why it's so important as a source of information. And so for this episode, I'm going to explain a little bit why I wanted to read this book so bad, why it's so unique as a source in connection with early American history. We'll get a little bit, I'm going to share a passage with you related to Village Life in Salkanok, the historical village of the Salk people. That Black Hawk basically went to war over, so I'll sort of share with you a little bit about that. And then I'm going to talk with you a little bit about the Runners, which Black Hawk doesn't really do a deep dive into into his book, but I'm going to do a little meditation on the Runners. One of my favorite movies is called The Maze Runner, and when Black Hawk is describing various communications, he gets into these Runners. So I'm going to just kind of meditate on that a little bit, I just have some questions that aren't answered. If any of you are experts, I would love to know, but that's really cool. And then the other thing I'm going to do, I'm going to give you a little bit of a tease, Black Hawk is the great, great, great grandfather of a very famous American athlete. So prepare to have your mind blown. Oh, there I go again. I get so excited about these topics. I say, hey, what's going to blow your mind? I sound like Quato, the Quato in total recall, open your mind, it's going to blow your mind. But seriously is, this is really like hair standing on and good. That's how good this particular book is. And I hope you get the chance to read autobiography of chief Black Hawk, or as he was called, Makatay, Meshekay, heak, I have no idea. That's how you say Black Hawk in the Elgonquin language that the sock spoke. So let's talk a little bit about just kind of the circumstances under which this book arose. As we know, so much of American history is written by the victor. And the United States, a lot of historians, a lot of places on college campuses beat ourselves up for that, the fact that many of the native peoples did not have at least paper and parchment language, written language such that they could record their point of view. There were no Black Hawk or sock monks that were sitting in their monasteries, like they were when the Vikings invaded England to share their perspective on the various wars, the various conflicts, their way of life. But in this particular case, that's precisely what we get. We get a written primary source from chief Black Hawk, told immediately after the war in 1832, essentially it was finished in the summer to fall of 1833. So just after the Black Hawk War concluded, Black Hawk told his story. The author, so just to give you a little bit of context about how important this is as a source of information. As with most autobiographies, this particular autobiography by Penguin, and I'll include a link in the show notes to this, was edited by a Dr. Gerald Kennedy from Louisiana State University, who is a professor of English specializing in Edgar Allan Poe. You wouldn't think that what connection would he have to Black Hawk? Well, Edgar Allan Poe, you're talking about 1830s, 1840s. So he's clearly a student of early American literature, and obviously had an interest in Black Hawk as a subject, and also just as a literary piece. Now, Black Hawk, of course, as far as I can tell, did not know how to write. This particular book was the result of a dictation by Black Hawk to a guy named Antoine Lechler as, which as I mentioned in my last episode, is the namesake for Lechler, Iowa, home of American pickers just north of Davenport, Iowa, a French Canadian and Potawatomi interpreter, and also this guy named John Patterson, a sympathetic editor, I believe in the Galena area that knew that this was very important to get this as a book. Well, Gerald Kennedy, who's professor of English, writes the introduction to the autobiography of Chief Black Hawk, and he basically says, "This is a book without precedent, unique in American history." He argues, and he states, I assume he's right because it's Penguin Press, he's a professor of English at Louisiana State, that this is the very first time that the indigenous people offers a detailed written defense of his actions during the war, before, during, and after. The only other time there had been a book of any kind, according to Gerald Kennedy, was by a guy named Pequot, it was a Pequot author named William Appris, who wrote a book called "Son of the Forest" in 1829 that also got into some of the indignities visited upon the indigenous people. However, William Appris, that doesn't really sound like a big, you know, indigenous name, he had already been converted to Methodism, and he was Christianized. So yes, you're kind of getting the indigenous perspective, but by someone who's already kind of drinking the Kool-Aid of Anglo-Western Christian culture, Kennedy indicates that Blacklock is the very first source, where you get an extended description of Native point of view. So it's just kind of mind-blowing as a source, if you really want to know his perspective. But the other thing that's kind of fun about this book, and I'll actually share a passage with you, is I also just wanted to know about what was it like to live in an Indian village. Now, this wasn't pure obviously pre-Columbian indigenous culture. This was not like reading about a primary source from like the Malen builders of the 8th or 9th century. By this time, in North American history, the Columbian exchange had occurred 300 or 400 years earlier. The French had been in this particular region of the upper Midwest at least since the late 17th century, where Dubuque was founded like 1673-ish, prayer to Sheen, there had been a settlement, so they're already by this time in the 1830s. Been a lot of interactions, or quite a bit few interactions between the French and indigenous cultures, the Spanish and indigenous cultures, the Spain basically controlled the area until like 1803. And then after that, there was a brief time period where Napoleon controlled it just long enough to be able to sell it to the United States. But so this is an area that had had some European interaction, but for the most part, not a lot. There were not huge communities, there was not a huge military presence. So Blackhawk gives you kind of a glimpse into what it was like to live in American, in a truly authentic indigenous American culture in the upper Midwest. He shares some of the rituals after they go out on hunts. He shares what Sauconuck actually looked like, and you can see why he really wanted to stay in that particular area. He is kind of hilariously funny at various points of it. So it's just a really unique source. The other thing that I think kind of does really amaze me in there. I'm not saying boys my mind, so I don't repeat myself too much. At least I get so that used to be one verbal filler that I had in a lot of episodes that I would say. So now I'm trying to get rid of it blows my mind, man. No, but it does. It amazes me as well use. The fact that this book was written, I hate to laugh, but it's kind of funny. So Blackhawk goes on this like four-month war path. Now to call the Blackhawk war a war, it really wasn't a war. There was only like four or five "battles". The casualties were extremely low. Blackhawk, I think, had one. About one battle, the Battle of Stillman's Run. There were other isolated massacres that had occurred in small settlements during this time period. The whole thing only lasted about four months. That said, the amount of fear that it created throughout the upper Midwest was absolutely hellable. So I think it'd probably be closest to the situation where, you know, what if you had a city like New York or let's say Minneapolis, in all of a sudden you had random massacres occurring in certain neighborhoods and you couldn't really know what was going on. So yes, the actual casualties of the Blackhawk war were not huge and it was more kind of a series of isolated skirmishes. That said, it had a very significant impact in terms of the fear that people felt and it was well known. It was just enough close to the east that the people in the east were following this particular war. Andrew Jackson, the president of the time, was actively involved in it and at the time of the Battle of Badax, in which Henry Dodge and his militia wiped out the rest of Blackhawk's band. Andrew Jackson had just sent Winfield Scott, like his crack general, to take care of the indigenous of the sock band that was fighting in the upper Midwest. But what happens after that, and I covered more of that in my previous episode, what happens more of that is just kind of fascinating. So what happens is that the Battle of Badax occurs in about August 1st of 2nd in 1832 and that's located about an hour north of me. I live in Aushen, Iowa in the Wisconsin side near just Soto, Wisconsin. About 500 died on the Indian side. About 5 to 10 Americans died during that particular battle. So it was a totally lopsided battle. Some people call it the Badax massacre. So afterwards, Blackhawk's able to escape. He's in his late 60s. He then hangs out in the about an hour north of there with another tribe north of prayer in the cross. For about probably 16 weeks, at that point, I think the tribe there was kind of like, dude, we're not going to harbor a criminal like you. I mean, they told him a criminal, but you could get the sense that he was no longer welcome because if anyone else were who would discover that, obviously that tribe would have been in trouble. So Blackhawk decides to surrender He surrenders for about, he surrenders at Harry Deschine near Fort Crawford to a guy named Jefferson Davis. Yeah, that Jefferson Davis, the guy that became the president of the Confederate States of America. And he gets into that a little bit during the course of his autobiography. From there, Jackson takes Blackhawk and I believe he also Wabishig, the prophet, he takes both of them down to Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis, Missouri. And from there, Blackhawk spends about seven months at the St. Louis Barracks. He doesn't dictate his story at that time, but one of the conditions during the seven months, he also has to take a tour of the East Coast. So during the seven months, he has a ball and chain there for a while, but then he takes his tour of the East Coast and everyone in the East, absolutely adores Blackhawk. They've been following this war and he's treated like a total rock star. People are just hunger for anything related to Blackhawk. Mobs of people show up so they can see Blackhawk. And he's meet at almost as if he's a hero. Some people refer to him as the hero of the like a revolutionary figure, like in the great American tradition. So then shortly thereafter, I believe it was Hayacock, who is the, basically the peace-loving chief. He wasn't really a peace lover, but I think Hayacock was much more pragmatic. I think he did settle in current day Hayacock Iowa. He was Blackhawk's rival within the sock band. But after the defeat of Blackhawk in the Blackhawk War, Hayacock had intervened on Blackhawk's behalf and basically received a full pardon so that he was then free after being seven months in captivity. Shortly after he's in captivity, he then is interviewed by Antoine Leclerc, Leclerc, an interpreter of French-Canadian and Potawannani Orger, who spoke, I believe it's the Algonquin language, and John Patterson, a sympathetic editor. For the most part, and Candy gets into this in a little bit, there's some concern about how accurate the interpretation is, but for the most part, it has upheld and was stood historical scrutiny. And in any case, it's about as close as you're going to get to an authentic, first-hand account by a Native American person just after the cessation of hostilities. So this is literally like, you know, Hayac to bring up Ojib, you know, Ojib gave his book "Why I Did It," or "If I Did It," Blackhawk, and Ojib did that several years after the murder, Blackhawk does this right after the end of the war while it's still fresh, and this autobiography becomes a bestseller sold throughout the United States, and people love this book. And it stays in print for, well, it's still in print today. I mean, it's still a very popular book. I don't know how many people do it. Read it, but it's still in print. And it's one of those things that, and I will share a portion of this book with you, this book should be in every high school curriculum. Now, I don't remember reading this book in my American history class at neither high school. I know I did not read it in college, but gosh, I think this book should be mandatory reading for all high school students of American history. And it's one of these also books. It's not that long of the entire book. Kevin, if you're listening, I think even you can have fine time to read this damn book. It's only like 97 pages. You can read the damn book. And I'm only covering one episode, so you got to be able to get through this book. And it's primary source. Maybe your son could read. I don't know, but it is so, so good. So let me just share with you a passage from this particular book. And this passage explains in large part why I've read this book, because I was just kind of curious, how the hell did native people live? I kind of had a hazy idea with this. And granted, this is, this one, it's kind of equivalent. Remember that movie "Dances of the Wolves"? It was kind of similar to that where it's not like this is like Indians in their authentic pre-Columbian setting. I mean, they had guns. They were trained with the French and the British by this time for nearly at least 160 years. Of course, the Spanish had been in the Americas since 1492, as we all know. But for the most part, it's just interesting. Yes, there was a European footprint at this time, but it was a relatively light footprint. And so here, Blackhawk describes, there was very isolated settlement at this time. There was not a huge military presence. And for the most part, most of the interactions of the Europeans came in the formal isolated forest places like Perdichain, which is like only 30 miles east of me in the western part of Wisconsin. And and fur traders, fur traders, agents, there's very, very light footprints. So the culture you see here is pretty authentic. And so let me just read him describing life in the Sockenock village. Now, keep in mind, Sockenock is this village that's located right near Rock Island, Illinois. And I think it may even be part of inside the city limits of current Rock Island, Illinois. And it is why the Sockenock people went to war, at least went back without permission to this side of the Mississippi River. So this gives you a sense of how important Sockenock was to the Blackhawk tribe, the socks. Now, the other thing I thought was cool is like, what is the voice of a voice of a Blackhawk leader even sound like? What is their cadence? Now here, you have to take it with a little bit of brain assault, because there are points of it where he used like the words like ascertain. I mean, do you really think? I mean, and there's like exclamation points and things like that. So there is probably a little bit of influence on the part of this editor as well as Antoine Leclerc. And the question also is, is how fluent was Antoine Leclerc in terms of language of Blackhawk? But any events, it's about as good as you're going to get the best that we have. Let's put it that way. And here, Blackhawk describes life in the Sockenock village. Blackhawk writes, "Our village was situated on the north side of the Rock River, at the foot of the rapids and on the point of land between Rock River and the Mississippi. In its front, a prairie extended to the bank of the Mississippi. And in her rear, a continued bluff gently ascending from the prairie. On the side of the bluff, we had our own corn fields, extending about two miles up, running parallel with the Mississippi, where we joined those of the foxes, whose village was on the bank of the Mississippi opposite the lower end of Rock Island, and three miles distant from ours." Now, here I'll just state the foxes were almost always described interchangeably with the socks. So when you hear socks, I hear the socks and fox. They were a different tribe, but they were a closely affiliated tribe and were allied. Here, Blackhawk writes, "We had about 800 acres in cultivation, including what we had on the islands of the Rock River. 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, nearby from which we were supplied with good water." Now, here, I mean, I just have so many questions that I want to ask Blackhawk. Like, what were the agricultural techniques of the sock tribe? How did they cultivate the corn? Did they have any innovative techniques that we would still find useful today? Like, isn't that cool? And then he talks about fine springs of water broke, breaking out of the bluff. So like, there must have been these beautiful waterfalls. I want to know where those waterfalls are. Would that be cool to go to those springs and be like, "Oh my God, I'm drinking the same water that Blackhawk broke? Isn't this cool? Like, are you with me here, people? This is really, really good." And then he says, "The rapids of Rock River furnish, 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." Now, I would have liked to know what kind of fish, what kind of fish were they actually farming? And then he talks about corn, bean, pumpkins, and squashes. Now, the other thing that I'm kind of interested in is like the diets of Native peoples. You know, since I started becoming more interested in my health, there's all sorts of work on the early, essentially the pre-agriculture role indigenous peoples. Now, here, obviously, they were not pre-agricultural. The Indians were doing their own form of agriculture, but they were kind of a mix between agriculture, and they were definitely more hunter-gatherer-ish than a lot of American settlers at that particular time. So they were both cultivating crops, but they were also gathering berries, eating honey. In fact, there was one episode that I found really interesting where Blackhawk, one of the things that led to the original conflict is they also liked honey. In a lot of the indigenous cultures, honey is a big thing, the sucrose, to get that honey. And that was one of the conflicts they'd harvested it, and these white people really pissed off at them. So that's just one example. So then we get into the diet. Think about how healthy they must have been. We talked about corn and beans for the protein, the pumpkins and the squashes. Pumpkins and squashes are full of all kinds, kinds of nutrients and minerals. So think how healthy and strong they must be. Now remember, I'm going to share with you an athlete that Blackhawk was related to. And then he said, "We always had plenty. Our children never cried with hunger, nor our people were never in law. Here our village had stood for more than 100 years. During all of which time, we were the undisputed possessors of the Valley of the Mississippi, from Wisconsin to the Portage to Stu, near the mouth of Missouri being about 700 miles in length." Now notice he says only 100 years, and he gets into that and begins a book, that actually his tribe originally arose from the Montreal area, and they were pushed out after the French lost to the British. I think it was in the late 1700s or something like that, but there was a reason why they were actually settled there, so they'd only actually been there for about 100 years. So this was not a case where they'd been here for like a thousand years. And the other thing the Blackhawk does get into is the various conflicts he had with other tribes. I mean, so this notion that white people were the only ones that exterminated other tribes just isn't true. They did it to each other. We all did, we're humans, and so we definitely shared that, share that characteristic as well. So it did certain white people suck, yeah, but certain Indian people suck too. The difference was the white people had the diseases, the superior technology, and just sheer numbers that overwhelmed the Indian's ability to defeat. But man for man, the Indian soldier was just as good as the white soldier, and I think in large part, I think we learned a lot of our fighting techniques from a lot of the Indians. And then here he says, during this time when he was when he was raised, and this is prior to the Blackhawk war, we had very little intercourse with the whites except the traders. That's why I said it was a very light footprint. So even though some of the technologies, some of the cultural trades, some of the pots and metals and things that they would be able to get from the Europeans was there. It's about as good a glimpse as you can get into this traditional American culture as you're as you're going to get. Here he describes his village, he said, our village was healthy, and there was no place in the country possessing such advantages, nor no hunting grounds better than those we already had in possession. If another prophet had come to our village in those days and told us what has since taken place, none of our people would have believed him. What? He uses the exclamation point to be driven from our village and hunting grounds, and not even be permitted to visit the graves of our forefathers, our relations, and our friends. And then he laments, this hardship is not known to the whites. With us, it is custom to visit the graves of our friends and keep them in repair for many years. The mother will go to weep over the grave of a child. The brave of pleasure visits the grave of his father after he'd been successful in war and repaints the post with where he lies. There is no place like where the bones of the great forefathers lies to go with grief. Here the great spirit will take pity on us. And then he gets a little bit into what would happen when, you know, just kind of the yearly ritual of the indigenous people, and it's some freaking good. So basically what they had was they kind of had this seasonal movement where they had kind of the village that they occupied during the summer. And then during other parts of the winter, they would go hunt for buffalo out on the prairies. They kind of had this migration from their chief agricultural ground in Salkanok, and then they would go on good hunts from there. So here he says, when they would return to their village in the spring, this would be the planning season, from our wintering grounds, we would finish trading with the traders who always followed us to the village. We purposely kept some of our fine furs for this trade, and there was a great opposition among them. Who should get these skins? We always had goods cheap. After the trade is over, the traders would give us a few kegs of rum, which we generally promised in the fall, who encouraged us to make a good hunt and not go at war. Then we would start with their furs and paltries for their homes. He said not only the old men would take a drink, at this time he says the young men never drank. When this ended, the next thing to be done was to bury the dead, and they would have a great medicine feast. The relations of those who died give all the goods they have purchased as presents to their friends, thereby reducing themselves to poverty to show the great spirit that they're humble. So they will take pity on them. They would then open up the next caches, take out the corn and other provisions which have been put up in the fall and then commence repairing their lodges. And as soon as this was accomplished, so they kind of get it ready for living for the year. They would clean themselves out and the women would go in and start planting corn. And as he notes, this work was done by the women. The men during this time would were feasting on dried venison, bear as me, while a foul and corn prepared in different ways, and recount to each other what had taken place during the winter. Now this would have been evidently the time of the hunts, but this issue of corn, one of the primary motivators behind the war is the women were the ones who had cultivated the corn, near Sockenock, and the planting area in west of the Mississippi River was not nearly as good. And I'm sure there's a variety of reasons for this. I'm sure just over the course of years they had known how to keep this land healthy in terms of the way that they had actually cultivated the corn. Now Blackhawk doesn't get into like how they did that because he didn't give a shit about what I think. He was just recounting what he'd remember growing up. And then as part of this corn planning ritual and process, of course, there are sacred ceremonies in connection with corn. So corn was a huge part of their culture. And then he says, our women would plant the corn, and as soon as they got done, we would make a feast and dance the crane dance in which they would join as dressed in their best and decorated with feathers. At this feast, our young braves select the young women they wish to have for a wife. He then informs the mother who calls upon the mother of the girl when the arrangement is made in the time appointed for him to sleep. Check this out. This is so cool. This is the brave who wants to be with the other woman to marry her. He goes to the lodge when they're all asleep or pretend to be, lights his matches which have been provided for this purpose, and soon finds where his intended sleeps. He then awakes her and holds the light to his face that they may know him after which he places the light close to her. If she blows it out, the ceremony is ended, and he appears in the lodge the next day as one of the family. If she does not pull out the light but leads it to burn out, he retires from the lodge. The next day, he places himself in full view of it and places flute. The young woman go out one by one to see who he is playing for. The tune changes to let them know what he is not playing for them. When his intended makes her appearance at the door, he continues his corded tune until she returns to the lodge. He then gives over the plane and makes another trial at night which generally turns out favorable. During first year, they ascertain whether they can agree with each other and can be happy. And if not, they look out, each looks out again. If we were to live together and disagree, we would should be as foolish as the whites. No indiscretion can banish a woman from her parental lodge. No difference how many of the children may bring home. She is always welcome. The kettle is over the fire to feed them. So as far as I can tell, this is kind of a trial run period. I don't know, maybe that's something we could learn from the Indians, where you kind of do a trial run. You kind of try to be with a squat for a couple 12, 15 months. And if it doesn't work out, you just pick someone new. So I kind of got to pick out of that. But then he gets into a little bit of the role of the warriors, which I found kind of really mind-blowing and interesting. So then he says, "This crane dance lasts for two or three days. When this is over, we feast again and have our national dance." The large square in the village is swept and prepared for the purpose. The chiefs and warriors take seats on mats which have been spread at the upper end of the square. The drummers and singers come next, and the braves and women form the sides leaving a large space in the middle. The drums beat and the singers commence. A warrior enters the square, keeping time with the music. He shows the manner he started on a war party, how he approached the enemy. He strikes and describes the way that he killed him. All join and applause. He then leaves the square and another enters and takes the place. Such of our young men has not been out on war parties and killed an enemy, stand back, ashamed, not being able to enter the square. I remember that I was ashamed to look where our young women stood before I could take my point, stand in the square, as in warrior. And then he talks about what pleasure it is to be an old- Ryan Reynolds here from Midmobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Midmobile unlimited, premium wireless, having it to get 30, 30, get 30, get 30, get 30, get 20, 20, get 20, get 20, get 20, get 15, 15, 15, just 15 bucks a month. So give it a try at midmobile.com/switch. $45 up from payment equivalent to $15 per month. 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And let's face it, the braids were probably the ones that got all the checks too. So they probably got laid a lot. In order to be able to do that, you had to be able to show your battle and your and your metal. Now this is something in terms of rights and initiation that I think we can learn a lot from Black Hawk's Drive and other more traditional tribes. These rights of initiation that make you a frickin' do, the ability to defend yourself, the ability to kill, if need be to defend yourself and defend others. To have a sacred circle of honor that only the ones who would show them bravery would be the ones to actually enter the circle. And then beyond that, to be able to actually lead a war tribe and think about how different that is in our today's culture. We have all these really weak and pathetic leaders like Joe Biden, Victoria Newland, all these sorts of people that have never fought in combat. Now I haven't either, but I'm not running for the president of the United States. I have not done that either, but I think there's just something about that, that these cultures respected and demanded bravery in order to be able to lead the people upon whom the the tribes fate rested so that every right to expect brave and robust warriors. And so finally, we'll get into this question of a little bit of the mythology of the indigenous people and the socks. And here he describes a little bit about how corn came to be. And I kind of found this really, really interesting too. And here he says, after he describes some of these ceremonies relating to corn and how the great spirit gave the sock corn. I will relate here, this is Black Hawk, the manner in which corn first came. As according to tradition handed down to our people, a beautiful woman was seen to descend from the clouds and a light upon the earth by two of our ancestors who had killed a deer and were sitting by a fire roasted a part of it to eat. They were astonished at seeing her, included that she must be hungry and had smelt the meat and immediately went to her taking with them a piece of the roasted vessel. They presented it to her and she eat and told them to return to the spot where she was sitting at the end of one year and they would find a reward for their kindness and generosity. She then ascended into the clouds and disappeared. The two men returned to the village and explained to the nation what they had seen, done and heard, but they were laughed at by their people. When the period arrived for them to visit this consecrated ground, where they were to find a reward for their attention to the beautiful woman of the clouds, they went with a large bar party and found where her right hand rested upon the ground, corn growing, and where the left hand had rested beans, an immediately where she had been seated tobacco. The first two have ever since been cultivated by our people as our principal provisions, the last used for smoking, the white people have found out the latter and seen up to relish it as much as we do, as they use it in different ways, for example, smoking, snuffing, and eating. So then he just describes a game, I don't know if this was lacrosse, but he describes a game where there would be a what he calls ball play from three to 500 people on a side playing this game. We play for horses, guns, blankets, or other kinds of property that we have. The successful party takes the stakes and retired the lodges and peace and friendship. They did horse racing and other sports, and then they would then after this kind of season was done, they would have a great feast and they would go to their winter hunting grounds, and so they'd be able to get additional meat for their family. So you can just imagine this is a very robust and vibrant culture where they were engaged in traditional agriculture. Think about this though, beans, corn, venison, buffalo, bear, and then squash, pumpkins, berries, nuts, all the different things they harvested, how healthy they must have been. I'd imagine that they were all probably pretty shredded just because of just their nutritional profile and how much exercise these people were getting. So I hope I picked your interest on this. I decided not to share any battle scenes. There are a few descriptions of battle which are pretty good and other observations of Black Hawk. He also gets into a little bit of the War of 1812, a little bit of how the sock people came to the sock-and-uck area near Rock Island, but totally advise you to buy this book, read it. If you're doing any homeschooling or anything like this, gosh, your child should read this book. This makes me want to read so much more about this period of American literature. I've already read Moby Dick, I want to read more Edgar Allan Poe. There's just so much good stuff here that just really helps you appreciate this particular region of the United States, the history of the upper United States, and just the culture. It's interesting and there's so many different people that were involved in the Black Hawk, where people like Abraham Lincoln was a sergeant and didn't see any combat, but he did volunteer for a while. Zachary Taylor, Henry Atkinson, who I believe was called White Bieber. He'd love to be called White Bieber, Jefferson Davis, Albert Sidney Johnson. Now, he's the guy that died in 1862 during the Battle of Shiloh. So there's a lot of Confederate American generals, military professionals, Henry Dodge was kind of like the Daniel Boone of the Upper Midwest. All these different people are described in this particular autobiography and it is so good. So the final thing I kind of want to cover is a little bit relating to Black Hawk. He mentions runners. So whenever he's talking about as the kind of war kind of gets going, he always says that runner came to the village and kind of explained what was going on. It got me thinking, "Who are these runners? How did they communicate?" And what were the training methods for these runners? So I would say for this part of it, Black Hawk does not provide a lot of detail about the training methods for the braves. He doesn't talk about how they got strong, what sort of physical fitness they did. Of course, their life was just physically active, but I'm sure that there was a degree of intentionality that was handed down from father to son in terms of how to wrestle, how to do combat, how to throw a tomahawk, how to fire a arrow, how to shoot a gun, because at this point they had guns, how to ride a horse. So there were all different sorts of things that were not explained that I would love to know more about. And I think runners is one of them. And he just kind of mentions it offhand. I've done a little bit more research in addition to this. And basically these runners were people that were obviously in very good cardiovascular shape, but they could be expected to run 40 to 60 miles a day from place to place. And so I think even though this isn't kind of a hunter-gatherer type culture, it had elements of hunting and gathering in it that was interspersed with agriculture. So yes, they relied on agriculture and they had kind of set agricultural fields, but they also did a lot of hunting and it also gathered a lot of different things too. Again, there was one episode where they had talked about honey in that led to particular conflict, which is also totally cool from the health perspective. Finally, I promised you that I would give you a little bit of Black Hawk trivia. So check this out. One of the greatest athletes of all time in America is the great, great, great grandson of Black Hawk, a Oklahoma, Sock and Fox native named Jim Thorpe. Isn't that cool? Jim Thorpe was the great, great, great grandson of Black Hawk. And it kind of makes sense because you think about it, if you're a great warrior in the culture, you're obviously getting the checks. So they're obviously probably going to be the best looking. They're going to be the strongest. They're going to be getting laid the most because all the Indian babes are going to want to procreate with them. And so it does make sense, but still kind of cool to think about the connection that Black Hawk directly had with one of the greatest athletes of all time, Jim Thorpe. Kind of reminds me of Steve Young, the San Francisco quarterback in the mid 90s for the 49ers, early 90s, mid 90s was the great, great, great grandson of Bergamio, kind of same thing. Bergamio was probably at Belichick's because he was a leader of all the Mormon people. And of course, too, at that time, he didn't play with me. So there's all sorts of connections, I think, to Bergamio out there. But so I hope you found this particular interesting, this episode interesting. At the very least, I hope I didn't turn you off to this, but I hope I won't get a chance to read this book on Black Hawk. It is so good. And what it really gives you, you know, one of my pet peeves with a lot of like leading hearts is they're always like, Oh, white people are all terrible. And indigenous people were committed, no sin. And it's basically lived in this e-denic existence. Well, of course, both, you know, the character of neither side is really true. First are evil white people. First are evil deeds that were done. But it's much more nuanced than that. I mean, again, I think what's remarkable of this is that here he's leaves a four month campaign of terror in modern language, we'd have probably called Black Hawk a terrorist. And then he goes and sees Andrew Jackson, he'll cut the intervenes. He's like, he's not gonna ride and cause me trouble again. And Jackson's like, okay, I'll pardon him. He's fine. He just has to go on this big tour of the East Coast and people mob of like, he's a rock star. That's pretty cool. And I'm just calling balls and strikes. That's what happened, people. And that is the history of this country, which is full of light and dark and good and bad and complexity and basically everything in the middle of it. So I hope you get a chance to read this. I got to get to work. But this is a great book. And I'm so grateful to each and every one of you for tuning in. And please give me positive views and Apple and Spotify. And next episode, I'm going to do episode on the war of 1812 in Wisconsin, the battle for prayer to shame by Mary Elise Antoine, which is a really, really good book. We also on deck are going to have the last lecture book by Randy Pausch, you probably saw it on YouTube about 16 years ago. I recently saw this book in a second hand store a couple years ago and bought it some of the shares, some little kernels of wisdom from Randy Pausch. At some point, I think I'm probably going to do some political podcasts too. We're going to be responding to Thomas Friedman at this point. I don't know why anyone listens to this fucking guy. I mean, he knows some shit, but Jesus Christ. Sorry, God. I'm just kind of done with Thomas Friedman. And he can go F himself. And so I'm going to go toe to toe Thomas Friedman because I think he's kind of a, I think he's kind of an asshole, excuse my language. Sorry, mom, but yeah, I just don't like Thomas Friedman. I think he's arrogant. And he doesn't ever write a lecture to anyone. So, and I think finally, I think I finally got a theme for the podcast. I think it's really going to be kind of three interrelated themes are history, politics, and wellness. What do you think about that? With occasional dives into spirituality, these are the topics that interest me most frequently. And so we'll do several episodes on all these various topics, as long as they are interesting, that is the mandate of the rocketing cast. So that's it for this episode of the rocket cast until next time you and I see each other on the rocketing cast. [BLANK_AUDIO]