Standing, he could see over the waving grass. He flourished the knife
blade at the vast dome of sky covering the prairie. He faced toward the
east, whence came those waves of pale eyes that had driven his people
from their homes. Whence, too, had come his father and one of his
grandfathers.

The last Sauk shaman this side of the Great River held up his knife so
the sun glinted from it.

"I will defend this land!" he shouted.

As long as he lived, he would give his blood to this earth.

Afterword

The reader may suspect the author of a bit of frontier-style
exaggeration, with one President and three future Presidents--two of the
United States and one of the Confederacy--playing parts in this novel.
But it's a historic fact that Colonel Zachary Taylor and Lieutenant
Jefferson Davis were among the regular Army officers who pursued Black
Hawk's people. The two ultimately drew even closer, when Davis married
Taylor's daughter Sarah. Davis resigned from the military and took his
new bride back to Mississippi, where they settled on a plantation. But
the daughter of U.S. President Zachary Taylor was not to be First Lady
of the Confederacy; she died of malaria a few months after the wedding.
And after the Civil War Jefferson Davis saw the inside of Fort Monroe
once again--as a prisoner.

The meeting of Andrew Jackson and Black Hawk in the President's
House--as the White House was known in 1832--is also an actual
historical incident. When Sharp Knife sent the Sauk leaders on a tour of
major Eastern cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York,
the crowds that came to see Black Hawk greeted him as if he was a
conquering hero, somewhat to Jackson's chagrin. But "King Andrew," as
his political opponents called him, handily won the election of 1832.
During the second four years of his reign Congress enacted into law his
policy of forcing all Native American tribes in the U.S. to move west of
the Mississippi. Even though the Winnebago and the Potawatomi remained
neutral or actively helped the Americans, they also had to give up their
land in Illinois and Wisconsin and move westward.

Abraham Lincoln, aged twenty-three, joined the Illinois militia in April
1832, and was promptly elected captain of the Sangamon County company of
volunteers. In May, Lincoln was one of those who helped bury the slain
militiamen at Old Man's Creek. When his company was disbanded, the men
having served their four weeks' enlistment,