Lincoln signed up for two
more short hitches. He served them as a private, and was finally
mustered out in July. His horse was stolen, and he and a friend walked
and canoed 250 miles southward to their home, in New Salem, Illinois.
Though Black Hawk War veterans tended to make much of their exploits,
Lincoln was content to say afterward that the only combat he saw was
against flies and mosquitoes. Thomas Ford, Auguste's attorney, served as
governor of Illinois from 1842 to 1846. His _History of Illinois_,
written in 1847, is one of the sources for this novel.

Other than Black Hawk himself, the most historically prominent Sauk in
these pages is He Who Moves Alertly. For the sake of consistency I've
translated all the Native American names in the novel into English.
Otherwise you'd have met He Who Moves Alertly under the name he's better
known by--Keokuk. And I would have referred to Shooting Star, the
Shawnee war chief mentioned in Chapters Five and Sixteen, as Tecumseh.
But then I'd have had to call Black Hawk by his Sauk name,
Makataimeshekiakiak. No wonder Emerson called consistency a hobgoblin.

Also an unfamiliar name today is Michigan Territory as a term for the
land north of Illinois through which Black Hawk and his people made
their final trek from the Trembling Lands to the mouth of the Bad Axe.
That land would soon become the state of Wisconsin. After achieving
statehood in 1848, Wisconsin promptly laid claim to the prosperous
northern portion of Illinois, including Chicago; but Illinois
politicians knew all about clout even then, and beat the Badgers back.

Large parts of Illinois and Wisconsin were lands previously occupied by
the Sauk and Fox. In the seventeenth century the Sauk migrated from
Canada, driven by wars with the Iroquois, down into what is today
eastern Wisconsin. During the eighteenth century they formed a
confederacy with the Fox and moved into the southwestern part of
Wisconsin and northern Illinois. In Black Hawk's time there were about
four thousand Sauk and sixteen hundred Fox, living in villages along the
Wisconsin (earlier spelled Ouisconsin) and Mississippi rivers and at the
mouth of the Rock River.

With the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the U.S. took charge of the Sauk
and Fox homeland. In 1804 white settlers attacked a party of Sauk men,
women and children, and three whites were killed. As territorial
Governor William Henry Harrison demanded, a delegation of five Sauk and
Fox chie