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Home , Black Hawk (Sauk leader), Black Hawk War, Keokuk (Sauk leader), Nathaniel Parker Willis, Warrior (steamboat)

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The American Indian Quarterly, Volume 34, Number 4, Fall 2010, pp. 498-520 (Article)

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For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/aiq/summary/v034/34.4.helton.html

Access provided by University of Springfield (7 Mar 2016 19:31 GMT) What the White “Squaws” Want from Gendering the Fan-Celebrity Relationship

tena l. helton

Although his study focuses on twentieth-century celebrity culture, David P. Marshall’s contention in Celebrity and Power that the celebrity lives in a symbolic and commodifi ed world is relevant to discussions of celebrity in the early nineteenth century.1 During the years preceding the Civil War, became more entranced with particular fi g- ures and their renown. Thomas Baker shows in his book about famed nineteenth-century writer and publisher Nathaniel Parker Willis that the early nineteenth century was a time in which celebrity culture was not just emerging but fl ourishing. Because the “market for access to re- nown” was growing and establishing “the groundwork for our modern condition, in which fame is both a durable commodity and inseparable from public attention to personality,” we can consider the similarities between antebellum and modern celebrity cultures, in particular, the public’s desire for celebrity gossip and scandal that might be refl ected in periodicals.2 Other popular fi gures of the midcentury, including P. T. Barnum and Buffalo Bill, capitalized on the apparent hunger for spec- tacle and celebrity in American culture.3 For a few months in 1833 Black Hawk and his band were the celebrities of the day; they were commodi- fi ed and symbolically consumed by the American public through news- paper renditions of them and their movements. Black Hawk, as he was known in English, was a Sauk Indian war chief who disputed the lawfulness of a treaty signed in 1804 by Indiana gov- ernor and chiefs of the Sauk and Fox nations. Black Hawk maintained that the treaty was unlawful because the full councils of the nations had not been consulted and, later, that those who had signed did not have the authority to cede the land of the Saukenuk (in modern-day Illinois). He began to fi ght the Americans soon there- after, and he fought on the side of the British during the . At the end of the war in 1815 the Sauk and Fox nations signed a peace treaty in which the cession of land in 1804 was reaffi rmed. Black Hawk never- theless disputed the lawfulness of those actions. Although Black Hawk and his “” of about fi ve hundred warriors and a thousand women, children, and old men attempted to move back to their original land from where they had been resettled west of the River in 1828, they were never able to retake the land. Americans then began settling upon the lands of the Sauk and Fox in Illinois. With promises of alliances, Black Hawk attempted again to return to Illinois, but once he had arrived near the nation’s original lands, the alliances never ma- terialized. As he returned toward the and , Black Hawk’s band was attacked by the Illinois . This precipitated the of 1832. After the fi ghting was over, Black Hawk and the remnants of his band were captured and held outside of St. Louis in Jef- ferson Barracks. Black Hawk’s capture provided a political opportunity for ’s government, and so Black Hawk and the remnants of his band were put to use in the East as examples of defeated Indians. Although Black Hawk and his band served a purpose as captive celebrities, the circulation of their celebrity could not be completely contained or ma- nipulated as a pro-Jackson political message.4 Black Hawk and his com- panions became celebrities who rivaled Jackson’s own tour of the East. Yet Black Hawk’s celebrity was highly malleable, often used to further editors’ own political or social viewpoints. For example, on July 30, 1833, after the end of Black Hawk’s “tour,” the Commonwealth, a Frankfort, Kentucky, newspaper, reported that during one of his many interactions with society, Black Hawk had responded to the intense interest of Wash- ington, DC, “ladies” with a cutting remark, “Debilinchibison Jekorre Manitou,” which was translated as “What in the devil’s name do these squaws want of me!”5 Orlando Brown, the editor of this newspaper, fur- ther circulated the “Blackhawkiana” and excerpted the already extant information from the Courier and Enquirer that had been re- ported in the New-York Mirror on July 13, 1833, along with a retrospec- tive biographical sketch and a woodcut print. We could speculate that female fans of Black Hawk wanted a brush with the exotic, a hint of miscegenation, and a bit of the transgressive—

Helton: What the White “Squaws” Want 499 an imagined sexual and political freedom wrought from the bodies of Black Hawk and his fellow Sauk Indians. However, we have no direct evidence of exactly how particular fans responded to Black Hawk and his good-looking son. Nevertheless, Black Hawk’s and his female fans’ identities were created through sexualized rhetoric circulated in the newspapers. This rhetoric and its (re)constitutive effects upon Indian and female identities diminished for some Americans the potential dan- ger of a disruptive force on the western borders; supposedly, it further “defeated” the “defeated Sauk and Fox Indians” and, by extension, all western tribes.

black hawk as captive celebrity In the early nineteenth century rhetorical strategies used to indicate that a person was a celebrity included direct references to his or her popular- ity as well as circulation rhetorically through media and cultural outlets. Besides being reported upon in newspapers or magazines, the celebrity might become the butt of jokes; have his or her likeness parodied in the theater, at a party, or in a magazine; be linked to circus acts, freak shows, and parades; or have a ship or a racehorse named after her or him.6 Each and all of these occurred in conjunction with Black Hawk’s “tour” of the East Coast in the spring and summer of 1833—and a bit beyond his journey. Eastern newspapers were well aware of his celebrity. The New York Courier, as reported in the Georgia Telegraph, even affi xed some numbers: Whereever [sic] they go, great numbers are sure to follow them, wherever they stop, hundreds and sometimes thousands, besiege them. If they had been kept as a “show,” (which of course would have been a shameful degradation,) we verily believe that $100,000 might have been collected, in the course of a few days for the privi- lege of seeing them.7

Interestingly, the payment would be a “degradation,” but the parading of the Indians was not. If these strategies seem similar to those of the twentieth and twenty-fi rst centuries, it is because they are. Celebrity is not a modern phenomenon.8 In addition to Black Hawk, the “tour” group included “the Prophet,” Wabokieshiek; Neapope, known as “the brother”; the Prophet’s adopted

500 american indian quarterly/fall 2010/vol. 34, no. 4 son, Pamaho (which means “fast-swimming fi sh”); and Black Hawk’s eldest son, Nasheaskuk (which means “the whirling thunder”). In the eastern newspapers the group was often spoken of as an aggregate ver- sion of Black Hawk himself. The Prophet often spoke at their public ap- pearances, although few of his words are actually reported. Black Hawk’s son was reported as handsome, exotic, and admired by the women. He was described in a number of eastern papers as “a perfect Apollo” and by the Mirror as “a monarch among princes”: “Had there not been wanting in his countenance that peculiar expression which ema- nates from a cultivated intellect . . . we could have looked upon him as the living personifi cation of our beau ideal of manly beauty and perfec- tion.”9 Any headlines, however, usually subsumed such descriptions and labeled the descriptions “Black Hawk” or “Blackhawkiana.” The son was usually not named in these accounts; he became simply a derivative of Black Hawk himself as “Black Hawk’s son.” Only rarely was the Prophet singled out. For all intents and purposes, the group was one. In April 1833 Andrew Jackson informed the group, who had been im- prisoned for an entire winter in St. Louis, that they were to be trans- ferred to at Old Point Comfort, Virginia. According to in- formation reprinted in Niles’ Weekly Register from an April 27, 1833, issue of the Globe, the president said he wanted peace among all the tribes, and “when the tribes had learned that the power they attempted to con- tend with, was equally able and disposed to protect the peaceful and to punish the violence of aggressors—when his information assured him that their people in particular, were convinced of this . . . then [the pris- oners] would be restored to their families.”10 According to the National Intelligencer on April 30, 1833, the “prisoners” were unaware of their sta- tus, thinking they were “guests” until that point. J. Gerald Kennedy in his introduction to the most recent edition of the Life of Black Hawk or Mà- ka-tai-me-she-kià-kiàk argues that the tour had at least three purposes: “to humiliate the Indians by placing them on display as trophy captives, to convince them of the uselessness of warring with a far more numer- ous and powerful people, and to demonstrate to the American public Jackson’s control over his Indian policy.”11 Donald Jackson, in his 1964 introduction to Black Hawk’s text, describes the group as “defeated In- dians” with whom the government no longer needed to exact exemplary vengeance.12 According to the New-London Gazette, when the group ar- rived in New York, this sentiment was further exemplifi ed in a portion

Helton: What the White “Squaws” Want 501 of a speech by Mr. Durant, a man who ascended in a hot air balloon and was a celebrity in his own right: He fought for Independence too— He struck for Freedom—with a few Unconquered souls—whose battle-cry Was—“Red men!—save your land, or die!” But fought in vain—for ’tis decreed, His race must fail, and yours succeed. Then kindly treat the captive Chief, And let your smiles assuage his grief; He knows your strength,—has felt your power— Then send him to his native bower.13

They were captives indeed, but they were captives of a certain type and with a special mobility. In “The Captive as Celebrity” Kathryn Der- ounian-Stodola argues that “the way to captive celebrity is almost always via accidental fame, since a captive’s reputation is consolidated as a re- sult of having been taken hostage, not as a result of pre-captivity status.” This certainly appears true for white female captives but does not apply so neatly to Black Hawk. Like white women captives before them, these captives as a group achieved celebrity via the media, which successfully “creat[ed] fame through a captive’s publications, pictorial representa- tions, [and] personal appearances.”14 Also like that of white women cap- tives, Black Hawk’s celebrity was actively consumed by American fans. These fans were not unlike fans today, who, as social science researcher Henry Jenkins argues, “enjoy . . . the sense of creating their own cul- ture . . . which more perfectly expresses their own social visions and fantasies.”15 Susan Scheckel argues in The Insistence of the Indian that the reading and viewing public had an overall national motivation for the consumption of Black Hawk. They needed his image: “The doomed chief—noble in his wish to die fi ghting, unchangeable in his primitive violence, pathetic in his hopeless resistance to his inevitable fate—was precisely the kind of Indian Americans needed to see as representative in order to justify American Indian policy.” Furthermore, the “touring” Black Hawk offered “a reassuringly simple version of Indian-white rela- tions. . . . Black Hawk’s statements during the tour reaffi rmed the justice and success of American policies.”16 Black Hawk’s group did not create their own celebrity except through

502 american indian quarterly/fall 2010/vol. 34, no. 4 their resistance to the U.S. government. They were “savage” but noble heroes, albeit considered by easterners to be misguided and misin- formed about the ’ goals and abilities to subdue uprising. They were a national threat subdued instead of, as so many white fe- male captives of the previous two centuries, victims who had overcome horrifi c circumstances to become examples of community reintegra- tion. Initially appearing in the New York Standard, Edward Sanford’s “Address to Black Hawk” attempts to fi x American responses to the In- dian. He describes the Sauk as “crownless, powerless” but “every inch a king” (line 100), and he ends his poem in a gesture of patronizing peace: Give us thy hand, old nobleman of nature, Proud leader of the forest aristocracy; The best of blood glows from thy every feature, And thy curled lip speaks scorn for our democracy. Thou wear’st thy titles on that god-like brow; Let him who questions them, but meet thine eye; He’ll quail beneath its glance, and disavow All question of thy noble family; For thou may’st here become, with strict propriety, A leader in our city[’s] good society.17

We might also note in these lines that the comparison between the ar- istocracy and Black Hawk is specifi cally imbued with a patriotic im- pulse that reacts against the royalism of Britain. Black Hawk’s followers were called the “British band,” after all, and had looked to Great Brit- ain to fi ght the insurgence of the American settlers. The “Address to Black Hawk” specifi cally serves a nationalist purpose quite like that of the “tour.” Black Hawk’s “tour” was meant to show him and his group the futility of challenging the U.S. government. In addition to attend- ing theatrical performances and various other amusements, the group specifi cally visited armories, warships, and prisons. The group of “Black Hawk” was paraded along the eastern seaboard both as defeated Indians and as an object on which American fans could inscribe their own na- tionalist visions. “The nature of the audience,” according to Leo Braudy, was a “crucial question” during the early nineteenth century: “As the new, self-consciously created nation, . . . America was simultaneously a place and a dream, a society of others and a society of the individual

Helton: What the White “Squaws” Want 503 spirit.”18 One effective way to negotiate this simultaneity was through circulation of the captive celebrity.

female fans’ rhetorical (re)constructions The eastern papers during the spring and summer of 1833, when they described the group’s interactions with women, often indicated how very white and very proper the women were. They were “belles,” for example, who played the piano beautifully. The American Sentinel on June 26, 1833, reports in an “Anecdote of Young Black Hawk” that Black Hawk’s son was very fond of the company of the beautiful American Squaws. He is passionately attached to Music—and, on one occasion, af- ter listening with the most profound attention to the strains of the Piano Forte as its keys were touched by a young lady, he suddenly jumped up, and drawing a brilliant ring from his fi nger, presented it, with many compliments to his fair companion. She declined it with an air of great politeness—but the Young Hawk was much mortifi ed at the refusal, and still more at the idea of his having transgressed some established rule of American etiquette.19

Quite interesting about this short “anecdote” is its unspecifi ed “trans- gression.” What precisely was the breach of etiquette, and was it a more important breach signifi ed by the acceptance of the ring? The subtext of this episode seems to be a fear of miscegenation. If the woman accepted the ring, would that be a subtle acceptance of more—or at least of the potential acceptance of the transgressive act itself? The female performer is here written into a model of white behavior, and the Indian is put in the vulnerable position of the one who does not know the cultural rules of the dominant society. Indeed, where before he was a celebrity, he is now a fan and placed in the less active and more dependent fan posi- tion. Essentially, through the example of the woman’s polite refusal, we see the stark distinction between “copper” and white and the reversal of the role of fan and celebrity. Rhetorically, then, each has maintained his or her place as defeated Indian and symbolic, inspirational female object of admiration. Both serve a nationalist purpose; neither is portrayed as a vital subject in his or her own right. This, of course, is not unlike much modern public consumption of celebrity and fan relationships.20

504 american indian quarterly/fall 2010/vol. 34, no. 4 We might contrast the above version of this incident with one re- ported by the New York Observer and Chronicle on June 22, 1833: On Wednesday a great crowd of ladies visited the rooms. The con- duct of the Indians was most respectful and proper. They seemed pleased with the attention, and one of them very handsomely took a pair of ear-rings from his ears and presented them to a lady who amused the company by playing on a piano, the music of which appeared to delight Black Hawk junior, who is a most elegant fel- low, six feet in height, and a perfect form.21

Nowhere in this earlier version is the woman’s refusal of the gift clear, nor is Black Hawk’s son placed rhetorically in a vulnerable position in- tended to strip him of his sexual threat. It is important to note that information about Black Hawk would be routinely reported in one paper and then rearranged and rereported in another so that the agenda of the writer and paper was paramount. This is particularly noticeable as Black Hawk reports circulated through west- ern papers, whose audiences were less concerned with symbolic repre- sentations and incorporations of defeated Indians than with more prox- imal threats to safety of persons and property. Nevertheless, Scheckel argues that “the more serious threat posed by Indians at this point in American history was moral rather than physical, a threat to the nation’s self image rather than its survival.”22 She does not differentiate between the consumption of Black Hawk on the frontier and the more settled re- gions because her point is to discuss how he was used to further Ameri- ca’s nationalistic purposes. Even so, how the media responded to his ce- lebrity was tempered by regional concerns, which can be judged in part by how the media constructed his band and his female fans. Only vaguely are female fans identifi ed in various newspapers, al- though they are in the aggregate often described in unfl attering ways. For example, the New-London Gazette on June 26, 1833, subtly denigrates female fans in an opening paragraph: “Black Hawk’s levee is as thronged as usual, this morning; a great number of ladies being present, notwith- standing the threatening appearance of weather.”23 These women are clearly not thinking straight if they would go to see Black Hawk when there is the possibility of rain, the Gazette writer implies. Of course, nothing is said of the men who were also in the throng. Women who at all threaten “the rules of etiquette” must be dismissed as a bit stu-

Helton: What the White “Squaws” Want 505 pid, although their reasons for seeing Black Hawk may be as “patriotic” as those of any man. But it is the potential for something more, some personal fascination with the group that warrants the mention in the papers. The subtextual message is that these women are about to cross a line. Tellingly, the next sentence after a harsh description of Black Hawk in the Gazette report describes the powerful, beautiful form of both “Tommy-hawk,” who “is a superb specimen of the physical man, with the frame of Milo, and the face of Curtius—a form of the most power- ful mould, and features that might have been cast in the old Roman die,” and the son of the Prophet (again, unnamed), who “is a fi ne looking youth—a sort of Paul Clifford, doubtless, in his way, who could fi lch off one’s scalp on the forest highway with as much grace as he now gives his hand to a lady.” It is not accident that the physical beauty of these men is juxtaposed to the mentions of “ladies,” their vulnerability to the weather, and their implied naïveté about Indian ferocity. The writer is aware of women’s fascination with the men’s physical form and the potential for sexual fascination. He does his best to undercut a popular conception of the young Indians as sexually exotic by emphasizing how Black Hawk’s son “looks fat and lazy . . . at present, like an Anaconda after dinner, and needs to be stirred up to show advantage.”24 To serve his nationalist pur- pose via sexual containment, the writer creates identities for both the celebrities and their female fans that are consumable and palatable by a larger American public. The Commonwealth paints Black Hawk as particularly vile, using snippets of the New York Courier’s reports about his interactions with women and condensing those satirical reports, signifi cantly leaving out portions that describe the one who originally “translated” the passages. The “translator,” according to the original source, was “a genuine Bo- swell, the sole business of whose life for many years past has consisted in attaching himself to the skirts of great men, worming himself into their confi dence, and placing on record all the foolish things they ever said or did in their lives.” We might hear a similar echo in this language in current descriptions of gossip reporters or paparazzi today. The Courier continues: “The translations of Black-Hawkiana have been made by [a] gentleman . . . who was taken prisoner by this renowned chief, and es- caped on account of having the good fortune to wear a wig.”25 The Mirror describes the “Black-Hawkiana” that comes from the Cou-

506 american indian quarterly/fall 2010/vol. 34, no. 4 rier as satire. And, considering the entire description of this translator, it is indeed satirical. As such, then, it should not be taken as particularly factual. However, Brown, as editor of the Commonwealth, completely ignores this context, instead taking as fact that which is intended to be funny. He adds his own unfl attering description of the women fascinated with Black Hawk: they were superfi cial and too idle because they “seem to have nothing to do but attend debates in Congress, trials for murder, and run after great men.” Brown points out that “among the ladies who honored [Black Hawk] with their attentions and admiration, was one remarkable for her fi ne hair, who made him a present of a tomahawk, patted her on the head and observed to his son, ‘Ousacolendmaouu.’ What a beautiful head for scalping.”26 The intended effect of this exam- ple, of course, is to create a continuing savage persona for Black Hawk, despite his “defeat.” It seems equally important that Brown chooses to use this particular example of a fan’s response to the Indian. She has beautiful hair and presents Black Hawk with a gift. She permits herself to be touched by Black Hawk. Of course, then, Black Hawk would have to say something awful to deny that potential for miscegenation. The rhetorical effect of this incident as used by Brown is to demonize the man, demonstrating his inappropriateness for any white woman and, by extension, any civilized society. Brown strives to contain the sexuality implied between white female fans and the exotic, “savage” Indian.

black hawk’s rhetorical construction Fascination with the body of Black Hawk began as his trip commenced from St. Louis to the east. Each newspaper would have at least a cur- sory description of his physical features and those of his group. Those descriptions continued throughout his “tour,” which is not surprising, considering that visual representations were not cheaply made and so not often used in newspapers of the time. The focus upon his body, however, continued even after his visit to the eastern seaboard. The direct portrayal of Black Hawk’s body in a woodcut print in the New-York Mirror on July 13, 1833, contains a visual rhetoric that desexu- alizes Black Hawk in order to contain female fans’ reactions to his son’s exoticism and blatant sexuality. Note that in the portrait Black Hawk is short and particularly old looking, with very distinct lines on his face.

Helton: What the White “Squaws” Want 507 Fig. 1. , Mk-a-tah-mish-o-káh-kaik, Black Hawk, Prominent Sac Chief, 1832, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr. Re- printed by permission from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (http://www .saam.si.edu).

He appears dour, and his head is not shaped as “nobly” as one might en- vision from poetic physical descriptions of Indians—and of Black Hawk in particular. Atkinson’s Saturday Evening Post on June 15, 1833, even sug- gests that Black Hawk’s head “would excite the envy of a phrenologist— one of the fi nest that heaven ever let fall on the shoulders of an Indian. . . . He has a pyramidal forehead, like Sir Walter Scott’s; and there seems

508 american indian quarterly/fall 2010/vol. 34, no. 4 Fig. 2. Unattributed woodcut print of Black Hawk, New-York Mirror, July 13, 1833. a slumbering fi re in his eye, which betokens great mental power and de- cision.”27 He does not dress in the clothing of the Sauk tribe and instead wears clothing more suitable to white men. His phallic power is dimin- ished by holding a pipe, not a gun or a spear. He holds a fan made up of a bird with feathers, which connotes a peaceful disposition. Accord- ing to the New-York Mirror, this drawing was completed while Black Hawk was imprisoned. This paper reports that for a long time Black Hawk never released his pipe and fan, “believing, probably, that carry- ing these, rather than any thing like a weapon, would be thought by the

Helton: What the White “Squaws” Want 509 offi cers under whose charge he was, as an evidence that he considered himself and his nation no longer at war with us.” The paper reports also that while Black Hawk was sitting for a portrait while at Jefferson Bar- racks, the artist, Catlin, suggested to Black Hawk that he pose with a spear. Apparently, Black Hawk, “indignant at the proposal,” said “‘No! . . . no spear for me! I have forever done with spears.’”28 This would sug- gest that Black Hawk was indeed the subjugated Indian whom America could emasculate and assimilate, and his reported comment here is at great odds with the anti-assimilationist stance that he takes within his Life. Timothy Sweet in “Masculinity in the Life of Black Hawk” reads Catlin’s portrait of Black Hawk in contrast with his portrait of , who holds a spear and a tomahawk, which, he says, “impl[ies] new lim- its on Sauk masculinity in the postsubjugation period: only the role of politician, a role easily managed by the U.S. government and military, is relevant. However, the tomahawk is clearly depicted, suggesting the form that Keokuk’s masculinity could take under freer circumstances.” Sweet suggests that Catlin’s portrait of Black Hawk is emasculating, that his “pose seems feminine, as if he were an elegant lady holding a fan.”29 The portrait certainly shows the elderly Sauk to be unintimidating and decidedly unwarlike. Whether this is Catlin’s choice or Black Hawk’s choice is undetermined. Compared with Catlin’s portrait, the line drawing is clearly less ex- otic. However, it is important that this particular woodcut likeness ap- pears after Black Hawk’s tour of the East is completed and the frenzy associated with him is diminished. In this print only Black Hawk re- mains as a representative of his group. He is the embodiment of that crew of Indians that throngs of people surrounded in and New York and Albany. Nowhere is there a scintilla of visual information that indicates the sexual vitality of the younger men who had made up “Black Hawk” as he was consumed on hotel balconies, in theaters, and on the streets. Besides the rhetorical purposes of the consumption of his likeness implied by this woodcut, Black Hawk was constructed as a rhetorical agent in various other ways, both physically and as a symbol of human nobility. For example, the New-Hampshire Gazette on June 30, 1834, uses Black Hawk’s popularity for political purposes—to undermine Nicholas Biddle. The headline: “High sense of honor exemplifi ed in the conduct of the savage Black Hawk contrasted with that of the President of the

510 american indian quarterly/fall 2010/vol. 34, no. 4 U.S. Bank.”30 Most of the time, however, his objectifi cation as the “noble, defeated savage” was co-opted by constituencies that wanted to contain the threat he represented to “polite” society. After his return to , Black Hawk’s body itself was misreported as extinguished as well, which would emphatically declare a lack of po- tency and threat. The reports of his death, however, were inaccurate and apparently politically motivated. At the very least, the reports res- urrected Black Hawk’s celebrity to sell more papers. The reports begin in January 1837 with the Galena, Illinois, newspaper. The report merely indicates that Black Hawk has drowned in the Iowa River. A subsequent report adds that the reason was “probably” from a “state of intoxica- tion.”31 Beginning in February, eastern newspapers began to refute such claims of Black Hawk’s death, explaining that he lost his hat in the river, which “gave rise to the report that he was dead,” or that another gentle- man traveler had been traveling with Black Hawk and refuted the claim of his death.32 They cited how unlikely it was that a warrior who was “an expert in the management of . . . canoes” would accidentally overtip one.33 One paper suggested a “scurrilous” political motive for the pre- mature report of his death. No matter the individual reasons, however, Black Hawk’s celebrity continued to be circulated through the papers, and his body was literally the object linguistically consumed.

life of black hawk: responding to celebrity Black Hawk was clearly less popular in some areas than in others, and his reputation was colored by the agendas of those who wrote about him. As Black Hawk traveled back toward the West after leaving and then Albany, his reception was decidedly less positive than it had been on the eastern seaboard. According to a July 31, 1833, report in the New-London Gazette, “When he had landed [in ] he was burnt in effi gy, and it was considered dangerous to proceed through the country without a body guard.”34 The Hartford Times, based in Con- necticut, went a bit further to editorialize upon the report of Black Hawk’s reception: That those people who have themselves been sufferers in the late confl ict with the Indians, or those whose friends have suffered, should feel somewhat sensitive on the appearance of Black Hawk

Helton: What the White “Squaws” Want 511 and the Prophet among them is not very strange; yet, we think it was at least imprudent and impolitic thus to manifest their dispo- sition on this occasion.35

In a number of newspapers Black Hawk had been stereotypically ac- cused of the murder of settlers. Rather than report upon the facts of the war, some newspapers (particularly those in the West) had just as a matter of course in reportage assumed that Black Hawk’s actions were criminal and not the actions of a nation at war, hence the public outcry at his appearance in Detroit. Perhaps in part to capitalize upon Black Hawk’s eastern “tour,” Black Hawk’s story was published in 1833 as Life of Black Hawk or Mà-ka-tai- me-she-kià-kiàk. After returning from the East, Black Hawk tells his story to a translator, Antoine LeClair, and that story is further edited by John B. Patterson. LeClair reports that Black Hawk went to the Rock Island Indian Agency and asked him to help him publish his life story for a white audience.36 Because of the mediation of these two men, the Life of Black Hawk has never been defi nitively argued as “authentic.” A number of critics have attempted to recover his authentic “voice” or viewpoint within the text, specifying rhetorical strategies that seem at odds with editorial interventions, particularly how Black Hawk defers interpretation of his tribe’s cultural practices or how he outlines Ameri- can trickery or how he asserts and resists assimilationist arguments that newspapers had attributed to him during his travels in the East.37 Most recent scholarship maintains some consensus regarding Black Hawk’s autobiography: the narrative of the text engages Jacksonian Indian poli- cies and their legal and moral bases.38 If we adopt the point of view that the textual Black Hawk is self- consciously constructed, we might more fruitfully discuss the text as a response to Black Hawk’s captive celebrity. In “The Fan and (Auto)Bi- ography: Writing the Self in the Stars” Timothy Dugdale argues that, at least in modern celebrity cultures and contexts, (auto)biographies reduce “social distance” between fans and celebrities symbolically and experientially.39 Black Hawk’s (auto)biography may have had the simi- lar effect of rendering his identity and his body textually in his “own” words. Thus, Black Hawk becomes a “social text” as a response to and interaction with newspaper renderings of him. We discover through the book that Black Hawk wanted to set the record straight about a few me- dia misconceptions. He was specifi cally concerned about his reputation

512 american indian quarterly/fall 2010/vol. 34, no. 4 as an honorable warrior, his status as a hero, which seems consistent with Black Hawk’s reported demeanor and actions during the war and his identity as a warrior. He directly addresses in his autobiography the newspapers: Village criers, who (I have been told,) accuse me of “having mur- dered women and children among the whites!” This assertion is false! I never did, nor have I any knowledge that any of my nation ever killed a white woman or child. I make this statement of truth, to satisfy the white people among whom I have been traveling, (and by whom I have been treated with great kindness,) that, when they shook me by the hand so cordially they did not shake the hand that had ever been raised against any but warriors. (97) Of course, Black Hawk merely asserts this. Yet the text stands as a testa- ment apparently contrary to the various reports of his eastern speeches, confi rming his status as a defeated Indian who is “forever done with spears.” As a textual representation of both man and character, the au- tobiography does important cultural work within a young nation strug- gling morally with the “Indian problem.” Black Hawk’s focus upon his right to fi ght this war as well as his honor as a warrior serves to reinvigorate a status that had been exoti- cized, diminutized, and feminized in eastern and western newspapers. The New-London Gazette provides evidence of Black Hawk’s apparent capitulation to the might of the United States and the acceptance of re- moval and of assimilationist arguments. In June the newspaper reports that after meeting Andrew Jackson and listening to his speech admon- ishing Black Hawk’s group and threatening them with powerful ven- geance if they again take up arms, the Prophet and the other answered: “My Father—My ears are open to your words. I am glad to go back to my people. I want to see my family. I did not behave well last summer. I ought not to have taken up the tomahawk. But my people have suffered a great deal. When I get back, I will remember your words. I won’t go to war again. I will live in peace. I shall hold you by the hand.”40

A July article reports Black Hawk’s interactions with the chief of the Seneca, who “counseled their brothers to return home with a peaceful mind, to cultivate their lands and no more to fi ght against so powerful

Helton: What the White “Squaws” Want 513 a people as the whites.” According to the article, Black Hawk responds that the whites “are very rich and very strong.—It is a folly for us to fi ght with them. . . . For myself, I shall advise my people to be quiet and live like good men.”41 These statements are consistent with what most critics fi nd is a formulaic, hollow argument at the end of Black Hawk’s Life that “the tomahawk is buried forever! We will forget what has passed—and may the watchword between the Americans and the Sacs and Foxes, ever be—‘Friendship!’” (98). These statements attributed to Black Hawk seem to be at great odds with his self-reported strength of will to fi ght and maintain cultural au- tonomy. In his autobiography he resists white cultural dominance and works particularly hard to reverse an image of him as the infantilized Indian Jackson wanted to parade. He very quickly runs through the sites of his “tour,” slowing occasionally to offer backhanded compliments. In New York, for example, he watches the fi reworks, calling them “grati- fying” yet “less magnifi cent than the sight of one of our large prairies would be when on fi re” (93). When he discusses the friendliness of his fans, he says that the white “squaws presented to us many handsome lit- tle presents, that are said to be valuable. They were very kind, very good, and very pretty—for pale-faces!” (93). The entertainment is “gratifying” but inferior, and the women are kind, good, and pretty but compara- tively inferior to Sauk women. One of the ways in which he engages verbally with such defi nitions of himself as a dishonorable (and feminized) warrior is to draw dis- tinctions between the courage of his warriors and that of the soldiers against whom they battled. Black Hawk seems consistently surprised that the Americans at various times retreat rather than fi ght. The Battle of Stillman’s Run is a case in point. When a scout reports that an army of several hundred white men are approaching, Black Hawk sends three men to meet them and ask for a meeting. They hoist a white fl ag. Black Hawk sends fi ve more men to spy and report about the initial interac- tion between the army and the three-man party. The three are captured. The fi ve are then fi red upon, two killed. With his forty men Black Hawk determines to avenge their deaths, despite the gross mismatch in num- bers: “I gave another yell, and ordered my brave warriors to charge upon them—expecting that we would all be killed! They did charge! Every man rushed and fi red, and the enemy retreated! in the utmost confu- sion and consternation, before my little but brave band of warriors!”

514 american indian quarterly/fall 2010/vol. 34, no. 4 (75). Black Hawk seems fl abbergasted at this turn of events, as he does at other times when the Americans fl ee despite their greater numbers. However, courage is not the most important marker of masculinity for Black Hawk. Honor is more important to him and is the indicator of his status as a strong warrior and man. Sweet reminds us that “Black Hawk’s sense of social position is heavily invested in his self-represen- tation as a Sauk who makes no gestures towards assimilation” and that Black Hawk’s status as warrior actualizes as he self-performs that iden- tity. Thus, “the warrior is necessarily an autobiographer.”42 Black Hawk’s narrative, while remaining a response to celebrity after his “tour,” is also a self-affi rming enterprise of his masculinity and his identity as an hon- orable warrior. After another battle at Dixon’s Ferry, Black Hawk discov- ers an enemy encampment about half a day’s ride from Dixon’s Ferry. He attacks the much more numerous force. He says that he expects that his “whole party would be killed! I never was so much surprised, in all the fi ghting I have seen—knowing, too, that the Americans, generally, shoot well—as I was to see this army of several hundreds, retreating! WITHOUT SHOWING FIGHT!!” (42). In case his readers think that the Americans were simply not as skilled as Black Hawk’s warriors, he provides the backhanded compliment. In contrast, Black Hawk and his band show much greater courage, according to Black Hawk: “An army of three or four hundred . . . come[s] forward, with a full determination to demolish the few braves I had with me, to retreat, when they had ten to one, was unaccountable to me. It proved a different spirit from any I had ever before seen among the pale faces! I expected to see them fi ght as the American did with the British during the last war!—but they had no such braves among them” (78). Black Hawk invokes and provokes the patriotism in his nineteenth-century audience to align himself with the more honorable, more courageous American patriots. As Scheckel has pointed out, he becomes a fi gure who symbolizes an idealized American past.43 Even so, his self-fashioning implicates the contemporary culture as impure, a lesser nation than when originally conceived. Black Hawk maintains that he was “forced” into the war by the dis- honorable actions of the United States. He writes that he did not want to go to war but that he was never allowed to air his grievances with the “Great Father” of the United States and that his people were not given the opportunity to gather provisions in order to feed themselves. As a result of his fl ag of peace being dishonored and his warriors being mur-

Helton: What the White “Squaws” Want 515 dered when on a peace mission, he argues that his attacks and the en- suing war were justifi ed. Although these are the proximal reasons that Black Hawk provides in the narrative, the subtext underlying the mo- tives for the war are much broader. Scheckel argues that the context of the Act and the judicial decisions regarding the Chero- kee’s arguments against removal are relevant to Black Hawk’s text. Eric Anderson argues that Black Hawk’s narrative is an example of “strate- gic” and “even pointed” countercolonial writing that moves from oral to print text: Far from buttressing the colonial American narrative of vanishing Indians . . . writers . . . such as Black Hawk . . . speak powerfully and paradoxically to these radical colonial whitewashings of Native cultures while at the same time constructing a Native-centered and multidimensional anti-extinction discourse that operates as a form of indigenous resistance and provocation.44

While Life of Black Hawk may seem solely a personal response to his celebrity and to Indian policy as it affected the Sauks, while it may pro- vide a space for performing “countercolonial provocations,” the nine- teenth-century audience’s consumption of the Black Hawk portrayed in the book reveals its cultural importance to the construction of the na- tion. Thus, while his autobiography appears in some respects to be revo- lutionary and progressive, Scheckel notes: The Indian is granted subject status only as he becomes subject to white representation. . . . “The Indian,” as represented by whites, was essential to nineteenth-century efforts to construct national identity not only because he provided the national history Ameri- cans desperately wanted but because the process of representation offered Americans the chance to purge that history of its moral taint by enacting textual (or artistic) justice.45

Thus, as a physical product of Black Hawk’s celebrity, the text is con- sumable and says as much about its fans as it does about its creators. Arguing about the text’s authenticity, then, is less relevant than dis- cussing the effect of Black Hawk as a celebrity and the text as an out- growth of that fame. His fame may have been his own, but it was also culturally co-opted. The book remains a fi nal response to Black Hawk’s brief time of celebrity, and it attempts to respond to and reconstruct an

516 american indian quarterly/fall 2010/vol. 34, no. 4 identity that had been developed through “village criers.” In doing so, it also participates in the circulation of Black Hawk’s textual body for rhe- torical and cultural purposes. Americans in the East were great fans of Black Hawk, whose popularity on tour overtook that of Andrew Jackson’s parallel tour of the Northeast. The Emancipator on June 15, 1833, reports briefl y, signifi cantly identifying Black Hawk as “the celebrated Indian chief” and indicating that “he will be ‘the lion’ of the day, and the President, of course, must ‘stand back a little.’ But the ‘monarch multitude’ will have their way.”46 Undoubtedly, then, Black Hawk was a celebrity. He remained popular even in 1837, when he attended Catlin’s gallery opening in New York, which included his 1832 painting of Black Hawk. Black Hawk may also have been a con- duit through which white women could imagine escape from the confi n- ing and “polite” parlors of eastern cities that Black Hawk toured. To these female fans Black Hawk may not have been just Jackson’s offi cial symbol to show that savagery could no longer threaten the civilization of Amer- ica and its right to internally colonize the North American continent. But no matter how his female fans actually felt, their identities were used to further a political, nationalist agenda that actively denied miscegena- tion as a method for becoming a unifi ed American culture. As part of that agenda, Black Hawk’s identity was also constructed, commodifi ed, circulated, and consumed through the culture via newspaper editors and his own autobiographical response. The relationship between celebrity and fans is, at least in Black Hawk’s case, culturally important as a public manifestation circulated through the media.

notes

1. David P. Marshall, Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture (Minneapolis: University of Press, 1997), 6. 2. Thomas N. Baker, Sentiment and Celebrity: Nathaniel Parker Willis and the Trials of Literary Fame (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 6, 7. 3. See Phineas Taylor Barnum, The Life of P. T. Barnum, Written by Himself, ed. Terence Whalen (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000); and Joy Kasson, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000). 4. See Marshall, Celebrity and Power, for a discussion of the role of celebrity and its relationship to politics.

Helton: What the White “Squaws” Want 517 5. Orlando Brown, “Black Hawk,” Frankfort (KY) Commonwealth, July 30, 1833, 9. 6. “Savannah Jockey Club Races,” Charleston (SC) Southern Patriot, January 28, 1835, 2; “Fayette (Mo.) Races,” Nashville Banner and Nashville Whig, May 29, 1835, 3; “Philadelphia Fantasticals,” Newburyport (MA) Herald, September 27, 1833, 1; “Black Hawk and His Lady,” New-London (CT) Gazette and General Ad- vertiser, July 17, 1833, 1; and other short items regarding Siamese twins and ship names in newspapers such as the Journal and Advertiser in August 1833. 7. “Black Hawk,” Georgia Telegraph (Macon, GA), May 8, 1833, 2. 8. See Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), in which he traces the history of celebrity from ancient Greece to the present day. 9. “Indians—Black Hawk, Etc.,” Cincinnati Mirror and Western Gazette of Lit- erature, Sciences, and the Arts, May 11, 1833, 131. 10. “Black Hawk and the President,” Niles’ Weekly Register (, MD), May 4, 1833, 152. 11. J. Gerald Kennedy, introduction to Black Hawk, Life of Black Hawk, or Mà-ka-tai-me-she-kià-kiàk. Dictated by Himself, ed. J. Gerald Kennedy (New York: Penguin, 2008), xiv. Hereafter cited in the text. 12. Kathryn Zabelle Derounian-Stodola, “The Captive as Celebrity,” in Lives out of Letters: Essays on American Literary Biography and Documentation, in Honor of Robert N. Hudspeth, ed. Robert D. Habich (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 2004), 68–69. 13. “Black Hawk’s Arrival at N. York,” New-London Gazette and General Ad- vertiser, June 26, 1833, 2. 14. Derounian-Stodola, “The Captive as Celebrity,” 69. 15. Quoted in Cheryl Harris, introduction to Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Sub- culture and Identity, ed. Cheryl Harris and Alison Alexander (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1998), 6. 16. Susan Scheckel, The Insistence of the Indian: Race and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century American Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 110, 111. 17. Edward Sanford, “Address to Black Hawk,” in Selections from the American Poets, ed. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1843), 283, lines 101–10. 18. Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown, 468. 19. “Anecdote of Young Black Hawk,” American Sentinel (Middletown, CT), June 26, 1833, 2. 20. For more about the confi guration of celebrity-fan relationships socio- logically, see Michael Basil, “Identifi cation as a Mediator of Celebrity Effects,”

518 american indian quarterly/fall 2010/vol. 34, no. 4 Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 40 (1996): 478–95; and Kerry O. Ferris, “Through a Glass, Darkly: the Dynamics of Fan-Celebrity Encounters,” Symbolic Interaction 24 (2001): 25–47. 21. “Black Hawk and His Party,” New York Observer and Chronicle, June 22, 1833, 99. 22. Scheckel, Insistence, 109. 23. “Black Hawk’s Arrival at N. York.” 24. “Black Hawk’s Arrival at N. York.” 25. “Blackhawkiana,” New-York Mirror, a Weekly Journal, Devoted to Litera- ture and the Fine Arts, July 13, 1833, 1. 26. Brown, “Black Hawk-ism,” Commonwealth, July 30, 1833, 1. 27. “Black Hawk,” Atkinson’s Saturday Evening Post (Philadelphia, PA), June 15, 1833, 2. 28. “Original Biography. Muck-a-Tay Mich-E-Kaw-Kaik, the Black Hawk,” New-York Mirror, a Weekly Journal, Devoted to Literature and the Fine Arts, July 13, 1833, 1. 29. Timothy Sweet, “Masculinity in Life of Black Hawk,” in Subjects and Citi- zens: Nation, Race, and Gender from Oroonoko to Anita Hill, ed. Michael Moon and Cathy Davidson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 233. 30. “High sense of honor exemplifi ed in the conduct of the savage Black Hawk contrasted with that of the President of the U.S. Bank,” New-Hampshire Gazette (Portsmouth), June 3, 1834, 3. 31. Georgia Telegraph, January 26, 1837, 3. 32. Salem (MA) Gazette, February 10, 1837, 1. 33. “A Mistake,” Patriot and Democrat (Hartford, CT), February 11, 1837, 2. 34. “Black Hawk’s,” New-London Gazette and General Advertiser, July 31, 1833, 3. 35. “General Black Hawk,” Hartford (CT) Times, August 12, 1833, 1. 36. Sweet, “Masculinity,” 221. 37. See Michelle H. Raheja, “‘I leave it with the people of the United States to say’: Autobiographical Disruption in the Personal Narratives of Black Hawk and Ely S. Parker,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 30, no. 1 (2006): 87–108. 38. See Neil Schmitz, “Captive Utterance: Black Hawk and Indian Irony,” Ari- zona Quarterly 48, no. 4 (1992): 1–18. 39. Timothy Dugdale, “The Fan and (Auto)Biography: Writing the Self in the Stars,” Journal of Mundane Behavior 1, no. 2 (2000), online at http://www.mun danebehavior.org/issues/v1n2/dugdale.htm. 40. “The President and the Indians,” New-London Gazette and General Adver- tiser, June 19, 1833, 2. 41. New-London Gazette and General Advertiser, July 24, 1833, 3. 42. Sweet, “Masculinity,” 225, 228.

Helton: What the White “Squaws” Want 519 43. Scheckel, Insistence, 125. 44. Eric Gary Anderson, “Indian Agency: Life of Black Hawk and the Coun- tercolonial Provocations of Early Native American Writing,” ESQ 52 (2006): 99. 45. Scheckel, Insistence, 124–25. 46. “Black Hawk,” Emancipator (Boston, MA), June 15, 1833, 25.

520 american indian quarterly/fall 2010/vol. 34, no. 4