Uncommon Defense: Indian Allies in the Black Hawk War

John P. Bowes, Eastern Kentucky University

Abstract

The Black Hawk War has received an inordinate amount of attention over the years, most recently in Black Hawk: The battle for the Heart of America, by Kerry A. Trask (2006) and The Black Hawk War of 1832, by Patrick J. Jung (2007). Yet not until Uncommon Defense by John W. Hall has anyone closely examined the decisions made by the Menominees, Dakotas, Ho Chunks, and Potawatomis who allied with the forces of the United States in that conflict. In what is an accessible an enlightening study, Hall asserts that those Indian allies “were the true architects of an alliance that served their own ends first and always.”