“I fought hard. But your guns were well aimed. The bullets flew like birds in the air, and whizzed by our ears like wind through the trees in the winter. My warriors fell around me. . . . The sun rose dim on us in the morning and at night it sunk in a dark cloud, and looked like a ball of fire. That was the last sun that shone on Black Hawk. . . . He is now a prisoner to the white men. . . . He has done nothing for which an Indian ought to be ashamed. He has fought for his countrymen, the squaws and papooses, against white men who came year after year, to cheat them and take away their lands. You know the cause of our making war. It is known to all white men. They ought to be ashamed of it. Indians are not deceiful. The white men speak bad of the Indian and look at him spitefully. But the Indian does not tell lies. Indians do not steal.”

—Chief Black Hawk, from his surrender speach, 1832; quoted in A People’s History of the United States; 1492-Present by Howard Zinn, 1999.