Black Hawk gave his name to a war that made a soldier out of a tall, gangling Illinois frontiersman named Abe Lincoln. He was also probably the most popular and honored prisoner of war in American history.

He doffed his hat to thousands of admiring Americans, watched a balloon ascension at New York City's Battery Park, and forced a President to cut short a popularity tour.

Black Hawk's war was born of wild frontier rumor, the unbridled imagination of a politically ambitious governor, and the rifle shots of frightened militiamen. It began in the spring of 1831 when Sauk and Fox women kicked over fences settlers had erected across Indian trails. Stories soon grew that the nation was uniting with their old allies, the Potawatomi, Winnebago, and Kickapoo, to declare war on the whites.

[...]

Black Hawk, who realized that he had reached the point of no return, now launched the war that was to bear his name. For two years he conducted a skillful frontier guerrilla campaign until the white man's army finally reduced his warriors to a pitiful handful. Dressed in white deerskin, the tribe's symbol of peace, he surrendered at Fort Crawford, Prairie du Chien, August 27, 1832.

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Curiously Colonel McKenney was not attracted by the chief's courage, integrity, or popularity, but by his attitude toward women. McKenney wrote:

"The strongest evidence of his good sense is found in an assertion contained in his autobiography that he has never had but one wife."