Black Hawk--the Final Days
"After his return from captivity, Black Hawk lived among his people on the Iowa River until that reservation was sold in 1836, when, with the rest of the Sacs and Foxes, he removed to the Des Moines, where he remained until his death on the 3rd day of October, 1838. His burial-place was near a large spring, not far from the residence of James Jordan, an old Indian trader, near the village of Ashland (now Eldon, at the crossing of the C., R.I.& P.R.R. His burial place is thus described in a letter published in the Hawk-Eye, in Ocober, 1843: 'It is constructed after the Indian mode of burial, by building a pen of round poles abou ten feet long, and three feet wide, and abou as high as a man's shoulders when sitting on the ground.
In the west end of this pen, the mighty Black Hawk was placed in a sitting posture, with his face toward the rising sun: his gun, tomahawk and blanket were placed at his side, and the pen covered over, leavingt he head and neck above, and exposed to the weather. His face was painted red and striped off with black, just as a living young Indian dandy paints when he goes a courting. thus conveying the idea to the living Indians, that their great chief had gone a courting to another world, where, should he receive the favor of the Great Spirit, he would be united to some squaw, who had passed the bounds of immortality and that there they would be forever in the green hunting-grounds, where deer and elk abound, and no white man could come to molest them.'
The writer of the above description of Black Hawk's burial ought to have added that the old chieftan was buried in a swallow-tailed coat made from blue broad cloth, which was elaborately decorated with brass buttons, epaulets, etc. After the 'pen' was completed, a plug hat, adorned with a broad red ribbon, was placed upon his head, and thus was left all that was mortal of the once powerful and warlike chieftain.
During the administration of Robert Lucas, as Governor of Iowa Territory, a vandal doctor from Quincy, Ill., invaded the burying-place and carried away the old chieftain's remains. Gov. Lucas issued a requisition on the Governor of Illinois for the arrest of the grave-robber and the recovery of the bones, and they were surrendered as a skeleton, and tendered to his people, but with Indian superstition and indifference, they never appeared to claim them, and they were deposited for safe-keeping in the Territorial museum at the Capitol in Burlington. A fire destroyed the building and its contents, and with them was destroyed all that was mortal of the great Sac chieftain."