Mahkatêwe-meshi-kêhkêhkwa, known in English as Black Hawk, was a Sauk leader and warrior who lived in the future Midwestern United States. Although he had inherited an important historic sacred bundle from his father, he was not a hereditary civil chief. Black Hawk earned his status as a war chief or captain by his actions: leading raiding and war parties as a young man and then a band of Sauk warriors during the Black Hawk War of 1832.
