for this act of youthful valor, he was, for the first time, permitted to mingle in the scalp-dance.  This triumph was followed shortly afterwards by two more excursions against the same tribe.  In the first, Black Hawk was the leader of seven men, who suddenly attacked a party of one hundred Osages, killed one of them, and as suddenly retreated without loss.  This exploit, so far increased the number of his followers, that he soon afterwards started with a party of one hundred and eighty braves, and marched to an Osage village, on the Missouri; but found it deserted.  Most of the party being disappointed, left their leader and returned home.  Black Hawk, however, with but five followers, pursued the trail of the enemy, and after some days succeeded in killing one man and a boy; and, securing their scalps, returned home.  In the year 1786, having recovered from the effect of his late unsuccessful excursion, Black Hawk found himself once more at the head of two hundred braves, and again set off to avenge the repeated outrages of the Osages upon the Sac nation.  Soon after he reached the enemy’s country, he met a party about equal in number to his own.  A battle ensued.  The Osages lost near one hundred men, and Black Hawk nineteen.  He claims, in the attack, to have killed five of the enemy, with his own hand.  This severe engagement had the effect, for some time, of keeping the Osages upon their own lands and arresting their depredations upon the Sacs.  This cessation of hostilities gave the latter an opportunity of redressing the wrongs which the Cherokees had committed upon them, by murdering some of their women and children.  A party was raised for this purpose, and met the Cherokees upon the Merrimack river, below St. Louis, the latter being most numerous.  In this battle Py-e-sa, the father of Black Hawk was killed.  The Cherokees were compelled to retreat with the loss of twenty-eight men, the Sacs having but seven killed.  Upon the fall of Py-e-sa, Black Hawk assumed the command and also took possession of the “medicine bag,” then in the keeping of his father.  Owing to the disasters of this expedition, and especially the death of his father, Black Hawk, for the ensuing five years, refrained from all warlike operations, and spent his time in fishing and hunting.  At the end of this period, being about the year 1800, he made another excursion, against the Osages, at the head of about five hundred Sacs and Foxes and a hundred Ioways, who had joined him as allies.  After a long march they reached and destroyed about forty lodges of the enemy, killing many of their bravest warriors, five of whom were slain by the leader of the invading army.  In the year 1802, he terminated a severe and protracted campaign against the Chippewas, Kaskaskias and Osages, during which six or seven battles were fought and more than one hundred of the enemy killed.  The following summer Black Hawk made one of his periodical visits to St. Louis to see his Spanish father, by whom