Kerry A. Trask, a scholar of early American history, is a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Manitowoc, and earned his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota. A native of Canada, he is particularly interested in the early history of the Great Lakes region. Trask is the author of two previous books; his most recent is Fire Within: A Civil War Narrative from Wisconsin, which was awarded the Council for Wisconsin Writers' Leslie Cross Book-Length Nonfiction Award in 1996. He lives on the west shore of Lake Michigan.
The Black Hawk War of 1832 was a three-month conflict that marked the only major effort within Illinois by a native group to resist expulsion from their tribal homelands. Drawing on diaries and oral histories, as well as secondary sources, Trask (history, Univ. of Wisconsin, Manitowoc; Fire Within: A Civil War Narrative from Wisconsin) examines this sordid episode in U.S. history, using a conventional historical model that divides the Sauks into two camps. Tradition is embodied in the leader Black Hawk, while Keokuk represents the accommodationist faction of the tribe. Their intertribal rivalry determined how the Sauk factions responded to the threat of white encroachment on tribal territory. This tradition-vs.-accommodation model, however, was already admirably applied to the conflict in Roger L. Nichols's Black Hawk and the Warrior's Path. Still, Trask's narrative is fast-paced and makes for a fine read. Recommended for public and academic libraries that do not already own Nichols's monograph.-John Burch, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
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