Settlers covet Indian land.

 The largest Sauk village was west of the present-day city of Moline, Illinois. From Moline, the Mississippi flows east four miles, forming the village's northern boundary. Then, the Mississippi turns to the south for three miles, forming the western boundary. The Rock River flows east into the Mississippi, forming the southern border. On this three-by-four-mile plot of land, the Sauk cleared three thousand acres, including the stumps. The women grew their crops while the men hunted in the surrounding area.

The tribal council divided the land, allowing families up to ten acres each. The families made fences from brush or pushed sticks into the ground to mark their property.

Their main crop was corn. The Indians also raised pumpkins and squash in abundance. Some had horses and may have grown Kentucky bluegrass on their plots.

Also, the tribe had a thousand acres of rich bottomland next to the river. There they grew tobacco, plums, strawberries, gooseberries, blackberries, raspberries, chokecherries, and crab apples. Here, on this land, their children never went hungry.

When the first white settlers saw this land for the first time, they were amazed by the magnificent cultivated farmland. To them, it represented free government land. The problem for the settlers was that Indians already inhabited the land.

Settlers began moving next to the Indians' farmland. When the Indians' corn was about knee-high, at night, the settlers' cows would go into the Indians' cornfields and eat the young, tender, immature cornstalks. These nightly raids by the cows were destroying the Sauk's food supply.

Chief Keokuk went to each settler with cows and begged them to keep their cows fenced at night. The chief told the farmers that in the daytime, the squaws and children could keep watch and keep the cows out. All the settlers agreed to keep their cows pinned in at night, except Einnah Wells.^[1] He told Chief Keokuk, “No.” Einnah was not worried his cows would get to his corn because he had built a substantial rail fence to keep them out.

The next day, Einnah went looking for his cows. He discovered some of the rails in his fence were missing, and the cows were in his field eating his corn. The cows had eaten and trampled five or six acres of corn. From then on, Einnah decided to keep his cows pinned in at night.

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[1] Perry Armstrong, The Sauks and the Black Hawk War (H. W. Rokker, 1887), 38.