Blackhawk and the Ethics of Honor

While Blackhawk’s “autobiography” clearly has so much going on, I was (unsurprising given my rant about ethics in last week’s class) most struck by what J. Gerald Kennedy calls the Sauk warrior’s method of “comparative national ethics.”  Initially reading this terminology in the introduction, I thought “comparative cultural ethics” might make more sense.  However, after reading the whole text, I might propose a Foucaultian word meld: natio-cultural, cultonational…something like that.  Blackhawk’s ethical framework indeed draws from cultural belief and practice, but the man is also preoccupied with the preservation of the Sauk “nation,” and that term is repeated throughout the text and used interchangeably with his “people.”  Granted, this may be more a tactic to avoid word repetition or choice translation by the ever-present translator and editor, Leclaire and Patterson respectively.  Yet while Blackhawk’s ethical framework is arguably nationally comparative, particularly at the end when visiting other cities, I would argue that our narrator puts forth ethical principles discerned by reason and motivated by honor, two concepts difficult to place within an either/or relationship with nation or culture.

Blackhawk’s appeals to reason and individual moral discernment are certainly worth further attention, but I am particularly interested in how his comparison’s between American and Sauk conduct speak to a sense of honor. In The Honor Code, culturally-minded ethicist Kwame Anthony Appiah theorizes honor, even in the context of a practical, Kantian ethics, as crucial in understanding why one nation or culture would both inflict injustice on another and later cease to do so: “One way to begin to grasp why honor matters to ethics is to recognize the connections between honor and respect; for respect and self-respect are clearly central human goods, too, things that add to eudaimonia, helping us to live well” (xv).  At different battles, negotiations, and other encounters with settler Americans, Blackhawk repeatedly offers respect and honor to their “war chiefs” while lamenting the lack of respect given to his people.  We see such a comparison while Blackhawk reflects on having been given a ball and chain during his incarceration under General Atkinson (White Beaver): “If I had taken him prisoner on the field of battle, I would not have wounded his feelings so much, by such treatment—knowing that a brave war chief would prefer death to dishonor!  But I do not blame the White Beaver for the course he pursued—it is the custom among white soldiers, and, I suppose, was part of his duty” (88).  The larger ethical problem of a group of people violently and nefariously grabbing land from long time inhabitants to appease a settler’s mentality fueled by manifest destiny should be fairly easily discerned on material and rights-based grounds.  Mark Rifkin analyzes this problem succinctly in his account of the 1804 treaty process.  However, Blackhawk goes even further to a sense of individual honor that is not offered him in the same measure he offers it to his adversaries.  At seemingly every turn, and even sometimes while at war, Blackhawk strives first to honor the individual he is encountering and offers them the respect he is often denied himself.  While he is never officially recognized as the sole representative of his nation or culture—and his reflections on Democracy in light of Keokuk’s rise to power are fascinating—Blackhawk sees the recognition of individuals within those collective constructs as more important than the cultivation of a preserved collective.  In other words, he is absolutely concerned with the preservation of his people and their culture, but he also demands to be seem as an individual dealing with other individuals who make individual decisions that affect nation(s) of people.