How the Black-Hawk-Slept-Here project got started
From Black Hawk Slept Here
The Black-Hawk-Slept-Here project got started in 1996 when I did a bike ride to all of the towns in the Midwest League (Class C minor league baseball). I use the word "I", but it was possible to do this ride only because my wife and youngest son were willing to come along to help watch the ball games and help out with the logistics. They went by car and I went by bicycle.
We saw at least one game in each town. It amounted to a trip of a little over 2000 miles. We did it in three weeks and a day. We started with a game in Battle Creek, Michigan (near our home), and then went to Fort Wayne, South Bend, Rockford, Beloit, Geneva (IL), Clinton (IA), Cedar Rapids, Burlington, Peoria, Davenport, Appleton, Grand Rapids, and Lansing. We closed it out with another game in Battle Creek.
It was not easy to plan such a trip within the limits of bicycle speeds and a three-week vacation, so that we'd hit each town for a home game. Rainouts could have crossed us up, and almost did. But it did work out.
This was my second tour ever. Based on one I had done the year before, I expected it to be somewhat of an endurance contest -- a struggle against the elements, the setting sun, and fatigue. It turned out to be not much of a challenge at all -- just a lot of fun. It may have helped that I did 2000 miles of riding beforehand to get ready for it.
In addition to the riding, I did another type of preparation beforehand. I got ready for the trip by reading about some of the history of each of the towns. And I read Allan Eckert's book, "Twilight of Empire", about the Black Hawk war. I liked that in the notes in the back of the book, he identified some of the locations in the story well enough to go visit them.
So in between ballgames we visited some of these places. We visited Stillman's Run where the fighting started, my son and I approaching the town down the long gentle slope from the north from the same direction as the the young men who had been sent by Black Hawk to surrender, before they were shot and killed by the militia that had been chasing them up the Rock River. Three of the teams of course play ball near this Rock River, the entire length of which is part of the story. At the Kishwaukee River, I stopped to watch an amateur baseball game and to think about the false trail that Black Hawk's people laid in its vicinity to deceive the soldiers following them. We stayed in Dixon, which is at one end of the Galena Trail that figures prominently in the story. Near the Kane County Cougars, I started to learn the terrain around the Fox River, which also plays a part in the story. We camped in Shabonna's country, near the Indian Creek massacre, as it's called.
When we got back home, I came to learn that we had missed a lot more of the sites of the story by not many miles. I was also somewhat surprised to learn that the Black Hawk war was part of our own history in southern Michigan. Here, of course, it was a war scare, not a war. But there were war scare anecdotes close to home. During the winter I started making notes about these locations, and was also getting the idea that the world needed a bicycling atlas to the sites of the Black Hawk war scare in Indiana and Michigan. As soon as the weather was fit for riding, I started visiting some of these sites. I'm not finished yet. In digging into primary and secondary sources when attempting to corroborate some of the stories told by old-timers in the county histories, I've come up with more more information, which has meant more bike ride destinations. And I keep finding more.
I've also expanded the geographic scope of the project as I've learned of other places in Indiana and Ohio with Black Hawk war scare connections. I've also expanded the definition of a "connection" somewhat, partly to give myself an excuse for more rides, and partly because learning the history of the settlement era and of the War of 1812 provides a context to better understand what was happening at the time of Black Hawk war itself.
One other point about the baseball tour. Beforehand, I expected the rides in Indiana and Illinois to be less-than-interesting drudgery that I'd have to do to get to the interesting country along the Mississippi River and in Wisconsin. I knew that travelling through anyplace by bicycle is a lot different from going by Interstate, but I didn't realize until I did it just how different it was. When it was all over, I realized that Indiana and Illinois had provided some of the most idyllic riding routes of the entire trip, and that I wanted to go back for more. During my training rides I had already gotten to know southern Michigan better, wondering why it had taken me nearly 20 years of living in Michigan to get to know my own backyard. I still can't get enough of it. I'm recently started putting as much as possible of what I've learned into this SpokesWiki, but I'm not finished learning yet, either.
--John Gorentz, July 2007
