On a bluff above the Rock River in Rock Island, Illinois, this place stands beside Saukenuk, the principal village of the Sauk people and the birthplace of Black Hawk. Established by about 1750, Saukenuk grew into one of the region’s most important Native settlements, sustained by farming, seasonal hunting, maple sugaring, and trade tied to British North America. The disputed 1804 Treaty of St. Louis, which ceded Sauk lands to the United States, intensified conflict as settlers advanced, contributing to the Black Hawk War of 1832. Today the site preserves and interprets the Sauk homeland, Black Hawk’s life, and the conflict that transformed the upper Mississippi valley.