Black Hawk War in the context of "Winfield Scott"

A stockade is an enclosure of palisades and tall walls, made of logs placed side by side vertically, with the tops sharpened as a defensive wall.

Zachary Taylor (November 24, 1784 – July 9, 1850) was an American military officer and politician who was the 12th president of the United States, serving from 1849 until his death in 1850. Taylor was a career officer in the United States Army, rising to the rank of major general and becoming a national hero for his victories in the Mexican–American War. As a result, he won election to the White House despite his vague political beliefs. His top priority as president was to preserve the Union. He died 16 months into his term from a stomach disease. Taylor had the third-shortest presidential term in U.S. history.

Taylor was born into a prominent family of plantation owners who moved westward from Virginia to Louisville, Kentucky, in his youth. He was the last president born before the Constitution of the United States was adopted. He was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Army in 1808 and made a name for himself as a captain in the War of 1812. He climbed the ranks of the military, establishing military forts along the Mississippi River and entering the Black Hawk War as a colonel in 1832. His success in the Second Seminole War attracted national attention and earned him the nickname "Old Rough and Ready".

The Ho-Chunk, also known as Hoocąk, Hoocągra, or Winnebago are a Siouan-speaking Native American people whose historic territory includes parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois. Today, Ho-Chunk people are enrolled in two federally recognized tribes: the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin and the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska.

In the Late Woodland Period (650–1200 CE), precontact Ho-Chunks built thousands of effigy mounds in Wisconsin and surrounding states. They are successors to the Oneota culture. Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Ho-Chunk were the dominant tribe in its territory in the 16th century, with a population estimated at several thousand. They lived in permanent villages of wigwams and cultivated corn, squash, beans, wild rice. They hunted wild animals, and fished from canoes. The name Ho-Chunk comes from the word Hoocąk and "Hoocąkra" (Ho meaning "voice", cąk meaning "sacred", ra being a definite article), meaning "People of the Sacred Voice". Their name comes from oral history that state they are the originators of the many branches of the Siouan language. The Ho-Chunk have 12 clans, each with specific roles. Wars with the Illinois Confederacy and later wars with the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, Meskwaki, and Sauk peoples pushed them out of their territories in eastern Wisconsin and Illinois, along with conflicts with the United States such as Winnebago War and Black Hawk War. The Ho-Chunk suffered severe population loss in the 17th century to a low of perhaps 500 individuals. This has been attributed to casualties of a lake storm, epidemics of infectious disease, and competition for resources from migrating Algonquian tribes. By the early 19th century, their population had increased to 2,900, but they suffered further losses in the smallpox epidemic of 1836. In 1990 they numbered 7,000; current estimates of total population of the two tribes are 12,000.

Sarah Knox Davis (née Taylor; March 6, 1814 – September 15, 1835) was the daughter of the 12th U.S. president Zachary Taylor and part of the notable Lee family. She met future Confederate president Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) when living with her father and family at Fort Crawford during the Black Hawk War in 1832. They married in 1835 and she died three months later of malaria.

Mahkatêwe-meshi-kêhkêhkwa, known in English as Black Hawk (c. 1767 – October 3, 1838), was a Sauk leader and warrior who lived in what is now the Midwestern United States. Although he had inherited an important historic sacred bundle from his father, he was not a hereditary civil chief. Black Hawk earned his status as a war chief or captain by his actions: leading raiding and war parties as a young man and then a band of Sauk warriors during the Black Hawk War of 1832.

During the War of 1812, Black Hawk fought on the side of the British against the US in the hope of pushing white American settlers away from Sauk territory. Later, he led a band of Sauk and Meskwaki warriors, known as the British Band, against white settlers in Illinois and present-day Wisconsin during the 1832 Black Hawk War. After the war, he was captured by US forces and taken to the Eastern US, where he and other war leaders were taken on a tour of several cities.