But Milwaukee invented one anyway.

Shy, bespectacled Elbert Smith arrived there in 1837 to teach school. A few years later, he showed some friends a sentimental poem he'd written called, "Lo, the Poor Indian." It included such stanzas as, "The Indian on the high bluff stood! / Alone, and nobody round him, / Save tenants of the ancient wood / That always did surround him."

As a joke, his acquaintances persuaded newspapers to print it. With tongue firmly planted in cheek, the press praised the poem extravagantly, claiming it placed Smith "at once among the first poets of the age."

Everyone seemed to know it was a farce except the author. He was so inspired by the attention that he wrote a 270-page epic about the Black Hawk War and printed it at his own expense. This consisted largely of vapid reflections, hackneyed clich?s, and strained rhymes which, like his first

effort, were greeted with hyperbolic admiration.

Smith's friends began to feel guilty. They explained to him that they had tried to set him up as a public laughingstock.

But the joke was on them. Readers from Chicago to Buffalo loved the book and bought up the whole edition.

Pocketing his sales receipts, Smith left Milwaukee in 1846 for New York, where his Black Hawk epic went through two illustrated editions and he became a celebrity.

— Wisconsin Historical Society
www.wisconsinhistory.org

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