How does Black Hawk’s rhetoric in this excerpt advance his viewpoint that in order to save their own culture, Indians must defeat the white men? We told them to let us alone; but they followed on and beset our paths, and they coiled themselves among us like the snake. They poisoned us by their touch. We were not safe. We lived in danger. We were becoming like them, hypocrites and liars, adulterers, lazy drones, all talkers, and no workers. He uses imagery to reveal the thoughts and feelings of the Native Americans. He uses a direct address to emphasize his point that white people are evil by nature. He uses a source to demonstrate how Native Americans are different than white people. He uses figurative language to convey the idea that white people morally corrupt Native Americans.