According to historian Kerry Trask, Black Hawk and his fellow prisoners were treated like celebrities because the Indians served as a living embodiment of the noble savage myth that had become popular in the eastern United States. Then and later, argues Trask, white Americans absolved themselves of complicity in the dispossession of Native Americans by expressing admiration or sympathy for defeated Indians like Black Hawk. The mythologizing of Black Hawk continued, argues Trask, with the many plaques and memorials that were later erected in his honor. "Indeed," writes Trask, "most of the reconstructed memory of the Black Hawk War has been designed to make white people feel good about themselves." Black Hawk also became an admired symbol of resistance among Native Americans, even among descendants of those who had opposed him.