Salamanders can regrow entire limbs and regenerate parts of major organs, an ability that relies on their immune systems, research now shows. ... They then wiped out some or all of the macrophage cells to determine whether these cells were essential for regrowing the limbs.
Black Hawk is talking of his experience of being beaten by warfare of the white man against his people and him being imprisoned. He suggests that is the only way to try to right the wrongs the white man has visited against him ie by resisting the white man's expansion into his territories. He considers the white man to be deceitful and only friendly in order to find a way to dupe the Indian. In fact Black Hawk would probably be very happy to see how the First Nations peoples have multiplied in recent years and obtained higher education and learned how to battle the white society in the courts and with road blocks and demonstrations etc and obtain some important land claims like the Tsilqhotin one in British Columbia, Canada.