USA > Wisconsin > An illustrated history of Wisconsin from prehistoric to present periods : the story of the state interspersed with realistic and romantic events > Part 27
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* Col. Mckay's forces consisted of about one hundred and twenty volunteers, prin- cipally voyegenrs in the employ of Canadian traders, and officered by their clerks, all dressed in red coats, together with three bands of Sioux Indians, under Waubashaw and other chiefs. Col. Mckay and force came to Green Bay in boats ; at that point he was reinforced by about thirty whites, with Pierre Grignon as captain, together with seventy-five Menominees, under Ma-cha-nah and other chiefs, and about twenty-five Chippewas, making about four hundred Indians and one hundred and fifty whites. They also had a sergeant of artillery and one brass six-pounder.
The expedition, by way of the Fox and Wisconsin rivers, arrived at the old Fox village, twenty-one miles from Fort Shelby, where they camped, and sent their spies to Prairie du Chien, to ascertain the strength of the garrison, which they found to be sixty. The next day Mckay met his spies at " Petit Greis," about three miles from the fort. The garrison was protected (?) by a small wooden gun-boat commanded by Captain Yaiser, who had stored on board the fort's magazine and provisions. Upon the refusal of the commander of the fort to surrender, the colonel's six-pounder commenced to play upon Captain Yaiser's gun-boat, and, before sundown, they drove him from the river against the protestations of the garrison. The garrison resisted all attacks of the British and Indians for four days, and not until Mckay was about to shoot red-hot cannon balls into the fort, was the flag lowered. When the American flag was taken down, it was found riddled with bullets, except the representa- tion of the eagle, which was unscathed. This fact was remarked by the gallant Mckay. The Indians had been shooting at it for four days.
t Black Hawk, in his life, says that Maj. Zachary Taylor arrived the night before the engagement and camped on a small willow island nearly opposite them. That the British, early the next morning, while Taylor's forces were starting up the river, commenced firing upon the boats.
ZACHARY TAYLOR. From an original oil painting, in the Wisconsin Historical Society's Rooms.
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HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
tery on the left shore and several hundred Indians under Black Hawk on the right. A severe battle took place in which several of Taylor's forces were killed and many wounded. Maj. Taylor, finding the British forces too great for his small number, retired down the river to St. Louis.
Great Britain's savage allies were forever released from their alliance with that nation upon the consummation of the treaty of peace between the United States and Great Britain, which was entered into Dec. 24, 1814.
Black Hawk and twenty-one of the Sac and Fox chiefs were persuaded by the United States authorities to meet in council on May 13, 1816, at St. Louis, where they ratified the treaty of St. Louis, dated November 3, 1804, by the terms of which treaty the Sac and Fox nation ceded to the United States the greater portion of Wisconsin, northern Illinois, and a strip of land on the northeast side of Missouri, and a large portion of the state of Iowa, which included Black Hawk's native village and the graves of his ancestors.
Black Hawk, in speaking of this treaty, says: " Here, for the first time, I touched the goose-quill to the treaty, not knowing, however, by that act I consented to give away my village. Had that been explained to me, I should have opposed it, and never would have signed this treaty, as my recent conduct will clearly show."
Upon Black Hawk's arrival from St. Louis, he found that in his absence, the United States troops had arrived at Rock Island, for the purpose of build- ing Fort Armstrong.
" We did not object to their building the fort," says Black Hawk, " but were very sorry, as this was the best island on the Mississippi, and had long been the resort of our young people during the summer. It was our garden (like the white people have near to their big villages) which supplied us with strawberries, blackberries, gooseberries, plums, apples, and nuts of different kinds ; and its water supplied us with fine fish, being situated in the rapids of the river. In my early life, I spent many happy days on this island. A good spirit had care of it, who lived in a cave in the rocks, immediately under the place where the fort now stands, and has often been seen by our people. He was white, with large wings like a swan, but ten times larger. We were particular not to make much noise in that part of the island which he inhabited for fear of disturbing him. But the noise of the fort has since driven him away, and no doubt a bad spirit has taken his place. Our village was situated on the north side of the Rock river, at the foot of its rapids, on the point of land between Rock river and the Mississippi. In its front a prairie extended to the banks of the Misssis- sippi ; and, in our rear, a continued bluff gently ascending from the prairie. On the side of this bluff we had our cornfields, extending about two miles up, running parallel with the Mississippi, where we joined those of the Foxes,
BLACK HAWK-WARS IN WHICH HE PARTICIPATED. 197
whose village was on the bank of the Mississippi opposite the lower end of Rock Island, and three miles distant from ours.
"We had about eight hundred acres in cultivation, including what we had on the islands of Rock river. The land around our village, uncultivated, was covered with blue-grass, which made excellent pasture for our horses. Several fine springs broke out of the bluff near by, from which we were supplied with good water. The rapids of Rock river furnished us with an abundance of ex- cellent fish, and the land, being good, never failed to produce good crops of corn, beans, pumpkins, and squashes. We always had plenty. Our children never cried with hunger, nor were our people ever in want. Here our village had stood for more than a hundred years, during which time we were the un- disturbed possessors of the valley of the Mississippi, from the Ouisconsin to the Portage des Sioux, near the mouth of the Missouri.
"At this time, we had very little intercourse with the whites, except our traders. Our village was healthy and there was no place in the country pos- sessing such advantages, nor any hunting grounds better than those we had in our possession. If another prophet had come to our village in those days, and told us what has since taken place, none of our people would have believed him. What, to be driven from our village and hunting grounds, and not even per- mitted to visit the graves of our forefathers, our relations, and friends ? This hardship is not known to the whites. With us, it is the custom to visit the graves of our friends and keep them in repair for many years. The mother might go alone to weep over the grave of her child. The brave with pleasure visits the grave of his father, after he has been successful in war, and repaints the post that shows where he lies. There is no place like that where the bones of our forefathers lie to go to when in grief; here the Great Spirit will take pity on us."
About this time, Black Hawk and several of his band took the old Indian trail across northern Illinois and southern Michigan, to the British Indian agency at Malden, Canada. They were well received by the British agent, who gave Black Hawk a medal for his fidelity to the English cause during the war of 1812, and invited him to return with his band each year and receive presents that had been promised them by Col. Dickson several years before. Upon their return home they were well laden with both presents and advice .*
The fraudulent treaty of St. Louis, in 1804, contained this inducement clause : "As long as the lands which are now ceded to the United States shall remain their (the general government's) property, the Indians belonging to said tribes shall enjoy the privilege of living or hunting upon them." This meant
*Black Hawk says, in his Life, that at the time the British agent gave him the medal, he said that there never would again be war between England and the United States, but, on account of Black Hawk's fidelity, he and his band should receive their annual presents.
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that the Indians were to remain upon these ceded lands until pre-empted by actual settlers.
The knowledge of this saving clause was to Black Hawk the one bright ray of light that shone through the dark and threatening clouds that were about to burst and destroy him.
Notwithstanding this clause in the treaty, the most venturesome of the early frontiersmen, within a short time after the building of Fort Armstrong, commenced squatting upon the lands adjacent to Black Hawk's ancient village.
The attractions to the fertile valley of the Mississippi were so great, that, as early as 1823, the old Indian village and its cornfields* were most en- tirely surrounded by these wily and avaricious squatters, and notwithstanding the fact that a strip of fine unoccupied land, forty miles wide, lay east of the village.
Black Hawk's affairs were each day becoming more and more complicated. The agent at Fort Armstrong and the trader at Rock Island had already induced Keokuk and other easy and rum-loving chiefs to cross over to the west side of the Mississippi and build a new village. The old Sac and Fox confederation was now for the first time divided. Those favoring peace and the abandonment of their native homes had crossed the Mississippi with Keokuk and other peace- · chiefs ; the balance, consisting of more than a thousand souls, remained in their native village with Black Hawk.
Keokuk frequently came to the village to co-operate with the agent and trader at Rock Island, with the view of persuading Black Hawk and his followers to cross over to the west side of the Mississippi; but Black Hawk's love for his native village, and the graves of his fathers, was so great that every induce- ment proved futile. He looked upon Keokuk as "no brave," a coward, and a friend of the whites.
Each day the unprincipled and avaricious squatters encroached more and more upon the heritage of Black Hawk and his people. Whenever a white man wanted a cornfield, he would plow up the Indian's newly-planted corn- ground and replant it himself, thereby destroying the Indian's greatest source for sustaining his family. Whisky was openly given to the Indians in the village, and they were made drunk, and cheated out of their horses, guns and equipments, and not infrequently were they inhumanly treated by these " early settlers."
At one time, while Black Hawk was hunting near Two Rivers, he was met by three white men, who accused him of killing their hogs, and, notwith- standing his protestations and declarations of innocence, they took away his gun, fired it off, took out the flint, and after giving it back, they beat him so
"Black Hawk's cornfields consisted of about eight hundred acres of fine land, including the islands in the Rock river.
BLACK HAWK-WARS IN WHICH HE PARTICIPATED. 199
badly that he could not sleep for several nights. An Indian woman was also beaten for pulling up a few cornsuckers from a white man's cornfield to eat when hungry ; and one of the young Indians was so badly beaten with clubs, by two white men, for opening a fence which crossed the road to the Indian village, that his shoulder-blade was broken, and he died.
Amid these disastrous and distressing times, not one of the whites was hurt or molested by the Indians. Black Hawk complained to the United States authorities at St. Louis and informed them of the true state of affairs. At the same time, the squatters were complaining to the authorities at St. Louis that the Indians were intruding upon their rights; "they made themselves out," says Black Hawk, "to be the injured party, and we the intruders, and called loudly to the great war-chief to protect their property."
In the fall of 1830, and shortly prior to their starting for their hunting grounds in Missouri, the agent at Fort Armstrong told Black Hawk that the land upon which the Indian village stood should be sold, and if they returned the following spring, that they should be forcibly removed. During the winter, a runner informed Black Hawk that the land, upon which their village stood, had been sold, and that the solicitious trader at Rock Island (who had repeatedly urged Black Hawk to remove to the west side of the Mississippi) had purchased it .*
During the long and dreary winter of 1830-31, the council lodge in Black Hawk's camp was several times convened, and therein it was determined that they should return to their native village, in the spring, and, if they were forcibly removed, " the trader, the agent, the interpreter, the great chief at St. Louis, the great war-chief at Fort Armstrong and Keokuk were to be killed." This wholesale slaughter was to be performed by Neapope, the prince of Indian liars. Unfortunately, Black Hawk had two friends and counselors, each of whom he implicitly trusted; one was White Cloud, the crafty half Sac and half Winnebago prophet, and chief of a Winnebago village, thirty- nine miles up Rock river, at a place now called Prophetstown, Illinois, and the other was the zealous, lying and deceptive Neapope, who frequently acted as Black Hawk's ambassador.
Upon the return of Black Hawk and his band, late in the spring of 1831, after a fruitlesst winter's hunt, they found their native village in a deplorable con- dition. Many of the bark lodges had been burned, the village divided up and sold to the government trader at Rock Island, and to his friends the squatters ; the old cornfields, that the Indians had cultivated for more than a century, had likewise been sold, and the dearest of all spots to the Indian heart, the burying-ground of their dead, had also been sold and plowed over .¿
* Col. Davenport.
t Black Hawk claimed that the principal cause of their failure to procure game and fur during the winter of 1830-31, was because the whites had traded whisky with the Indians for their guns and traps.
# Smith's Hist. Wis., Vol. III., 138.
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HISTORY OF WISCONSIN.
Black Hawk, in contrasting the good old days before Fort Armstrong was built, with these times, says: " But how different now is our situation from what it was in those days-then we were as happy as the buffalo on the plains, but now we are as miserable as the hungry, howling wolves in the prairie. Bitter reflections crowd upon the mind and must find utterance."
Black Hawk now went to Fort Malden to advise with the British agent, on the subject of his grievances, and also called upon the " Great Chief" at Detroit, for the same purpose, and was told by both that " if we had not sold our lands, and would remain peaceably on them, we should not be disturbed." This, he says, " assured me that I was right and determined me to hold out."
Owing to the fact that they were obliged to break new grounds with their primitive hoes, the prospect for a corn crop was so poor, that, for the first time, Black Hawk found his people face to face with starvation.
The interpreter and agent at Fort Armstrong ordered Black Hawk and his people, under pain of compulsion, to cross over to the west side of the Missis- sippi. They tried, however, to make arrangements with the government authorities at St. Louis, whereby Black Hawk should receive six thousand dollars to remove quietly and peaceably westward of the Mississippi, but the authorities at St. Louis sent back word that " the government could give them nothing, and if they did not remove immediately that they would be driven off."
Notwithstanding these facts, Black Hawk was determined to remain in the village, but fearing that a conflict might arise he directed his band, that in case the authorities came, not to raise a hand against them. Frequently and vainly did Black Hawk apply to the various government authorities for redress, and vainly did he ask for permission to go to Washington, for the purpose of having a talk with the American Father, President Jackson.
The settlers complained to Governor Reynolds, of Illinois, and represented that Black Hawk was a regular Memphisto, and his band, imps; that they had thrown down their fences, cut up their grain, slaughtered their cattle, and did numerous other unholy acts .*
Black Hawk's band, considering their usage by the settlers, together with their almost starving condition, undoubtedly did commit numerous offenses, but that these offenses were greatly multiplied and distorted, none can deny.
Governor Reynolds, upon receipt of the numerous exaggerated reports, immediately declared the state invaded, and appealed to Gen. Clark, superin- tendent of Indian affairs, to afford means for the protection of the people, and to remove the Indians across the Mississippi.
The governor's call was speedily complied with, and, on the 10th day of June, 1831, about sixteen hundred men had assembled at Beardstown, and
"The squatters, with one exception, left the village and vicinity for a short period after Black Hawk threatened them with death. One white man who had a large family was, through sympathy, permitted to stay.
BLACK HAWK-WARS IN WHICH HE PARTICIPATED. 201
there organized into an " odd battalion and a spy battalion." The brigade was then placed under command of Maj .- Gen. Jos. Duncan, of the Illinois state militia.
General Gaines, having arrived at Rock Island by steamboat with a detach- ment of soldiers, convened a council at the agency, on the 7th day of June, 1831, which was attended by Black Hawk and several of his chiefs, together with Keokuk and Watella, the peace-chiefs. Black Hawk was told that their Great Father, the president, was sorry to be put to the trouble and expense of sending a body of soldiers to remove them from the lands which they had long since ce led to the United States, and advised them to immediately remove to the west side of the Mississippi. Black Hawk replied : " We have never sold our country ; we have never received any annuities from our American Father, and we are determined to hold on to the village."
Gen. Gaines angrily arose, and replied : " Who is Black Hawk? Who is Black Hawk?" Black Hawk, with flashing eyes, answered : " I am a Sac ; my forefather was a Sac; and all the nations call me a Sac."
" I came here," said Gen. Gaines, " neither to beg nor to hire you to leave your village ; my business is to remove you peaceably, if I can ; forcibly, if I must. I will give you two days to remove in, and, if you do not cross the Mississippi in that time, I will adopt measures to force you away." Thus the council broke up.
About June 24, the whole of the forces were concentrated about eight miles below the mouth of the Rock river, at a place now called Rockport. From this point, plans were laid for the capture of the Indian village, and the de- struction of the Sac nation. Gen. Gaines convened a council on the 24th of June and gave Black Hawk and his band one day in which to cross to the west side of the Mississippi. Accordingly, on the morning of June 26th, the two brigades marched up the country, and General Gaines and a detachment ascended the river in a steamboat. Upon their arrival at the mouth of the Rock river, they found the Indian village deserted, Black Hawk and his whole band having crossed to the west side of the Mississippi in the night, and encamped below Rock Island.
This brave band of sixteen hundred well-armed and well-fed militiamen, in their wrath at not finding a few hundred nearly-starved and half-armed In- dians, amidst torrents of rain, set fire to the bark wigwams, and in a short time this ancient village, which had been the home of six or seven thousand Indians, was reduced to a pile of smouldering ashes .*
It is suggested that perhaps the militiamen, who set fire to the old Indian village, were the brave three hundred, who the next year, upon hearing the first Indian war-whoops at Syracuse Creek, ran to Dixon, a distance of thirty miles away.
* Ford's Illinois, 114.
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Upon June 27, the little army marched up Rock river, where they camped at a place now called Rock Island. At this place, Gen. Gaines con- vened another council, and by threatening to cross the Mississippi, in pursuit of the starving refugees, succeeded in getting Black Hawk to "touch the quill" to a peace treaty, by the terms of which, Black Hawk was to receive corn in place of that growing in the fields, and that he and his nation were ever to remain on the west side of the Mississippi, and not to recross without the permission of the governor of Illinois, or the President of the United States.
History should not conceal facts, nor misrepresent them ; either for the pur- pose of covering up, or concealing the errors or mistakes of government offi- cials, or for any other purpose. More than sixty years have elapsed since the occurrence of these unhappy events-sufficient time to allay all prejudice against these unfortunate and misguided red men.
When Gen. Gaines ordered Black Hawk to recross to the west side of the Mississippi, several million acres of unoccupied lands lay east of the Mis- sissippi which, under the terms of the treaty of 1804, Black Hawk had the right to live and hunt on.
The greatest travesty on justice ever perpetrated in the United States was the treaty of St. Louis, made Nov. 3, 1804. In this treaty, the United States was represented by its able commissioner, William Henry Harrison, and the Sac and Fox nation by five drunken Indians, four of whom had been sent to St. Louis to try and liberate an Indian prisoner. The consideration for more than fifty-one million acres of land was $2,234.50 in goods, delivered to these Indians, and the government's promise to pay annually $1,000 in goods to be valued at cost, $600 of which was to be paid to the Sacs and $400 to the Foxes.
In the life of Black Hawk, which was published in 1833, both in the United States and England, Black Hawk stoutly maintained that not one cent of the promised annuity was ever paid. It is reasonable to suppose that had the government paid the promised annuity, that, long ere this, the vouchers would have been produced by the government to erase the stain upon its escutcheon, which was made by overzealous and not overscrupulous officials.
There is no doubt but that Black Hawk, in 1831, working in unison with other malcontent chiefs, undertook to unite the different Indian tribes between Lake Superior and Mexico. He admits that "runners were sent to the Arkansas, Red river and Texas, not on the subject of our lands, but on a secret mission which I am not at present perinitted to explain."
If Black Hawk had succeeded in forming such a general alliance for offensive and defensive purposes, he would be known in history as the greatest Indian chief America ever produced.
MAP OF THE
Fond du Lac
Mayville
Scale-30Miles-Tin.
Norricon
Wisconsin
Madison
Kal herson
Lake Koshkonong
Janesville
Belvet State line
Rocklon
Rockford Byron
Illinois
Oregon & Stillman's Fight 1832
Illinois
Rock River Coma
Lyndon
DRAWN BY
Rock Island
Part land.
NAPOLIAN BOARDMAN
milan
U. S. SURVEYOR.
MAP SHOWING COUNTRY TRAVERSED BY BLACK HAWK IN HIS FLIGHT.
Fox River Watertown. Herson
Wisconsin
CHAPTER XXVI.
Black Hawk Returns to East Side of Mississippi .- Ordered Back .- Goes up Rock River to Make Corn .- United Forces of Government and Illinois Militia .- Black Hawk Tries to Surrender .- Maj. Stillman's Militia Shoots Truce-Bearer .- Battle of Stillman's Run .- Gen- erosity of Black Hawk.
ABOUT this time Neapope arrived from Fort Malden, where he had been sent when Gen. Gaines was first making arrangements to remove the British band* across the Mississippi.
Upon Neapope's arrival, he reported to Black Hawk that the agent of the British Father had sent him word that the Americans should not remove them to the west side of the Mississippi, and that, in the event of war, the British would assist them. He further said that he had stopped at the Prophet's village, and that the prophet had received expresses from the British Father, who prom- ised to send them guns, ammunition and clothing, in the spring, and that the prophet had received wampum and tobacco from different tribes on the lake.
At this time Keokuk, having learned that Black Hawk was about to re- cruit his band with the view of recrossing to the east side of the Mississippi, made application to the government authorities at St. Louis for permission for Black Hawk and some of his chiefs to go to Washington, with the view of set- tling their difficulties. Keokuk also requested Col. Davenport, the trader at Rock Island, who was going to Washington, to call upon the president and get his permission for a delegation of chiefs to visit him. But the United States officials on the Mississippi, the traders and squatters, were not anxious for Black Hawk to have a hearing before the president.t At any rate, the much- sought permission was not granted to Black Hawk and his chiefs to visit the president.
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