The Black Hawk War Including a Review of Black Hawk's Life
element. So great was the advantage of their assailants that the Iowas
could make but a feeble resistance. Their enemies, however, accorded
to them the credit of making a brave but hopeless resistance and of
yielding only because of the advantage their enemies had taken. The
Iowas asked a parley and submitted their fate to the will of their
conquerors. For a time they lived in the country as an integral part
of the Sac and Fox nation. This condition of a conquered people they
felt to be a galling one, and they complained of the tyranny of the
Sacs and Foxes.”
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Footnote 46:
Flagler’s Rock Island Arsenal, p. 15.
Footnote 47:
Auto., p. 70.
Footnote 48:
Journal of Maj. Thomas Forsythe, the Indian agent, who called June 24,
1819, at Black Hawk’s village to pay the installment due, as all
previous ones had been paid. Vol. 6, Wis. Hist. So. Colls., p. 191.
Footnote 49:
Morse’s Report to Secretary War, pp. 139, 377, etc.
Footnote 50:
Morse’s Report, p. 59.
Footnote 51:
Beltrami’s Pilgrimage, Vol. 2, p. 165.
Footnote 52:
A circumstance demanding notice.
Footnote 53:
If he had behaved himself as advised, there had been no Black Hawk
campaigns in 1831-2 and no occasion for this history. The admonition
contains more food for thought than four volumes of comment could
supply.
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CHAPTER XI.
TREATIES OF 1822-24-25–WINNEBAGO OUTBREAK–ATTACK ON THE BOATS–ARREST AND
DISCHARGE.
The Sacs and Foxes were also trespassers upon Illinois soil,
dispossessing by conquest, after the manner just related, the Santeaux,
who claimed the soil from which they were driven.[54] Black Hawk was
always strenuously insistent for the principle that land could not be
alienated, therefore his nation could not, by treaty, legally have
alienated their lands. If lands were inalienable by grant, how, then,
could they have been alienated by conquest? The difference was in
instance and not principle with Black Hawk, and he no doubt argued that
the case was different with Santeaux and Iowas, because his was a party
in interest. And so with the treaty of 1804; it was good if it helped
Black Hawk and very bad if it contained anything good for the Americans.
That the Americans were intent on doing the best for the Indians which
then could be done under all circumstances is everywhere apparent in the
several treaties with the Sacs and Foxes. On September 3d, 1822,[55]
another treaty was negotiated with them, which also recognized the 1804
compact, and doubtless Black Hawk thought this all right, because it
gave to them an additional $1,000.00 for the privilege of being relieved
from the obligation of building a factory as that treaty had provided.
This 1822 affair bears the signature of Black Hawk.
Again on August 4th, 1824, a treaty was made between the Sacs and Foxes
recognizing the former treaties.[56]
On August 19th, 1825, another treaty for the purpose of suspending the
constant internecine wars of the Indians was made at Prairie du Chien,
wherein all former treaties were recognized.[57] With all these various
ratifications one would naturally infer that the treaty of 1804 was
pretty thoroughly understood by the Indians, and particularly by Black
Hawk, yet in the face of them all he continued his hostility to the
Americans whenever the possibility of making them trouble arose, and if
it did not arise from the efforts of others, he was ever alert to set it
in motion on his own account. The Winnebago outbreak, coming along in
1827, afforded him the next opportunity to display his genius for war,
and he was quick to place himself against his ancient foe, the
Americans. The unfriendly attitude of certain unruly Sioux, sometimes
called or classed as the Dakotas in the prints of those days, was
quickly brought to his attention, and without delay he was on the road
north to find trouble in which to participate.
In those days there were good and bad Dakotas, as with the Sacs, and the
malcontent element of the former was generally finding itself in
trouble. Upon two notable occasions parties of Dakotas wantonly murdered
unoffending Chippewas, the latest offense being under the very walls of
Fort Snelling and at a time when the Chippewas were dispensing a liberal
hospitality to them–a most atrocious crime![58]
These deeds were so revolting that Col. Josiah Snelling, the commandant,
very properly applied the custom prevalent among the Indians by turning
the four captured culprits over to the injured Chippewas for punishment.
Each Dakota was given thirty paces law, and a chance to run for his
life; but Chippewa bullets were swifter, and four vicious Dakotas were
speedily forwarded to their fathers. Revenge toward the whites for the
part they played in that affair rankled within the breasts of the
friends of the dead Dakotas and they diplomatically set about settling
the grudge in a most civilized and sensible manner, at the expense of
their friends, the Winnebagoes. Red Bird, a Winnebago chief of note,
contemporaneously, or soon thereafter,[59] led a losing enterprise
against the Chippewas, returning to his camp crestfallen and sullen. It
was at this fecund moment that emissaries from the Dakotas fell upon him
with all manner of adroit badinage for his fallen estate, impressing
upon his mind, with much innuendo, to what belittled influence his parts
had been reduced in the estimation of his people and to what distressing
ridicule he was being subjected by the laughter of the Americans. While
in the receptive mood to which these tactics had driven his mind, he was
in the same perverted manner made to believe that the four guilty
Dakotas turned over to the Chippewas and killed were Winnebagoes. Thus
was the foundation laid for the “Winnebago war” of 1827! The murder of
one Methode, with his wife and five children, was discovered. Following
this, on the 26th of June, 1827, Red Bird, with We-kau and Chic-hon-sic,
called at various places in Prairie du Chien (the garrison and its
stores having been removed just previously to Fort Snelling), obtained
from a trader ammunition and, as some have said, whisky, and left for
the cabin of one Registre Gagnier, who resided with his wife, young son,
baby daughter and an old discharged American soldier named Solomon
Lipcap some two miles from the village. The three entered, begged and
received food, and, taking advantage of their entertainers’ unguarded
condition, shot down and instantly killed Gagnier and Lipcap. Madam
Gagnier, in the frenzy of her excitement, seized the gun of her dead
husband, and while protecting her son finally drove the savages into the
yard, where they scattered. She then ran to the village with her boy,
forgetting the infant daughter, which had been lying upon the bed when
the Indians entered. The posse which immediately returned found Gagnier
and Lipcap scalped, but the girl baby, alive, was discovered under the
bed, though scalped and savagely cut in the neck. Stranger yet, she
recovered and grew to woman’s estate.
Thomas L. McKenney, who gained the woman’s story from her own lips, has
narrated it in a manner worthy so illustrious a writer, disclosing a
heroism sufficient to warrant the erection to her memory of a monument
more than a little pretentious. In the order of mundane things, however,
heroines fare very badly when burly heroes can be found or manufactured
to consume the contributions of a hero-loving public, and probably Madam
Gagnier will get no monument.
Next evening a keel-boat, its sides literally filled with leaden balls,
arrived from Fort Snelling, bearing the dead bodies of two of its crew
and four wounded members, two mortally and two slightly; also the body
of a dead Indian, the result of a conflict of unusual fierceness and
inequality with Sac and Winnebago Indians at the mouth of the Bad Axe
about sunset of the 26th. This boat, the Oliver H. Perry, with its
consort, had gone up to Fort Snelling, under the command of Captain
Allen Lindsay, some time before, and meeting on the route[60] with many
exactions and exasperating and suspicious ovations from the Dakotas
whose villages were along the river, asked and received at Fort Snelling
thirty-two muskets and a quantity of powder and ball.
Arriving on the downward passage[61] at the the last of their villages,
Wa-ba-sha, now Winona, Minnesota, the Dakotas were found dancing a war
dance and making threats, but, offering no resistance (the Winnebagoes
and Sacs present having assumed that dangerous function), Captain
Lindsay very naturally considered all danger over and allowed the boats,
which had been lashed together for protection, to separate. That which
sat deeper in the water, having the advantage of the river’s
undercurrents, gained several miles’ advantage. This boat, commanded by
a Sac half-breed named Beauchamp, was manned by a crew of sixteen,
officers and men. The Frenchmen of the party, growing suspicious of the
actions of new bands of Indians gathering as the boat approached the Bad
Axe, urged the crew to caution, but the usual contempt for Indian
prowess and the thought that all danger had been passed caused a
foolhardy disregard of the Frenchmen’s warning. Naturally a supine
security followed.
The wind had sprung into unusual strength from the east and, in the face
of continued admonition, some of the crew were for tying up for the
night then and there, river crews in those days being much used to the
enjoyment of their own wishes.
A large body of Indians had collected on an island to the west of the
channel near to which the boat must pass, and as it reached this point
was rapidly drifting toward the bar on the island’s edge. Suddenly the
trees and rocks reverberated with blood-curdling war-whoops and a volley
of bullets rained upon the deck, wounding a negro named Peter so
desperately that he afterward died. The crew instantly sought shelter by
lying flat below the water line, because the bullets penetrated the
bulwarks. The second volley resulted in the instant death of an American
named Stewart, who had risen to return the first fire through a
loophole. The exposure causing a target to be made of his head, he fell
back dead, his finger still upon the trigger of his undischarged gun. No
further attempt was made to return the Indians’ second volley, and they,
encouraged by this non-resistance, rushed to their canoes with intent to
board. The men who had remained flat recovered in a measure from their
panic and the boarders were received with a disastrous fire and
repulsed. One canoe in particular was severely received, two of its crew
being killed, and in the death struggle overturned, compelling the
others to swim for their lives.
Presently a voice in the Sac tongue hailed the boat, demanding to know
if the crew were English. Beauchamp, who was a half-breed Sac, answered
in the affirmative.
“Then,” replied the querist, “come on shore and we will do you no harm,
for we are your brethren, the Sacs.”
“Dog,” retorted Beauchamp, “no Sac would attack us thus cowardly. If you
want us on shore, you must come and fetch us.”
Confident that it was impossible to storm the boat with success, the
plan was abandoned by all save two daring Indians, who leaped aboard.
One seized the steering oar and strove to run the boat aground, while
the other discharged some guns found abandoned on the deck, wounding one
white. After this exploit, he hastened to the bow of the boat and, lying
upon the deck, endeavored to assist his companion in stranding the boat.
Succeeding in this, he dropped the pole, and with supreme contempt for