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In what is now Will County, Plainfield was the designated refuge, and to
the little fortification, which was built of logs and fence rails,
around the log cabin of Rev. S.R. Beggs, the name of Fort Beggs was
given. It was not much of a fortification, but it served the purposes of
protection to the people, who placed themselves under orders of Chester
Smith as captain until Captain Naper called with his little company,
after the Indian Creek murders, and escorted the entire garrison to
Chicago for better protection. They went none too soon, for the entire
country along the Illinois, Fox, DuPage and Auxplaines (Desplaines) was
very soon overrun with murderous bands of Indians, invariably led by
prominent Sacs. As their actions became more and more annoying and then
distressing, men from Chicago and vicinity, under Capt. James Walker,
constituted themselves a band of rangers, doing yeoman service, ranging
through to Ottawa as an independent company, until placed under Major
Buckmaster when he later came to take charge of the DuPage River
district, and under whom the Indians were soon dispersed.
The murder at this time of Rev. Adam Payne, a Dunkard preacher, was as
pitiful as it was atrocious. He was a man found at all times sacrificing
his personal comforts and his substance to alleviate the distresses and
discomforts of his fellowman, and particularly the Indian. His
ministrations to their needs had been rewarded by professions of
religion from numbers, and among the Pottowatomies he was venerated to
the last degree. His family had been stopping at Hollenback’s Grove,
where he expected to find them at or near the home of Mr. Cummings, his
stepson.[143]
On reaching Plainfield he found that they had gone to Ottawa for safety,
where, in fact, they were in safety at that moment. He wished to reach
them instead of marching to Chicago, as the garrison at Fort Beggs was
preparing to do. He was importuned to go along, but by reason of his
abiding faith in the Indians’ appreciation of his works and his trust in
the protection of God, he determined to set out for Ottawa. The fact
that he had traveled from Ohio to Illinois, thence by way of Hickory
Creek to Plainfield without the least interruption from the Indians, was
reason enough to convince him that he would not be disturbed if he
continued. Accordingly he started the very morning the garrison set out
for Chicago under Captain Naper. He was mounted on a fine bay mare,
carried a large spyglass in his saddlebags, and with the aid of the two
he was confident he could, if threatened, elude any ordinary foe.
About the middle of the afternoon, as he was skirting Holderman’s Grove,
unconscious of danger, he was awakened from a reverie by shots fired
from a foe concealed in a clump of underbrush. One ball entered his
shoulder and another inflicted a wound, which soon proved mortal, in the
body of his beautiful mare. Realizing that no time was to be lost in
garrulous appeals for sympathy and that the only possible chance for
escape lay in the old-fashioned way of flight, he pricked his mare
forward and for five miles maintained a safe distance ahead of his three
pursuers on ponies. But the effect of the mare’s wound was now apparent.
She staggered and fell dead under her rider. The three pursuers quickly
came upon him and leveled their guns, while he simply raised his hands
to Heaven and appealed for mercy. The appeal was heeded by two of them,
but, so we are told by one of the party, who subsequently removed west,
the third pulled his trigger and fired and Mr. Payne dropped dead. If
two of these fiends had been so humane in lowering their weapons it is
remarkable that they should all have joined in severing the head from
the body, as they did. A long black beard flowed from the victim’s chin,
and by this one of the party seized the head, threw it over his shoulder
and together the three returned to camp. At this very moment Mr. Payne’s
brother Aaron was in the volunteer ranks, and it may not be amiss to
relate an incident which occurred at the battle of the Bad Axe. He, too,
was a Dunkard preacher, but, being a sensible man, the murder of his
brother called every honest human passion into play, one being the
desire to revenge his brother’s death, though this he subsequently
denied.
In pursuing the retreating Indians, he, with others, came upon a squaw
and a boy crouched behind a tree, but, under the belief that the pair
were harmless, no attention was paid to them. As the last of the rangers
passed the boy raised his gun and shot Payne from his horse, two balls
entering his back near the spine. The enraged rangers wheeled and
riddled both squaw and boy with bullets, an act which might be deplored
in a discussion of casuistic questions, but not to be considered in a
case so infamous as this. These bullets Mr. Payne carried during a very
long life.
General Scott, attracted to this simple man as he was lying in the
hospital at Prairie du Chien, had this to say of him:
“While inspecting the hospital at Fort Crawford, I was struck with a
remarkably fine head of a tall volunteer lying on his side, and
seeking relief in a book. To my question, ‘What have you there, my
friend?’ the wounded man pointed to the title page of ‘Young’s Night
Thoughts.’ I sat down on the edge of the bunk, already interested in
the reader, to learn more of his history. The wounded volunteer said
his brother, Rev. Adam Payne, fell an early victim to Black Hawk’s
band, and he (not in the spirit of revenge, but to protect the
frontier settlements) volunteered as a private soldier. While riding
into the battlefield of Bad Axe he passed a small Indian boy, whom he
might have killed, but thought him a harmless child. ‘After passing,
the boy fired, lodging two balls near my spine, when I fell from my
horse.’ The noble volunteer, although suffering great pain from his
wound, said he preferred his condition to the remorse he should have
felt if he had killed the boy, believing him to be harmless.”
Public feeling, by these murders, had been worked to such a pitch that a
rumor, no matter how impossible or ridiculous, was sufficient to throw a
community into a panic, consequently over in Fulton County occurred the
silly “Westerfield scare,” which threw the population of the entire
county into the improvised fortifications. At such times one Indian
might have captured the county without the slightest resistance.
While Dodge was covering Michigan territory (Wisconsin), independent
regiments and companies from the south were organized and sent rapidly
forward to protect the country between Plainfield and Chicago and Ottawa
and the Mississippi, the most important being the Vermilion County
regiment organized by Colonel Moore on the 23d of May, the staff
officers of which, as near as can be ascertained from the defective
records and correspondence, were: Colonel, Isaac R. Moore;
Lieutenant-Colonel, Daniel W. Beckwith. It was composed of the seven
companies of Captains John B. Thomas, Alexander Bailey, of which Gurdon
S. Hubbard was Second Lieutenant, Eliakem Ashton, James Palmer, I.M.
Gillispie, James Gregory and Corbin R. Hutt; also of Morgan L. Payne,
subsequently transferred to Buckmaster’s battalion. Of this Vermilion
organization Governor Reynolds learned May 28th. The regiment ranged
constantly until June 23d, when, finding its territory purged of the
enemy and peace thoroughly conserved by Major Buckmaster’s battalion, it
was mustered out.
At this period of atrocious murders, the killing of Felix St. Vrain, the
Fort Armstrong agent for the Sacs and Foxes, was particularly thrilling
as well as pathetic. This man, appointed about a year previous to
supersede Agent Forsythe, had always been found the stanch friend of the
Indian, and such had been the appreciation of his labors that “The
Little Bear” had adopted him as his brother.
Aaron Hawley, John Fowler, Thomas Kenney, William Hale, Aquilla Floyd
and Alexander Higginbotham, who had been to Sangamon County to buy
cattle, had heard of the Indian troubles, and, abandoning their project,
were hurrying home to assist in the protection of their homes. On the
22d of May they left Dixon’s Ferry for Galena and traveled as far as
Buffalo Grove, where they found the body of Durley, who, as will be
remembered, was the murdered member of the Frederick Stahl party. The
party immediately returned to Dixon’s, reported the murder and remained
there over night. As General Atkinson, who had just returned there on
the 23d, had dispatches for Fort Armstrong, he detailed Felix St. Vrain,
the most competent officer for the service, to travel to Galena with the
party and from that point carry the dispatches down the Mississippi to
the fort.[144]
At Buffalo Grove the returning party found and buried the body of Durley
about a rod from the spot where he fell. The party then resumed its
march, traveling toward Fort Hamilton for a distance of ten miles. Here
it halted and camped for the night.
At daylight the little band started out again on its march and proceeded
about three miles and then stopped again to cook breakfast. After the
meal had been finished and the men were about a mile further on their
journey, they fell in with a band of thirty Sacs under the command of
“The Little Bear.” St. Vrain regarded this as peculiarly propitious and
at once assured his companions that no trouble need be feared from his
friend, who had many times been an inmate of his house and partaken of
his hospitality. Though he approached the Indian with outstretched hand,
the overture of peace was spurned, and death to everyone sworn. In vain
St. Vrain pleaded for his companions and urged his relations as agent
and adopted brother. The Indians attempted in the most methodical and
cold-blooded manner imaginable to murder every man present.
Seeing the hopelessness of further parley or an attempt to fight such
odds, each man dashed for freedom, trusting to the superior speed of the
horses to distance the ponies of the Indians, and the motion of the
flight to dodge bullets. But first Fowler was shot down, a few yards
distant, then St. Vrain, a little further out, and Hale about three
quarters of a mile from the scene of the parley.
Exulting in the glory of their deeds of blood, the Indians, after
scalping the three, cut off the head and hands and feet of St. Vrain and
took out his heart, which was cut up and passed in pieces to the braves
to eat,[145] that they might take pride in the statement that they had
eaten of the heart of one of the bravest of Americans. After these
ghoulish acts, the pursuit of the survivors was resumed, and in it Mr.
Hawley was killed, though his body was never recovered and nothing ever
definitely heard thereafter concerning it. However, as Black Hawk
himself was subsequently found in possession of his coat, it can be
easily conjectured that Hawley’s horse mired in the mud, and then, while
helpless, the rider was shot down, his body spirited away and his
clothing used by his murderers.
The three other fugitives directed their course toward Galena, pursuing
it successfully for three or four miles, when they met part of the same
band of Indians, who gave them another chase of five or six miles, after
which the pursued evaded them altogether. The men then crossed Brush
Creek, and, sighting another band, immediately back-tracked six or eight
miles to Plum River, where they camped in a thicket until night.