This important episode in the history of Marshall and Putnam Counties
demands extended notice, and for what follows we are mainly indebted to
Ex-Governor Thomas Ford, who was a personal actor therein, and probably the
very best man that could be found to tell the story. In order to a full and
complete understanding of the causes that led to it, it will be necessary to
refer to a treaty made by General Harrison, at St. Louis, in 1804, with the
chief of the Sac and Fox nations of Indians, by which those Indians ceded to
the United States all their lands on Rock River, and much more elsewhere.
"This grant was confirmed by a part of the tribe in a treaty with
Governor Edwards and Auguste Chouteau, in September, 1815, and by another
part in a treaty with the same Commissioners in May, 1816. The United States
had caused some of these lands, situate at the mouth of Rock River, to be
surveyed and sold. They included the great town of the nation, near the
mouth of the river. The purchasers from the Government moved on their lands,
built houses, made fences and fields, and thus took possession of the
ancient metropolis of the Indian nation. It consisted of about two or three
hundred lodges made of small poles set upright in the ground, upon which
other poles were tied transversely with bark at the top, so as to hold a
covering of bark peeled from the neighboring trees, and secured with other
strips sewed to the transverse poles. The sides of the lodges were secured
in the same manner. The principal part of these Indians had long since moved
from their town to the west of the Mississippi.
"But there was one
old chief of the Sacs, called Mucata Muhicatah, or Black Hawk, who always
denied the validity of these treaties. Black Hawk was now an old man. He had
been a warrior from his youth. He had led many a war party on the trail of
an enemy, and had never been defeated. He had been in the service of England
in the war of 1812, and had been aid-de-camp to the great Tecumseh. He was
distinguished for courage and for clemency to the vanquished. He was an
Indian patriot, a kind husband and father, and was noted for his integrity
in all his dealings with his tribe and with the Indian traders. He was
firmly attached to the British, and cordially hated the Americans. At the
close of the war of 1812 he did not join in making peace with the United
States, but himself and band kept up their connection with Canada, and, were
ever ready for a war with our people. He was in his personal deportment
grave and melancholy, with a disposition to cherish and brood over the
wrongs he supposed he had received from the Americans. He was thirsting for
revenge upon his enemies, and at the same time his piety constrained him to
devote one day in the year to visit the grave of a favorite daughter buried
on the Mississippi River, not far from Oquawka. Here he came on his yearly
visit, and spent a day by the grave, lamenting and bewailing the death of
one who had been the pride of his family and of his Indian home. With these
feelings was mingled the certain and melancholy prospect of the extinction
of his tribe, and the transfer of his country, with its many silvery rivers,
rolling and green prairies, and dark forests, the haunts of his youth, to
the possession of a hated enemy; while he and his people were to be driven,
as he supposed, into a strange country, far from the graves of his fathers
and his children.
"Black Hawk's own account of the treaty of 1804 is
as follows. He says that some Indians of the tribe were arrested and
imprisoned in St. Louis for murder; that some of the chiefs were sent down
to provide for their defense; that while there, and without the consent of
the nation, they were induced to sell the Indian country; that when they
came home, it appeared that they had been drunk most of the time they were
absent, and could give no account of what they had done, except that they
had sold some land to the white people, and had come home loaded with
presents and Indian finery. This was all the nation ever heard or knew about
the treaty of 1804.
"Under the pretense that this treaty was void,
he resisted the order of the Government for the removal of his tribe west of
the Mississippi. In the spring of 1831 he re-crossed the river, with his
women and children and three hundred warriors of the British band, together
with some allies from the Pottawatomie and Kickapoo nations, to establish
himself upon his ancient hunting-grounds and in the principal village of his
nation. He ordered the white settlers away, threw down their fences,
unroofed their houses, cut up their grain, drove off and killed their
cattle, and threatened the people with death if they remained. The settlers
made their complaints to Governor Reynolds. These acts of the Indians were
considered by the Governor to be an invasion of the State. He immediately
addressed letters to General Gaines, of the United States army, and to
General Clark, the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, calling upon them to
use the influence of the Government to procure the peaceful removal of the
Indians, if possible; at all events, to defend arid protect the American
citizens who had purchased those lands from the United States, and were now
about to be ejected by the Indians. General Gaines repaired to Rock Island
with a few companies of regular soldiers, and soon ascertained that the
Indians were bent upon war. He immediately called upon Governor Reynolds for
seven hundred mounted volunteers. The Governor obeyed the requisition. A
call was made upon some of the northern and central counties, in obedience
to which fifteen hundred volunteers rushed to his standard at Beardstown,
and about the 10th of June were organized and ready to march to the seat of
war. The whole force was divided into two regiments, an odd battalion and a
spy battalion. The first regiment was commanded by Col. James D. Henry, the
second by Col. Daniel Lieb, the odd battalion by Maj. Nathaniel Buckmaster,
and the spy battalion by Maj. Samuel Whiteside. The whole brigade was put
under the command of Maj. Gen. Joseph Duncan, of the State Militia. This was
the largest military force of Illinoisans which had ever been assembled in
the State, and made an imposing appearance as it traversed the then unbroken
wilderness of prairie.
The army proceeded in four days to the
Mississippi, at a place now called Rockport, about eight miles below the
mouth of Rock River, where it met General Gaines in a steamboat, with a
supply of provisions. Here it encamped for the night, and the two Generals
concerted a plan of operations. General Gaines had been in the vicinity of
the Indian town for about a month, during which time it might be supposed
that he had made himself thoroughly acquainted with the localities and
topography of the country. The next morning the volunteers marched forward,
with an old regular soldier for a guide. The steamboat with General Gaines
ascended the river. A battle was expected to be fought that day on
Vandruff's Island, opposite the Indian town. The plan was for the volunteers
to cross the slough on to this island, give battle to the enemy if found
there, and then to ford the main river into the town, where they were to be
met by the regular force coming down from the fort. The island was covered
with bushes and vines, so as to be impenetrable to the sight at the distance
of twenty feet. General Gaines ran his steamboat up to the point of the
island, and fired several rounds of grape and canister shot into it to test
the presence of an enemy. The spy battalion formed in line of battle and
swept the island; but it was soon ascertained that the ground rose so high
within a short distance of the bank} that General Gaines's shot could not
have taken effect one hundred yards from the shore. The main body of the
volunteers, in three columns, came following the spies; but before they had
got to the northern side of the island, they were so jammed up and mixed
together, officers and men, that no man knew his own company or regiment, or
scarcely himself. General Gaines had ordered the artillery of the regular
army to be stationed on a high bluff which looked down upon the contemplated
battlefield a half mile distant, from whence, in case of battle with the
Indians in the tangled thickets of the island, their shot were likely to
kill more of their friends than their enemies. It would have been impossible
for the artillerists to distinguish one from the other. And when the army
arrived at the main river, they found it a bold, deep stream, not fordable
for a half mile or more above by horses, and no means of transportation was
then ready to ferry them over. Here ^they were in sight of the Indian town,
with a narrow, deep river running between, and here the principal part of
them remained until scows could be brought to ferry them across it.
"When the volunteers reached the town they found no enemy there. The Indians
had quietly departed the same morning in their canoes for the western side
of the Mississippi. Whilst in camp twelve miles below, the evening before, a
canoe load of Indians came down with a white flag to tell the General that
they were peaceable Indians, that they expected a great battle to come off
the next day, that they desired to remain neutral, and wanted to retire with
their families to some place of safety, and they asked to know where that
was to be. General Gaines answered them very abruptly, and told them to be
off and go to the other side of the Mississippi. That night they returned to
their town, and the next morning early the whole band of hostile Indians
re-crossed the river, and thus entitled themselves to protection."
Says Governor Ford: "It has been stated to me by Judge William Thomas, of
Jacksonville, who acted as Quartermaster of the brigade of volunteers, that
Gaines and Duncan had reason to believe, before the commencement of the
march from the camp on the Mississippi, that the Indians had departed from
their village, that measures had been taken to ascertain the fact before the
volunteers crossed to Vandruff 's Island, that General Duncan, in company
with the advanced guard, following the spies, preceded the main body in
crossing, and that this will account for the confusion and want of order in
the march of the troops.
"I was myself in company with the spies,
arriving at the river a mile in advance of the army. I saw General Gaines
ascend with his boat to the point of the island; was within one hundred
yards of him when he fired into the island to test the presence of the
Indians; I marched ahead with the spies across the island, saw with my own
eyes the elevation of the land near the shore, which would have prevented
cannon shot from taking effect more than one hundred yards. I also knew the
condition of the island as to bushes and vines, and saw the artillery firing
from the fort stationed on the high bluff on the opposite side of the river.
I was on the bank of the main river when General Duncan came up, followed
soon after by his brigade in the utmost confusion, and heard him reprimand
John S. Miller, a substantial and worthy citizen of Rock Island, for not
letting him know that the main river was on the north side of the island;
and I heard Miller curse him to his face at the head of his troops for
refusing his services as guide when offered the evening before, and then
censuring him for not giving information which he had refused to receive. I
give the facts as I personally know them to be true, and leave it to others
to judge whether the two Generals, knowing of the departure of the Indians,
had taken proper measures to ascertain the presence of an enemy, or had made
the- best disposition for a battle if the Indians had been found either at
their village or on the island. Much credit is undoubtedly due to Governor
Reynolds and General Duncan for the unprecedented quickness with which the
brigade was called out, organized, and marched to the seat of war, and
neither of them are justly responsible for what was arranged for them by
General Gaines.
"The enemy having escaped, the volunteers were
determined to be avenged upon something. The rain descended in torrents, and
the Indian wigwams would have furnished a comfortable shelter; but
notwithstanding the rain, the whole town was soon wrapped in flames, and
thus perished an ancient village which had once been the delightful home of
six or seven thousand Indians; where generation after generation had been
born, had died, and been buried; where the old men had taught wisdom to the
young; whence the Indian youth had often gone out in parties to hunt or to
war, and returned in triumph to dance around the spoils of the forest, or
the scalps of their enemies; and where the dark-eyed Indian maidens, by
their presence and charms, had made it a scene of delightful enchantment to
many an admiring warrior.
"The volunteers marched to Rock Island
next morning, and here they encamped for several days, precisely where the
town of Rock Island is now situated. It was then in a complete state of
nature, a romantic wilderness. Fort Armstrong was built upon a rocky cliff
on the lower point of an island near the center of the river, a little way
above; the shores on each side, formed of gentle slopes of prairie extending
back to bluffs of considerable height, made it one of the most picturesque
scenes in the Western country. The river here is a beautiful sheet of clear,
swift-running water, about three-quarters of a mile wide; its banks on both
sides were uninhabited except by Indians, from the lower rapids to the fort,
and the voyager up stream, after several days' solitary progress through a
wilderness country on its borders, came suddenly in sight of the whitewashed
walls and towers of the fort, perched upon a rock surrounded by the grandeur
and beauty of nature, which at a distance gave it the appearance of one of
those enchanted castles in an uninhabited desert so well described in the
Arabian Nights Entertainment.
General Gaines threatened to pursue
the Indians across the river, which brought Black Hawk and the chiefs and
braves of the hostile band to the fort to sue for peace. A treaty was formed
with them, by which they agreed to remain forever after on the west side of
the river, and never to recross it without the permission of the President
or the Governor of the State. And thus these Indians at last ratified the
treaty of 1804, by which their lands were sold to the white people, and they
agreed to live in peace with the Government.
"But notwithstanding
this treaty, early in the spring of 1832, Black Hawk and the disaffected
Indians prepared to reassert their right to the disputed territory.
"The united Sac and Fox nations were divided into two parties. Black Hawk
commanded the warlike band, and Keokuk, another chief, headed the band which
was in favor of peace. Keokuk was a bold, sagacious leader of his people,
was gifted with a wild and stirring eloquence rarely to be found even among
Indians, by means of which he retained the greater part of his people in
amity with the white people. But nearly all the bold, turbulent spirits, who
delighted in mischief, arranged themselves under the banners of his rival.
Black Hawk had with him the chivalry of his nation, with which he re-crossed
the Mississippi in the spring of 1832. He directed his march to the Rock
River country, and this time aimed, by marching up the river into the
territory of the Pottawatomies and Winnebagoes, to make them his allies.
Governor Reynolds, upon being informed of the facts, made another call for
volunteers. In a few days eighteen hundred men rallied under his banner at
Beardstown. This force was organized into four regiments and a spy
battalion. Colonel Dewitt commanded the First Regiment, Colonel Fry the
Second, Colonel Thomas the Third, Colonel Thompson the Fourth, and Col.
James D. Henry commanded the spy battalion. The whole brigade was put under
the command of Brigadier General Samuel Whiteside, of the State militia, who
had commanded the spy battalion in the first campaign.
Extracted 30 Aug 2018 by Norma Hass from Records of the Olden Time, 1880, by Spencer Ellsworth, pages 98-104.
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