Stories of the Badger State Part 6

Henceforth, for many years, the lead trade of southwestern Wisconsin, northwestern Illinois, and parts of Missouri and Iowa was the chief interest in the West. By this time the fur trade had almost died out, and the old French Canadian element had become but a small proportion of the population of the Mississippi valley. In those days, Galena, Mineral Point, and other lead mining towns were of much more importance than Chicago or Milwaukee, and their citizens entertained high hopes of the future. The lead trade with St. Louis and New Orleans was very large; but the East also wanted the lead, and the air was filled with projects to secure routes by which lead might be carried to vessels plying on the Great Lakes, which could transport it to Buffalo and other far away ports.

For a time the most popular of these projects was the old fur trade route of the Wisconsin and Fox rivers. A ca.n.a.l was dug along the famous carrying trail at Portage, and the federal government was induced to deepen Fox River, which is naturally very shallow, and to attempt to create a permanent channel in the Wisconsin River. But, although much money has been spent on these schemes, from that day to this, the Fox-Wisconsin route is still impracticable save to boats of exceptionally light draft; and in our time the project of connecting the Mississippi River with Lake Michigan, by the way of Portage and Green Bay, is almost wholly abandoned. Another scheme was the proposed Milwaukee and Rock River ca.n.a.l, by which Milwaukee was to be connected with the Rock River, which joins the Mississippi at Rock Island; but this plan died a still earlier death. It was the struggle to connect the port of Milwaukee with the lead region that finally led to the building of the railroad between that city and Prairie du Chien.

More immediately effective for the benefit of the lead trade, was the opening of a wagon road from the lead mining towns, through Madison, to Milwaukee, along which great canvas-covered caravans of ore-laden "prairie schooners" toiled slowly from the mines to the Lake Michigan docks, a distance of about a hundred and fifty miles. Other roads led to Galena and Prairie du Chien, where the Mississippi River boats awaited similar fleets of "schooners" from the interior. A good deal of the lead was sent by similar conveyances to Helena, a little village on the Wisconsin River, where a shot tower had been built against the face of a high cliff; from here, shallow-draft boats took the shot to Green Bay, by way of the Portage Ca.n.a.l and Fox River, or descended the Wisconsin to Prairie du Chien.

From various causes, the lead trade of the Upper Mississippi region had sadly declined by 1857. Among these causes was the finding of gold in California (1849), which attracted large numbers of the miners to a more profitable field; again, the surface or shallow diggings having been exhausted, much more capital was required to operate in the lower levels; more serious was the lack of sufficient transportation facilities, and these did not come until the great silver mines of the Rocky Mountains had been opened, lead being thenceforth more profitably produced in connection with silver.

The effect of the lead industry upon the development of Wisconsin was important. Many years before farmers would naturally have sought southern Wisconsin in their pushing westward for fresh lands, the opening of the mines brought thither a large and energetic industrial population, and a considerable capital, and awakened popular interest in land and water transportation routes.

THE WINNEBAGO WAR

The world over, white men, representing a higher type of civilization, have wrested, or are still wresting, the land from the original savage occupants. This seems to be inevitable. It is one of the means by which civilization is being extended over the entire globe. We glory in the progress of civilization; but we are apt to ignore the hardship which this brings to the aborigines. While not relaxing our endeavor to plant the world with progressive men who shall make the most of life, we should see to it that the savage races are pushed to the wall with as kindly and forbearing a hand as possible; that we apply to them humane methods, and give them credit for possessing the sentiments of men who, like us, dearly love their old homes, and are willing to fight for them.

These sentiments have certainly not often been applied in the past, by our Anglo-Saxon race, to the Indians of North America.

We have failed to appreciate that the Indian, in being driven from his lands, has retaliated from motives of patriotism. His methods of fighting are often cruel and treacherous; but it must be remembered that he is in a stage of development akin to that of the child, and that white men upon the frontier have often been quite as cruel and treacherous toward the Indian as he was toward them, for such are ever the methods of the weak and the primitive. The Indian is blamed for his custom of wreaking vengeance upon all white men, when but an individual has injured him; yet, on the border, it has always been seen that white men have retaliated on the Indians in exactly the same spirit. "The only good Indian is a dead Indian," has been their motto, the offense of one Indian being considered the offense of all. Our dealings with the red men, both as individuals and as a nation, have, for over a hundred years, often been such as we should blush for. We are doing better now than formerly; but our treatment of the weak and unfortunate aborigines is still far from being to our credit.

The story of the Winnebago War, in Wisconsin, is ill.u.s.trative of the old-time method of treating our barbaric predecessors. No doubt it would have been better if the United States had, from the first, held all the Indians to be subjects, and forced them to obey our laws. But the tribes were considered in theory to be distinct nations, over whom we exercised supervision, and with whom we held treaties. This at first seemed necessary, owing to the patriarchal system among the Indians, by which heads of families or clans are supposed to control the younger members, all affairs being decided upon in councils, in which these wise old men partic.i.p.ate. It was thought that, through the chiefs, binding agreements could be made with entire tribes. It was not then generally understood that each Indian is, according to the customs of those people, really a law unto himself; that the chiefs, in signing a treaty, are seldom representative in the sense that we use the word, and that they generally represent no one but themselves; that the only way in which they can commit their tribes is through the respect or fear which they may foster in the minds of their followers.

In the month of August, 1825, when Wisconsin was still a part of Michigan Territory, there was a treaty signed at Prairie du Chien between the United States and the Indians of what are now Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The treaty set boundaries between the quarrelsome tribes, and agreed on a general peace upon the border. Like most Indian treaties, this doc.u.ment was drawn up by the officers of the general government; and the chiefs, knowing little of its contents, were simply invited to sign their names to it. They signed as requested, but went home in bad temper, because the American commissioners would not make them costly presents of guns, ammunition, beads, hatchets, cloths, and rum, as the British in Canada always did; and the savages were not even allowed to celebrate the treaty by a roistering feast. The Americans, from their cold, businesslike conduct, impressed the Indians as being "stingy old women."

n.o.body on the frontier, the following winter, seemed to pay the slightest attention to the terms of the treaty. The Sioux, who lived west of the Mississippi, the Winnebagoes in southern and western Wisconsin, and the Chippewas in the north, quarreled with one another and scalped one another as freely as ever; while French traders, in British employ, stirred up the red men, and told them that Great Britain would soon have the whole country back again. The Winnebagoes, in particular, were irritated because two of their braves had been imprisoned for thieving, at Fort Crawford, in Prairie du Chien. They held numerous councils in the woods, and resolved to stand by the British when the war should break out. In the midst of this uneasiness, the troops at Fort Crawford were suddenly withdrawn to Fort Snelling, on the Upper Mississippi River, near where St. Paul now is. This was supposed by the Indians to mean that the American soldiers were afraid of them.

The spring of 1827 arrived. A half-breed named Methode was making maple sugar upon the Yellow River, in Iowa, a dozen miles north of Prairie du Chien. With him were his wife and five children; all were set upon by some Winnebagoes and killed, scalped, and burned. Naturally there was an uproar all along the Upper Mississippi. Excitement was at its height, when word was brought in by Sioux visitors to the village of Red Bird, a petty Winnebago chief, that the two men of his tribe who had been imprisoned in Fort Crawford had been hung when the troops reached Fort Snelling. The wily Sioux suggested vengeance. The Winnebago code was two lives for one. Inflamed with rage, Red Bird set out at once upon the warpath to take four white scalps.

Meanwhile the clouds were gathering for a general storm. The American Indian agent at Prairie du Chien, with singular indiscretion, was not treating his Winnebago visitors with kindness. English and French fur traders were, on behalf of Great Britain, making liberal promises for the future. Winnebagoes were being brutally driven from the lead mines by the white miners, who were now swarming into southwest Wisconsin. The Sioux along the west bank of the Mississippi, in Minnesota, were encouraging the Winnebagoes to revolt; and were displaying a bad temper toward Americans, whom they thought cowardly because apparently unwilling to use military force to keep the Indians in order.

One day in June, Red Bird, a friend named Wekau, and two other Winnebagoes, appeared at the door of a log cabin owned by Registre Gagnier, a French settler living on the edge of Prairie du Chien village. Gagnier was an old friend of Red Bird, and invited the four Indians in to take dinner with him and his family. For several hours the guests stayed, eating and smoking in apparent good humor, until at last their chance came. Gagnier and his serving man, Lipcap, were instantly shot down; an infant of eighteen months was torn from the arms of Madame Gagnier, stabbed and scalped before her eyes, and thrown to the floor as dead; but the woman herself with her little boy, ten years of age, escaped to the woods and gave the alarm to the neighbors. The Indians slunk into the forest and disappeared. The villagers buried Gagnier and Lipcap, and, finding the infant girl alive, restored her to her mother.

Curiously enough, the scalped child recovered and grew to robust womanhood.

According to the Winnebago code, four white scalps must be taken in return for the two Indians supposed to have been killed at Fort Snelling. Red Bird had now secured three, those of Gagnier, Lipcap, and the infant; a fourth was necessary before he could properly return to his people in the capacity of an avenger, the proudest t.i.tle which an Indian can bear. How he obtained these scalps was, to the mind of his race, unimportant; the one idea was to get them.

On the afternoon of the third day after the ma.s.sacre, Red Bird and his friends were visiting at a camp of their people, near the mouth of the Bad Ax River, some forty miles north of Prairie du Chien. A drunken feast was in progress, in honor of the scalp taking, when two keel boats appeared on their way down the Mississippi from Fort Snelling to St.

Louis. The Sioux, at what is now Winona, had threatened the crews, but had not attempted to harm them. The Winnebagoes now appeared on the bank and raised the war whoop, but the crew of the foremost boat thought it only bl.u.s.ter, so in a spirit of bravado ran their craft toward sh.o.r.e.

When it was within thirty yards of the bank, the Indians, led by Red Bird, poured a volley of rifle b.a.l.l.s into the boat. The crew were well armed, and, rushing below, answered by shooting through the portholes.

The boat ran on a bar, and a sharp fire lasted through three hours, until dusk, when the craft was finally worked off the bar, and dropped downstream in the dark. Although seven hundred bullets penetrated the hull, only two of the crew were killed outright, two others dying later from wounds, and two others were slightly wounded. The Indians lost seven killed and fourteen wounded.

The "battle of the keel boats" was the signal for military activity. In July a battalion of troops from Fort Snelling came down to Prairie du Chien; and a little later a full regiment from St. Louis followed.

General Henry Atkinson was in command, and early in August he ordered Major William Whistler, then in charge of Fort Howard, to proceed up Fox River with a company of troops, in search of the fugitives Red Bird and Wekau. At a council held with the Winnebagoes, at b.u.t.te des Morts, the chiefs were notified that nothing short of the surrender of the leaders of the disturbance would satisfy the government for the attack on the boats; were they not delivered up, the entire tribe should be hunted like wild animals.

Great consternation prevailed among the tribesmen, as the runners sent out from the b.u.t.te des Morts council carried the terrible threat to all the camps of the Winnebagoes, in the deep forests, in the pleasant oak groves, and upon the broad prairies throughout southern Wisconsin.

Whistler had reached the ridge flanking the old portage trail between the Fox and Wisconsin rivers, but had not fully completed the arrangements of his camp when an Indian runner appeared in hot haste, saying that Red Bird and Wekau would surrender themselves at three o'clock in the afternoon of the following day, that the tribe might be saved.

Whistler and his officers, as true soldiers, were prompt to appreciate bravery. They were broad enough to judge these savages by the standards of savagery, not by those of a civilization from which the Indian is removed by centuries of human progress. They knew full well that the culprits were but carrying out the law of their race in seeking white scalps in vengeance for the Winnebagoes supposed to have been slain at Fort Snelling. Whistler knew that the Indians considered Red Bird and Wekau as heroes, and could feel no pangs of conscience, because treachery toward enemies was the customary method of Indian warfare.

Realizing these facts, the American officers recognized that it required a fine type of heroism on the part of these simple natives thus to offer themselves up to probable death, to redeem their tribe from destruction.

For this reason the soldiers were brought out on parade; and when, prompt to the hour named, Red Bird and Wekau, accompanied by a party of their friends, came marching into camp, clad in ceremonial dress, and singing their death songs, they were received with military honors. The native ceremony of surrender was highly impressive. Red Bird conducted himself with a dignity which won the admiration of all. Wekau, on the contrary, was an indifferent looking fellow, and commanded little respect.

Red Bird made but one request, that, although sentenced to death, he should not be placed in chains. This was granted; and while, during his subsequent imprisonment at Prairie du Chien, he had frequent opportunities to escape, he declined to take advantage of them. A few months later he fell an easy victim to an epidemic then raging in the village, thus relieving the government from embarra.s.sment, for it was felt that he was altogether too good an Indian to hang; indeed, his execution might have brought on a general border war.

The murderers of Methode were also apprehended and given a death sentence; but upon the Winnebagoes promising to relinquish forever their hold upon the lead mines of southwestern Wisconsin and northwestern Illinois, President Adams pardoned all the prisoners then living. The following year (1828), a fort was erected at the Fox-Wisconsin portage, near the scene of Red Bird's surrender; being in the heart of that tribe's territory, it was called Fort Winnebago. Thereafter the Winnebagoes were kept in entire subjection. Indeed, the three forts, Howard at Green Bay, Winnebago at Portage, and Crawford at Prairie du Chien, now gave the United States, for the first time, firm grasp upon the whole of what is now Wisconsin.

THE BLACK HAWK WAR

In November, 1804, the Sac and Fox Indians, in return for a paltry annuity of a thousand dollars, ceded to the United States fifty million acres of land in eastern Missouri, northwestern Illinois, and southwestern Wisconsin. There was an unfortunate clause in this compact, which quite unexpectedly became one of the chief causes of the Black Hawk War of 1832; instead of obliging the Indians at once to vacate the ceded territory, it was stipulated that, "as long as the lands which are now ceded to the United States remain their property, the Indians belonging to said tribes shall enjoy the privilege of living and hunting on them."

Within the limits of the cession was the chief seat of Sac power, a village lying on the north side of Rock River, three miles above its mouth. It was picturesquely situated on fertile ground, contained the princ.i.p.al cemetery of the tribe, and was inhabited by about five hundred families, being one of the largest Indian towns on the continent.

From the beginning of the nineteenth century, the princ.i.p.al character in this village was Black Hawk, who was born here in 1767. Black Hawk was neither an hereditary nor an elected chief, but was, by common consent, the village headman. He was a restless, ambitious, handsome savage; was possessed of some of the qualities of successful leadership, was much of a demagogue, and aroused the pa.s.sions of his people by appeals to their prejudices and superst.i.tions. It is probable that he was never, in the exercise of this policy, dishonest in his motives. A too confiding disposition was ever leading his judgment astray; he was readily duped by those who, white or red, were interested in deceiving him. The effect of his daily communication with the Americans was often to shock rudely his high sense of honor; while the studied courtesy accorded him upon his annual begging visit to the British military agent at Malden, in Canada, contrasted strangely, in his eyes, with his experiences with many of the inhabitants on the Illinois border.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BLACK HAWK]

At the outbreak of hostilities between Great Britain and the United States in 1812, Black Hawk naturally allied himself with Tec.u.mseh and the British. After burying the hatchet, he settled down into the customary routine of savage life, hunting in winter and loafing about his village in summer, improvidently existing from hand to mouth, although surrounded with abundance. Occasionally he varied the monotony by visits to Malden, whence he would return laden with provisions, arms, ammunition, and trinkets, his stock of vanity increased by wily flattery, and his bitterness against the Americans correspondingly intensified. It is not at all surprising that he hated the Americans.

They brought him naught but evil. The even tenor of his life was continually being disturbed by them; and a cruel and causeless beating which some white settlers gave him, in the winter of 1822-23, was an insult which he treasured up against the entire American people.

In the summer of 1823, squatters, covetous of the rich fields cultivated by the "British band," as Black Hawk's people were often called, began to take possession of them. The treaty of 1804 had guaranteed to the Indians the use of the ceded territory so long as the lands remained the property of the United States and were not sold to individuals. The frontier line of homestead settlement was still fifty or sixty miles to the east; the country between had not yet been surveyed, and much of it not explored. The squatters had no rights in this territory, and it was clearly the duty of the general government to protect the Indians within it so long as no sales were made.

The Sacs would not have complained had the squatters settled in other portions of the tract, and not sought to steal the village which was their birthplace and contained the cemetery of their tribe. There were outrages of the most flagrant nature. Indian cornfields were fenced in by the intruders, squaws and children were whipped for venturing beyond the bounds thus set, lodges were burned over the heads of the occupants.

A reign of terror ensued, in which the frequent remonstrances of Black Hawk to the white authorities were in vain. Year by year the evil grew.

When the Indians returned each spring from the winter's hunt, they found their village more of a wreck than when they had left it in the fall. It is surprising, in view of their native love of revenge, that they acted so peaceably while the victims of such harsh treatment.

Returning to his village in the spring of 1831, after a gloomy and profitless winter's hunt, Black Hawk was fiercely warned away by the whites; but, in a firm and dignified manner, he notified the settlers that, if they did not themselves remove, he should use force. This announcement was construed by the whites as a threat against their lives. Pet.i.tions and messages were showered in by them upon Governor John Reynolds, of Illinois, setting forth the situation in exaggerated terms that would be amusing, were it not that they were the prelude to one of the darkest tragedies in the history of our Western border.

The governor caught the spirit of the occasion, and at once issued a flaming proclamation calling out a mounted volunteer force to "repel the invasion of the British band." These volunteers, sixteen hundred strong, cooperated with ten companies of regulars in a demonstration before Black Hawk's village on the 25th of June. During that night the Indians, in the face of this superior force, quietly withdrew to the west bank of the Mississippi, whither they had previously been ordered. On the 30th they signed a treaty of capitulation and peace, solemnly agreeing never to return to the east side of the river without express permission of the United States government.

The rest of the summer was spent by the evicted savages in a state of misery. It being now too late to raise another crop of corn and beans, they suffered for want of the actual necessaries of life. White Cloud, the eloquent and crafty Prophet of the Winnebagoes, was Black Hawk's evil genius. He was half Sac and half Winnebago, a hater of the whites, an inveterate mischief maker, and, being a "medicine man," possessed much influence over both tribes. He was at the head of a Winnebago village some thirty-five miles above the mouth of the Rock, on the east side of the Mississippi; and to this village he invited Black Hawk, advising him to raise a crop of corn there, with the a.s.surance that in the autumn the Winnebagoes and Pottawattomies would join him in a general movement against the whites in the valley of the Rock.

Relying on these rose-colored promises, Black Hawk spent the winter on the west bank of the Mississippi, recruiting his band, and on the 6th of April, 1832, crossed the great river at Yellow Banks, below the mouth of the Rock. Thus he invaded the State of Illinois, in the face of his solemn treaty of the year before. With him were his second in command, Neapope, a wily scoundrel, who was White Cloud's tool, and about five hundred Sac warriors with their women and children, and all their belongings. Their design was to carry out the advice of the Prophet, in regard to the corn planting, and if possible to take up the hatchet in the autumn.

But it became evident to Black Hawk, before he reached the Prophet's town, that the main body of the Pottawattomies, now controlled by the peace loving Chief Shaubena, did not intend to go to war; and that the rascally Winnebagoes, while cajoling him, were preparing as usual to play double. He tells us in his autobiography that, crestfallen, he was planning to return peacefully to the west side of the Mississippi, when of a sudden he became aware that the whites had raised an army against him, and he was confronted with a war not in the time and manner of his asking.

The news of his second invasion had spread like wildfire throughout the Illinois and Wisconsin settlements. The United States was appealed to for a regiment of troops; and meanwhile, under another fiery proclamation from the governor of Illinois, an army of eighteen hundred militiamen was quickly mustered. Amid intense popular excitement, during which many settlers fled from the country, and others hastily threw up log forts, the army was mobilized by General Atkinson, who appeared at the rendezvous with three hundred regulars. There were many notable men upon this expedition: Abraham Lincoln, then a rawboned young fellow, was captain of a company of Illinois rangers; Zachary Taylor, famous for his bluff manner, was a colonel of regulars; and Jefferson Davis, who was wooing Taylor's daughter, was one of his lieutenants; also of the regulars, was Major William S. Harney, afterward the hero of Cerro Gordo in the Mexican War; and the mustering-in officer was Lieutenant Robert Anderson, who was to become famous in connection with Fort Sumter.

Black Hawk was foolish enough to send a message of defiance to General Atkinson, and, retreating up the Rock, he came to a stand at Stillman's Creek. Here he repented, and sent out runners with a flag of truce, to inform the white chief that he would surrender; but the drunken pickets of the militia advance wantonly killed these messengers of peace. This so angered the Hawk that with a mere handful of thirty-five braves, on foot, and hid in the hazel brush, he turned in fury upon the two hundred seventy-five hors.e.m.e.n who were now rushing upon him. The cowardly rangers, who fled at the first volley of the savages, without returning it, were haunted by the genius of fear, and, dashing madly through swamps and creeks, did not stop until they had reached Dixon, twenty-five miles away. Many kept on at a keen gallop till they reached their own firesides, fifty or more miles farther, carrying the absurd report that Black Hawk and two thousand bloodthirsty warriors were sweeping northern Illinois with the besom of destruction.

Rich in supplies captured in this first encounter, and naturally encouraged at the result of his valor, the Hawk thought that so long as the whites were determined to make him fight, he would show his claws in earnest. Removing the women and children to far-away swamps on the headwaters of the Rock River, in Wisconsin, he thence descended with his braves for a general raid through northern Illinois. The borderers flew like chickens to cover, on the warning of the Hawk's foray. There was consternation throughout the entire West. Exaggerated reports of his forces, and of the nature of his expedition, were spread throughout the land. His name became coupled with fabulous tales of savage cunning and cruelty, and served as a household bugaboo the country over. The effect on the Illinois militia was singular enough, considering their haste in taking the field; in a frenzy of fear, they instantly disbanded!

A fresh levy was soon raised, but in the interval there were irregular hostilities all along the Illinois-Wisconsin border, in which Black Hawk and a few Winnebago and Pottawattomie allies succeeded in making life miserable enough for the frontier farmers of northern Illinois and the lead miners of southwest Wisconsin. In these border strifes fully two hundred whites and nearly as many Indians lost their lives; and there were numerous instances of romantic heroism on the part of the settlers, men and women alike.

In about three weeks after Stillman's defeat the reorganized militia took the field, reenforced by the regulars under Atkinson. Black Hawk was forced to fly to the swampy region of the upper Rock; but, when the pursuit became too warm, he hastily withdrew with his entire band westward to the Wisconsin River. Closely following upon his trail were a brigade of Illinois troops under General James D. Henry, and a battalion of Wisconsin lead mine rangers under Major Henry Dodge, afterwards governor of Wisconsin Territory.

The pursuers came up with the savages at Prairie du Sac. Here the south bank of the Wisconsin consists of steep, gra.s.sy bluffs, three hundred feet in height; hence the encounter which ensued is known in history as the Battle of the Wisconsin Heights. With consummate skill, Black Hawk made a stand on the summit of the heights, and with a small party of warriors held the whites in check until the noncombatants had crossed the broad river bottoms below, and gained shelter upon the willow-grown sh.o.r.e opposite. The loss on either side was slight, the action being notable only for the Sac leader's superior management.