CHAPTER 21

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War-Trail’s End

THOUGH the slippery Black Hawk escaped from the pale-face trap at Wisconsin Heights, that hard-fought battle really marked the end of the Sac uprising. After fording the broad Wisconsin River, the desperate Sac band, now destitute of food and ammunition, split into three smaller groups.

One band floated down the river on crudely improvised rafts, and was speedily taken. Another party fled northward to an almost inaccessible canyon, known to the Indians as Neeh-ah-ke-coonah-er-ah, “where the rocks strike together.” Here they were tracked down and either killed or captured by the vengeful whites.

The third, and larger, band, under Black Hawk himself, pushed westward through a rugged and forbidding wilderness, striving for the distant Mississippi,—beyond which they hoped for safety. Pursuit of this band was given over to the forces of General Atkinson (White Beaver), who had now arrived on the scene, too late to take part in the battle of the heights.

Although the difficulties of travel were great, swamps and turbulent streams being frequently encountered among the steep, thickly-wooded hills, these fresh troops pressed on feverishly. They found Black Hawk’s pathway strewn with the bodies of dead Sacs, who had died of wounds and starvation, and there were constant evidences that the fleeing savages were eating the bark of trees and the sparse flesh of their fagged-out ponies to sustain life.

Finally, on the first of August, the Hawk and his sadly-depleted and almost starving band reached the Mississippi at the mouth of the Bad Axe River, one of its smallest eastern tributaries. Here the redskins tried to cross, using a few canoes and rude rafts. Some were killed by canister-shot from an army gunboat, “The Warrior,” which happened to be on the spot. Others, including Black Hawk himself, surrendered to the White Beaver’s soldiers, now arriving after their headlong pursuit. Still other Sacs, who managed to cross the great river, were largely taken captive or scalped by their hereditary enemies, the fierce Sioux tribesmen.

Thus, out of nearly one thousand Sacs whom the Hawk had led into the Illinois country in April, barely two hundred survived to return to the Ioway Territory that they had left on their ill-fated foray.

As for Black Hawk, after being imprisoned for some months at Fortress Monroe in far-off Virginia, he was taken to Washington, where he saw the Great White Father. Following this, he was conducted on a tour of the principal cities of the eastern seaboard, so that he would be impressed with the might of the whites and take the story of that might back to his own people.

Afterward, he was allowed to retire to a small reservation, set apart for him and the remnant of his tribe on the Des Moines River, in the heart of the Ioway country. The aged warrior, with the weight of over seventy years on his whitened head, finally departed this life on the third of October, 1838, at that place. His grave was dug on the nearby prairies, the rich prairies that he had fought so vainly to keep as the sole domain of the red race.

THE END

Transcriber’s Note:

Punctuation has been standardised. Both [Kaintock] and [Kaintuck], and hyphenation and spelling have been retained as they appear in the printed publication except as indicated below: