The Indians having finished their dance, struck their tents, and, after a good deal of bustle and confusion, the whole camp started in a northerly direction. When they reached a point beyond the grove, it seemed to the girls that the whole earth was alive with Indians. Probably not less than 4,000 warriors, squaws, and children constituted that army.
Tired and sore from their former long ride and greatly exhausted by their constant fears, it was an extraordinary ordeal for the girls to plunge still farther into the wilderness. During traveling hours the girls were separated and each was placed in charge of two squaws. Whenever the army halted the girls were brought together, but always kept under the surveillance of the four squaws.
Their march from Black Hawk’s Grove was very slow and over a broad prairie. Shortly before sundown the Indians pitched their tents at Cold Spring, about three miles southeast of Ft. Atkinson, near “Burnt Village,” the camp of Little Priest.[23]
[23] Hist. of Jefferson Co., 327.
As soon as the tents were erected everybody partook of some food, most of the Indians without any utensils, but the girls were supplied with the usual dishes: wooden plates, bowls and spoons. At this place maple-sugar seemed to be abundant and the girls were furnished all of it that they could eat. Also, the squaws seemed to appreciate the fact that the girls were suffering from exposure, and took great pains to make their quarters as comfortable as possible.
During their long tramp through the brush, the light working dresses that the girls had on at the time that they were captured had become badly torn, and the squaws brought Rachel a red and white calico dress with ruffles around the bottom, and Sylvia, a blue calico. The Indians requested the girls to throw away their shoes and put on moccasins, against which the latter strongly protested and refused to take off their shoes. No violence to take away their shoes was used, and the girls continued to wear them. An Indian threw away Rachel’s comb and she immediately went after it and kept it so that it could not be snatched away again without using force, to which the Indians did not resort.
As night set in the Indians retired and each of the girls had to sleep between two squaws, which they were compelled to do thereafter up to the time that they were turned over to the Winnebagoes.
Day after day the Indians changed the location of their camp, probably to evade the whites if they should pursue them. From Cold Spring by circuitous routes, through the beautiful lake country around Oconomowoc, they moved northward until they reached the rolling hills near Horicon Lake where they pitched their camp not far from the rapids, and southeast of the Indian village of Big Fox.[24]
[24] V. Wis. Hist. Col., 260; Black Hawk’s Autobiography, 106, 110, 160; “Waubun,” 320; Hist. of Dodge Co., by Hubbell, 67.
The girls had now traveled about 150 miles north from their home. It was the eighth day of their captivity, and to them the time was so long that every minute seemed almost a day; and since they last sat at dinner in the little cottage of William Davis at Indian Creek, although very vivid in their minds, seemed an age. Also, the unknown places at which they had camped being in such various directions from each other, the girls had no idea how far they had gone from Black Hawk’s Grove (Janesville). Everywhere they traveled Indian camps were numerous, because as soon as spring had opened the Indians divided into small camps to make maple sugar. Were the girls to put an estimate upon the number of Indians in that unknown region, it certainly would have reached high up into the thousands.