Whilst in camp down the river the previous evening a canoe filled with friendly Indians, bearing a white flag, called upon General Gaines to inform him of their neutrality, and ascertain a place of safety to which they might remove from the dangers of the anticipated battle of the morrow. Had Gaines desired to pursue a tactful course and punish the Indians, he might have learned definitely the position of the enemy and planned a successful campaign, but he gruffly told them to be gone, and that night they returned to the village, where preparations were immediately made to abandon it, as they did the following morning.
Governor Ford, who was a private of Whiteside’s battalion in this expedition, has been especially severe with Gaines in his narration of the lack of preparation and the frightful confusion which ensued, together with the peril in which the troops found themselves by Gaines’ disposition of the cannon on the heights above. It always is easy to plan an enterprise after it has been concluded and all its details fathomed by experience; much easier than before, with its uncertainties and possible failure. The Indians left; no blood was shed; no accidents happened to man or beast, and so long as the wish became a fact, though somewhat ingloriously done, there should be no cause for such acrimonious comments as Ford saw fit to record.
The enemy having escaped, the volunteers were determined to leave behind them a record of their displeasure. The rain descended in torrents, and though shelter might have been found for many in the frail houses, the Indian village was put to the torch and soon consumed with flames.
The volunteers then marched for Fort Armstrong the following morning and encamped several days on the left bank of the Mississippi, where the city of Rock Island now stands. The island, Rock Island, was then a most romantic bit of nature. To this landscape Governor Ford in his narrative did ample justice: “It was then in a complete state of nature–a romantic wilderness. Fort Armstrong was built upon a rocky cliff on the lower part of an Island near the center of the river. * * 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 the Indians, from the lower rapids to the fort, and the voyagers upstream, after several days’ solitary progress through a wilderness country on its borders, came suddenly in sight of the white-washed 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.”[[82]] Reynolds, in his “My Own Times,” page 338, mentions a supposition that Gaines purposely retained the troops in camp at Rockport over night to allow the Indians to escape, and that he and Duncan knew of their flight when the brigade moved upon the village. If he did, then his arrangement of the contemplated battle was justified. But whether he knew of the departure or not, his measures for pursuit were prompt, vigorous and effective, and Black Hawk realized the fact. When demanded to return for a “peace talk,” some of the Indians appeared at the fort without Black Hawk. Immediately Gaines sent word down to the camp, twelve miles below, that unless the remaining warriors came in at once and sued for peace he would chastise them. Very soon these recalcitrants, five or six hundred in number, appeared upon the river, picturesquely dotting it with their canoes for the whole distance.
Z.H. VERNOR.
JAMES SEMPLE.
JOSEPH GILLESPIE.