Those Menominees, while lovers of whisky, were pronounced by Hon. James H. Lockwood, who was present at Prairie du Chien at the time, and who was intimately acquainted with Menominee character, to be, with surprisingly few exceptions, a quiet, peaceable race, Tomah, the then acting chief, occupying in Menominee annals a high character for ability and exemplary enterprises.
“United States Indian Agency,
At Prairie du Chien, August 1, 1831.
“Sir:–One year had scarcely elapsed after the sealing of the treaty of 1830 at this place, before one of the parties has broken its solemn engagements, and dyed the scene of the ratification in the blood of those Indians whom they took by the hand in the presence of their great father’s commissioners.
“Two or three hours before day, on the morning of the 31st July, a party consisting of 80 or 100 Sacs and Foxes surprised a Menominee camp, three or four hundred paces above old Fort Crawford, on the east side of the Mississippi, and killed twenty-five of the latter, and wounded many who may probably recover. There were about thirty or forty Menominees, men, women and children, in the camp, most of whom were drunk, and the women had hidden their guns and knives, to prevent their hurting each other. The Sacs and Foxes, though so greatly superior in numbers, and attacking by surprise a drunken and unarmed encampment, lost several men who were seen to fall in the onset, and retreated in less than ten minutes, with only a few scalps, pursued by four or five Menominees, who fired on them until they were half a mile below the village. I received information, and was on the ground in an hour and a half after the murders were committed. The butchery was horrid, and the view can only be imagined by those acquainted with savage warfare.
“At seven o’clock a.m., I addressed the letter marked ‘A’ to the officer commanding at Fort Crawford, giving him the first intimation of the massacre, and received in answer his letter of this date, marked ‘B’. Lieut. Lamotte, stationed on the west bank of the Mississippi, two miles below Prairie du Chien, saw the Indians pass up about 9 o’clock p.m. the night the murders were committed and again saw them descend with great rapidity at daylight the next morning.
An express was dispatched by the commanding officer here to Rock Island at two o’clock on the day of the murders; but no other steps to arrest these daring violators of the provisions of the treaty of July, 1830, have, as I believe, been taken.
“To-day, the remaining Menominees asked to speak to me, and I met them accordingly. They complain of the violation of the treaty, and say they have fallen victims to their confidence in the security that was promised them under the sanctions of a treaty made in the presence of their fathers, Gen. Clark and Col. Morgan. That Col. Morgan promised them a free and secure path to this place, and that if they were struck, he would march an army of his warriors into the country of those who struck them with their warriors, and take man for man of their enemies. They say they have lost many of their bravest men. ‘One of our chiefs has lost all his family; his wife and his children and his brother were all murdered, and he is left alone. He is not here; he is in his lodge mourning.’ They added, ‘Take pity on our women and our orphan children, and give us something to console us, and we will wait a while to see if our great father, whom you tell us is strong, will help us to punish those Sacs and Foxes, who shake hands and smoke the pipe of peace to-day, and to-morrow break it and kill those they smoked with.’ Under existing circumstances, I deemed it prudent and humane to give them a few things and to provide some necessaries for their destitute children, the amount of which I will forward by mail. I also promised to lay the affair before their great father, the President, and ask him to have justice done for them agreeably to their treaty, if they would go into their country and remain quiet. They have promised to do so a short time, yet I learn from other sources that runners have been dispatched to Green Bay and among the Sioux.
“The Menominees also complain that they were promised that if they would be quiet, their great father would see justice done between them and the Chippeways. That nothing is done, nor are their dead covered. They remarked, ‘Shall we remain quiet on the faith of our great father until we are all killed? When will our great father answer us?’
“They inform me that a white man (a discharged soldier from St. Peters) had killed a Menominee a few days past. On inquiry I learned that the white man had a fight with two Indians, and in the fight he struck the Indian on the head with a stick and fractured his skull, and he died the day after. There is no white person who can testify anything about it, and the white man has gone off, I know not where.