J.S. Williams, 6th Regiment.
Second Lieut. W. Wheelwright, 1st Artillery, Ordnance Officer.
Will Carr Lane, Surgeon.
Maj. Thomas Wright, Paymaster.
On April 10th the expedition arrived at the rapids of the Des Moines about 2 P.M., where General Atkinson was informed that Black Hawk on the 6th had crossed to the east bank of the Mississippi, near the mouth of the lower Iowa, with 400 or 500 horsemen, beside others to portage canoes, making a total force able to bear arms of over 500 men, the whole band, men, women and children, amounting, as then estimated, to about 2,000 souls,[[95]] and going, as Black Hawk has told in his book, “to make corn.”
CHAPTER XVI.
Council–Atkinson’s Call for Troops–Reynolds’ Proclamation–Black Hawk Defiant–Gratiot’s Journey.
What the intentions of General Atkinson might have been, above his actual instructions, when leaving St. Louis, are entirely conjectural. The same may be said with reference to the 10th, but when he arrived at Fort Armstrong, during the night of the 12th, they are plainly evident.
On the 13th, at 10 A.M., he called a council, at which Keokuk and his head men, some seventy in number, including Wapello, attended, and there he demanded the surrender of ten of the principal men concerned in the murders. Keokuk replied that he was unable to deliver them up because some had joined the Prophet’s band at his village, toward which Black Hawk was then rapidly marching along the left bank of Rock River, and the others were with Black Hawk.