“You were right, oh Black Hawk,” lamented the thin-faced Ne-a-pope. “Fox and Winnebago are old women. Their hearts are faint and their muscles weak.”
“Let the stinking Fox and Winnebago sit in their lodges,” the Prairie Wolf cried, fairly clicking his teeth in rage, “squaw-men that they are. The Sacs are warriors! We will fight on! Death to the pale-face!”
It was, indeed, death for the pale-face. Black Hawk, wild with hate and anger, sent out small bands of his red horsemen far and wide across the Illinois frontier.
On the twenty-second of May, at the Davis farm, on Indian Creek, twelve miles north of Ottawa, fifteen settlers, men and women, were massacred by the marauding warriors. Taken captive were two girls, Sylvia and Rachel Hall, who were carried back to Black Hawk’s stronghold. Here they were sold for two thousand dollars to the White Crow, a Winnebago chief, who had been sent out by the whites to conduct negotiations for their return. Two days later, the Crow safely delivered the anguished girls into the hands of the military.
Soon afterward, a band of eleven Sacs killed and scalped five white men at Spafford’s farm, on the Pecatonica River, a western tributary of the Rock. Neighboring settlers formed a posse of thirty men, however, and gave quick chase. They overtook the roving warriors in a swamp, and in a pitched battle lasting but a few minutes, killed all eleven savages; while of the pursuers only three were slain and one wounded.
On the next day, Black Hawk himself, with a party of picked braves, made a desperate attack on Apple River fort, a small, stockaded post in the northwest corner of the state. The little garrison sustained a heavy siege for upwards of four hours. Great courage was displayed by the whites. Women and girls moulded bullets, loaded fire-arms, cared for the wounded, and in general proved themselves true border heroines. The thwarted redmen retired with some loss, after laying waste by fire the neighboring cabins and fields.
En route home, this same war party attacked, with singular ferocity, a battalion of whites, one hundred and fifty strong, at Kellogg’s Grove, sixteen miles to the east. After a fierce encounter, the Indians were routed, losing twenty braves killed, while the whites counted but ten.
At Plum River fort, Burr Oak, Sinsiniwa, and Blue Mound, hard skirmishes were likewise fought. Bloodshed, flame, pillage and torture swept the whole northern border. Black Hawk and his feathered warriors were on the loose.