The spread of the contagion at Chicago was checked before the end of July, and on the twenty-ninth of the month Scott set out, accompanied by a few officers, along the Chicago-Galena trail for the seat of war, leaving orders for Lieutenant-colonel Eustis to follow him with all of the troops who should be able to move by the third of August. Scott reached Prairie du Chien and assumed command of the army on August 7, only to find that the war had been brought to a close. The Illinois militia under Henry and Dodge and the regulars under Atkinson had roused Black Hawk's band from the wilderness fastness to which it had retired in the neighborhood of Lake Koshkonong, and hotly pursued it across southern Wisconsin, through the beautiful Four-Lakes country where the capital of the state has since been located, to the Mississippi River about forty miles above the mouth of the Wisconsin. Here on August 2 in the battle of the Bad Axe, which shortly degenerated into a massacre, Black Hawk's band was practically destroyed, and the war concluded. The red leader himself, seeing the end at hand, had deserted his party the night before the battle, and with a few followers had fled eastward to the Dalles of the Wisconsin.[845] About three hundred of his deserted band succeeded in escaping across the Mississippi, either before or during the affair at the Bad Axe, but half of these were shortly slaughtered by a party of one hundred Sioux, whom General Atkinson had sent after them. Of the band of nearly one thousand persons who had crossed the Mississippi in April not more than one hundred and fifty lived to tell the tragic story of the Black Hawk War, "a tale fraught with dishonor to the American name."[846]
[845] Thwaites, "Story of the Black Hawk War," in Wisconsin Historical Collections, XII, 258.
[846] Ibid., XII, 261.
General Scott's first act after assuming command of the army was to order the discharge of the volunteers.[847] On August 10 he started down the Mississippi by steamer to Fort Armstrong, intending there to bring the war to a formal close by the negotiation of a treaty of peace. The troops from Chicago, who were making their way, meanwhile, across Illinois to the seat of war in obedience to Scott's orders, were met at Dixon's Ferry by news of the termination of the war, and orders to change their destination to Fort Armstrong. Here, while awaiting the bringing-in of the prisoners, and examining those brought in to determine their share of responsibility for the war, Scott was once more confronted by the enemy that had wrought such havoc among the troops in the journey around the Lakes and at Chicago. About August 26 the cholera again broke out among his troops with all the virulence of a first attack.[848] Four companies of United States Rangers had been enlisted, one from Illinois, two from Indiana, and one from Missouri.[849] The Illinois company, while proceeding to the seat of war, had been, like Eustis' detachment of regulars from Chicago, directed to make its way to Rock Island. On the way down Rock River from Dixon's Ferry, the soldiers were attacked by cholera; some were left behind, ill, on the march, and others died after reaching camp near Rock Island. Whether or not it was brought by these troops, the disease soon made its appearance in Rock Island, the first death occurring August 27.[850]
[847] Stevens, op. cit., 247-48.
[848] Scott, Memoirs, I, 221; Wisconsin Historical Collections, X, 231.
[849] Wisconsin Historical Collections, X, 231.
[850] Scott's Order No. 16, August S, 1832, printed in Stevens, op. cit., 248-40.
The outbreak of the plague halted, for the time being, the progress of arrangements for the treaty. The Indians who had not yet assembled were directed to remain away until a new summons should be sent them, and those at hand were permitted to disperse. In this connection there occurred a striking exhibition of the red man's devotion to his code of honor. Among the prisoners whose cases were awaiting disposition were three Sacs who were accused of having murdered some Menominees in accordance with the Indian law of retaliation. Scott set them at liberty to seek safety in the prairies from the pestilence, having first exacted a promise that in response to a prearranged signal, to be hung out from, a dead tree on the subsidence of the pest, they would return to stand their trial. The cholera having passed away the signal was displayed, and a day or two later the murderers presented themselves.[851] It is pleasing to be able to add that an appeal which Scott had already dispatched to Washington in their behalf met with a favorable response and that it was not necessary to take the lives of the men who esteemed their honor so highly.
[851] Stevens, loc. cit., Scott, Memoirs, I, 221-23.