Scott's measures for coping with the cholera at Rock Island were no less energetic and courageous than those he had already taken in dealing with the earlier outbreak of the plague. In a characteristic order to his troops, issued the day after the first death occurred, he recited the facts of the situation and commanded a strict observance of the proper sanitary regulations.[852] He stated that having himself seen much of the disease, he knew the generating cause of it to be intemperance. Every soldier, therefore, who should be found intoxicated after the issuance of this order would be compelled, as soon as his strength should permit, to dig a grave large enough for his own reception, as such grave could not fail soon to be wanted "for the drunken man himself or some drunken companion." This order was given, it was added, as well to serve for the punishment of drunkenness as to spare good and temperate men the labor of digging graves for their worthless companions.
[852] Stevens, op. cit., 248-49.
The troops were camped in tents in close order exposed for several days to cold rains.[853] The groans and screams of the afflicted, audible to everyone, added to the horror of the scene. In the face of this situation the hearts of the stoutest quailed. Through it all General Scott ministered personally to the wants of the afflicted, officers and privates alike, freely exposing himself to disease and death in the most terrible form, and by his example exciting confidence and courage in all.[854] The ravages of the cholera were finally checked by removing the troops from their camp on Rock Island to small camps on the bluffs on the Iowa side of the Mississippi.[855]
[853] Captain Henry Smith's narrative, in Wisconsin Historical Collections, X, 165. The author was himself an officer in General Atkinson's brigade during the war.
[854] Ibid.; Scott, Memoirs, I, 230-32.
[855] Flagler, Rock Island Arsenal, 22; Wisconsin Historical Collections, X, 166.
On September 15 and 21, 1832, treaties were concluded by General Scott and Governor Reynolds, acting on behalf of the United States, with the Winnebago and the Sac and Fox Indians respectively, which formally terminated the war.[856] The former were compelled to cede their lands in southern Wisconsin to the United States, and accept in their stead a new home west of the Mississippi in the modern state of Iowa; the latter surrendered an important tract of their territory on the western side of the Mississippi, extending northward from the northern boundary of Missouri. Thus was punishment meted out by the victors—to the Sacs and Foxes for their active participation in the war, to the Winnebagoes for the sympathy and covert assistance extended by them to the former. Black Hawk, the leader of the forlorn red hope in this disastrous foray, was taken, after several months' imprisonment, upon a tour of the East, with the design of imbuing him with a conviction of the futility of further resistance to the whites. Upon his return, shorn of all political power, he was permitted to live out the remainder of his life in retirement, the quiet and peace of which contrasted strangely with the tempestuousness of his active career. No better defense of his action in going to war with the whites can be made than he himself offered in the course of a Fourth of July speech shortly before his death: "Rock River was a beautiful country. I loved my towns, my cornfields, and the home of my people. I fought for it."[857]
[856] Treaties ... from 1778 to 1837, 503 ff.
[857] Stevens, op. cit., 271.
Upon the conclusion of peace the troops which had been gathered at Rock Island were dispersed in various directions. The survivors of the six companies of artillery which had left Fortress Monroe in June for the seat of war returned to that place in November. Their return route from Rock Island was down the Mississippi and up the Ohio and the Kanawha to Charleston and thence across Virginia to the final destination.[858] On September 23 six companies of infantry of the Second and Fifth Regiments under Lieutenant-colonel Cummings left Rock Island for Chicago.[859] Seven days later the detachment was in camp, on the east branch of the "River du Pagan" near Chicago.[860] Evidently the "Du Pagan" was the modern Du Page. The next day Major Whistler's two companies of the Second Infantry, which were included in the detachment, moved into Chicago and once more took up their quarters in Fort Dearborn. Two days later, October 3, Lieutenant-colonel Cummings left Chicago for Fort Niagara with the two companies of the Fifth Infantry which had come from that place four months before to take part in the war. The destination of the remaining companies of the detachment which had marched from Rock Island to Chicago is not in evidence.