Wau-Bun: The Early Day in the Northwest

by Mrs. John H. Kinzie

CHAPTER XXXV.

SURRENDER OF WINNEBAGO PRISONERS.

The war was now considered at an end. The news of the battle of the Bad Axe, where the regulars, the militia, and the steamboat Warrior combined, had made a final end of the remaining handful of Sauks, had reached us and restored tranquillity to the hearts and homes of the frontier settlers.

It may seem wonderful that an enemy so few in number and so insignificant in resources could have created such a panic, and required so vast an amount of opposing force to subdue them. The difficulty had been simply in never knowing where to find them, either to attack or guard against them. Probably at the outset every military man thought and felt like the noble old veteran General Brady. "Give me two infantry companies mounted," said he, "and I will engage to whip the Sauks out of the country in one week!"

True, but to whip the enemy you must first meet him; and in order to pursue effectually and catch the Indians, a peculiar training is necessary—a training which, at that day, few, even of the frontier militia, could boast.

In some portions of this campaign there was another difficulty,—the want of concert between the two branches of the service. The regular troops looked with contempt upon the unprofessional movements of the militia; the militia railed at the dilatory and useless formalities of the regulars. Each avowed the conviction that matters could be much better conducted without the other, and the militia, being prompt to act, sometimes took matters into their own hands, and brought on defeat and disgrace, as in the affair of "Stillman's Run."

The feeling of contempt which the army officers entertained for the militia, extended itself to their subordinates and dependants. After the visit of the Ranger officers to Fort Winnebago, before the battle of the Wisconsin, the officer of the mess where they had been entertained called up his servant one day to inquire into the sutler's accounts, He was the same little "Yellow David" who had formerly appertained to Captain Harney.

"David," said the young gentleman, "I see three bottles of cologne-water charged in the month's account of the mess at the sutler's. What does that mean?"

"If you please, lieutenant," said David, respectfully, "it was to sweeten up the dining-room and quarters after them milish' officers were here visiting."

Black Hawk and a few of his warriors had escaped to the north, where they were shortly after captured by the One-eyed Day-kau-ray and his party, and brought prisoners to General Street at Prairie du Chien. The women and children of the band had been put in canoes and sent down the Mississippi, in hopes of being permitted to cross and reach the rest of that tribe.