Our travelling companions started early in the morning for the fort, which was but twelve miles distant, and they were so kind as to take charge of a note to our friends at home, requesting them to send Plante with the carriage to take us the rest of the distance.
We reached there in safety, and thus ended the first journey by land that any white woman had made from Green Bay to Fort Winnebago.
COMMENCEMENT OF SAUK WAR
Late in the autumn, after our return, my husband took his mother to Prairie du Chien for the benefit of medical advice from Dr. Beaumont[[98]] of the U. S. Army. The journey was made in a large open boat down the Wisconsin river, and it was proposed to take this opportunity to bring back a good supply of corn for the winter’s use of both men and cattle.
The ice formed in the river, however, so early, that after starting with his load, he was obliged to return with it to the Prairie, and wait until the thick winter’s ice enabled him to make a second journey, and bring it up in sleighs—with so great an expense of time, labor, and exposure, were the necessaries of life conveyed from one point to another, through that wild and desolate region!
The arrival of my brother Arthur from Kentucky, by way of the Mississippi, in the latter part of April, brought us the uncomfortable intelligence of new troubles with the Sauks and Foxes. Black Hawk had, with the flower of his nation, recrossed the Mississippi, once more to take possession of their old homes and cornfields.[AY]