“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-kay-ray and his party, and brought prisoners to General Street at Prairie du Chien.[[118]] 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 their tribe.
The canoes had been tied together, and many of them had been upset, and the children drowned, their mothers being too weak and exhausted to rescue them. The survivors were taken prisoners, and starving and miserable, they were brought to Prairie du Chien. Our mother was at the fort at the time of their arrival. She described their condition as wretched and reduced, beyond anything she had ever witnessed. One woman who spoke a little Chippewa gave her an account of the sufferings and hardships they had endured—it was truly appalling.
BLACK HAWK.
(Head-man of the Rock River Sacs.) From oil portrait by R. M. Sully, in possession of Wisconsin Historical Society.
After having eaten such of the horses as could be spared they had subsisted on acorns, elm-bark, or even grass. Many had died of starvation, and their bodies had been found lying in their trail by the pursuing whites. This poor woman had lost her husband in battle, and all her children by the upsetting of the canoe in which they were, and her only wish now was, to go and join them. Poor Indians! who can wonder that they do not love the whites?
But a very short time had we been quietly at home, when a summons came to my husband to collect the principal chiefs of the Winnebagoes and meet Gen. Scott and Gov. Reynolds at Rock Island, where it was proposed to hold a treaty for the purchase of all the lands east and south of the Wisconsin. Messengers were accordingly sent to collect them, and, accompanied by as many as chose to report themselves, he set off on his journey.