Unluckily, General Harrison and his officers had rather lavish notions of hospitality; and when Black Hawk’s decision was made known to the other chiefs, most of them were a great deal too drunk to know what they were agreeing to. The money was paid regularly enough, and, for some few years, whatever breaches of the treaty there were, were so trifling that the Government could easily wink at them. Black Hawk went about his hunting and his civil warfare 108 and conducted himself as a respectable savage should.
Then he got into bad hands. As the troubles of our own armies in India and the Soudan have shown, it is no uncommon thing to find peaceable men stirred to fighting frenzy by some maniac who makes it his business to cause as much strife as possible in the name of religion. A great prophet had arisen among the Indians—a Shawnee, in whose hands poor Black Hawk was wax; and who gave the redskins no rest till they crossed the river in a body, and swept eastwards as far as Michigan, driving the handful of white settlers back and back to the towns from which they had come. This was in 1811. In the following year, now thoroughly persuaded that he and all the chiefs and all the white subscribers to the treaty were drunk when it was signed, and that it was no longer binding, Black Hawk pressed on into Michigan as far as Detroit. This was more than human patience could stand; the white citizens turned out, and drove away the Indians with such slaughter that their leader was only too glad to draw off. For four years he confined his attacks to petty farm raids, and, in 1816, signed another treaty, which was followed by fourteen years of comparative peace, though Black Hawk and a few of his supporters refused to retire across the river again.
By 1830 the States Government, realising its folly in having allowed any deviation from the strict terms of the agreement, obliged Black Hawk to sign another, by which every acre of land east of the river became white property. It was now that the real trouble began. 109 The Indian chief was growing old, losing his former promptness of action, and becoming more and more a slave to the Shawnee prophet’s counsels. During the fourteen years that he had been practically defying the Government, he and his immediate adherents had begun to farm a little; and just now their crops were ripening, and harvest-time was almost due. When the order came for him to leave the neighbourhood he lost his head or his temper, refused to stir, and threatened with death anyone who dared to interfere with him. A week later he returned from his hunting to find some white labourers calmly ploughing up his crops and parcelling out his land. There was a brief scuffle, and the whites were obliged to flee, and thus opened the last period of the war.
Knowing that vengeance would be taken, Black Hawk sent across the river for more warriors, and prepared to make a decided stand. But instead of the half-dozen shopkeepers and labourers he had been prepared to meet, he found himself attacked by a body of men several hundred strong, well armed, and many of them mounted. These were the Illinois militia under General Gaines—hardy trappers, farmers, and timber-rafters, whose fathers had fought with and defeated British regiments. The Indians’ nerve failed them, and, after a single deadly volley from the militia, they fled. But, instead of crossing the river, they went north, into Wisconsin, where they looked to find remnants of their tribe who would ally themselves with them.
During the whole of the next year, and until the summer of 1832, a very clever guerrilla warfare was 110 carried on by the savages; hundreds of white men were killed, and scarcely one Indian; nor was there much in the shape of a pitched battle. It was then that General Atkinson, an old and experienced fighter of Indians, was sent to put an end to the whole matter. Dispatching a small force of light cavalry, under General Scott, to search the woods, he marched the bulk of his little army towards the Wisconsin River, in the hope of eventually surrounding the Indians and capturing Black Hawk.
His march proved more tedious than he had bargained for. Nowadays tired New Yorkers and Chicagoites, with a taste for sport, devote their summer holidays to shooting over the beautiful Wisconsin highlands; but in 1832 there were no railways or palace-like hotels there. Even a farm was a rarity, and every hill or ravine might conceal a score of Indian sharpshooters. The whole aspect of the country was savage, dreary, and forbidding. It had been the duty of the advance guard to see that there were no redskins lying in ambush; but General Atkinson soon began to think that that duty had been very much neglected, for at almost every mile an arrow or a bullet came from nowhere, wounding some man or horse, and in one case killing a Sioux guide. This kind of thing continued for a couple of days or more; and Atkinson had begun to say somewhat hard things of his colleague when one of the scouts rode up to report a mound of earth which, he said, looked very much like a grave. Before the day was out, six more such mounds had been seen by the wayside, and as most of them were marked by a cross, hastily made with a 111 couple of sticks, it was all too probable that these were the graves of white men.
The old soldier’s mind was soon made up.
“We must get double work out of our horses, boys,” he said; “there’ll be no camping to-night; I’m going to overtake General Scott.”
All sorts of possibilities suggested themselves, the most prominent of which was that they were coming to a district more thickly populated by Indians, who had been picking off Scott’s men with increasing rapidity; for the last four graves were ominously close together. Scouts were doubled and, so far from making any pretence of a stealthy march, lanterns and torches were lit, and every hiding-place hurriedly examined. The night passed without any sign of Indians; but, soon after daybreak, three or four columns of smoke were seen rising from behind a hill that lay in the line of march. Half a dozen scouts galloped forward and soon disappeared. Atkinson’s men closed up, baggage-waggons were dragged to the centre, and in a moment everyone was prepared either to charge or to repel a charge.
In less than five minutes a single horseman appeared on the top of the hill and clattered down the slope. Atkinson spurred his horse and hurried to meet the messenger—one of the six scouts.